Have you ever "dropped your bundle"?

Comments this morning about what is the best way to lift the spirit and improve the mental health of a person with depression reminded me of a report I read in 2011 when I was writing a book to commemorate the Karridale Bushfires of 1961.

One particular man Taffy Smith got a “dressing down” from the government land agent because he was depressed. Taffy thought the harsh words helped rouse him from his apathy.

Maybe they did.

But what I also know from all the contemporaneous reports of the post fire recovery is that all the neighbours turned out to help Taffy and his family, they cleared the land together, ploughed together, helped him put in new fences etc. Karridale showed the Dunkirk Spirit, but that spirit needed the synergy of the group.

Nobody will ever know if the “dressing down” did help or whether the warmth and kindness of the group had the beneficial effect.

Left alone and isolated after his “dressing down” Taffy may well have gone from bad to worse. It is the power of the group that most often lifts the spirits. The Dunkirk Spirit was not something experienced alone and in isolation. Group support is important, which is why when the British government sent people out to settle that inhospitable land we know as Australia they set up the Group Settlement Scheme.

We can do a lot for ourselves, but when we are feeling low we usually need others to help us. I wouldn’t risk giving anyone a “dressing down” unless I knew them intimately and I was going to be by their side 24/7 ready and willing to share the lifting. And if I was not absolutely certain about what my friend needed I would probably just give them a gentle nudge, rather than a dramatic swipe.

I used a picture of Taffy taken by a press photographer immediately after the fire for the cover of my book as it seemed to illustrate the aftermath of a bushfire very well.

An extract describing what happened to Taffy in 1961

 "This roaring wall of flames was also heard by George (Taffy) Smith who lived in a small property located in a valley at the end of McDonald Road, a short distance west of Smith Road. He could see the fires coming towards them as four separate fires. As the wind shifted, swirling the fire this way and that Taffy had to make a life or death decision. Stay or go? He made the decision to evacuate his wife and son to the home of the Jenkins, a house on the other side of the Brockman Highway. That decision will almost certainly have saved their lives.
Taffy Smith could not have known exactly what was occurring around his property, but an extreme situation was developing. The wind change that spared Betty Smith caused the two McLeod Creek fire fronts to join together just after 2pm, creating one huge head fire. This fire front was capable of delivering destruction of such power and intensity that nothing could stand in its way. The power of this fire front combined with the slope of the land where the Smith home was located made any chance of defence impossible. Roaring through Taffy Smith’s small timber home everything was incinerated to ash within minutes.
After delivering his family to safety Taffy tried to return but access was blocked by fallen burning timber. When they did eventually return, some time later, all that remained were a few photographs and personal papers that they had buried underground in a biscuit tin.Taffy Smith was a Welshman, a Dunkirk veteran who had arrived in Karridale to farm on virgin bush. Now he saw his eight years of effort destroyed. His comment later was to give thanks that he had owned a car, without it he knew his family would have perished."

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The extract commenting on how he was assessed as “dropping his bundle”

The following comments on Taffy Smith’s reaction to the loss of his home and how he was subsequently treated by the Chairman of the Government Advisory Committee gives us an interesting insight into how “post traumatic stress” and “reactive depression” were dealt with in 1961.

Writing in the Daily News, April 1961, Dan O’Sullivan recounted the following observation on Taffy Smith;

"In truth Taffy Smith had been wiped out. His life seemed at an end. He was stunned into a lethargy so profound that people believed he had “dropped his bundle” – and that he would never have the strength to pick it up again.Yet when I saw Smith again a few days ago, with a neighbour helping him to plough new pastures, the little Welshman was so perky that he was trying to explore his chance of selling up and taking over a bigger nearby, unoccupied farm where he has been quartered since the fire.And he had a word of thanks for Government Advisory Committee Chairman Mr.J.P.Gabbedy.
Said Smith;
“He gave me quite a dressing down when I went to Perth depressed, and he more or less roused me from my lethargy. I’d like him to know it helped.”

(drop your bundle. mainly AUSTRALIAN, INFORMAL. If someone drops their bundle, they lose all hope or lose control of their emotions)