Feature - Full Circle

Artist, seamstress, bookseller, and advocate for tolerance and compassion, Cheryl Laizans is a woman who knows how to listen to her instincts. 

By Victoria McGuin

After hearing about Cheryl Laizans from various friends, I knew I had to meet her, so I headed to her welcoming Maleny home, peppered with unique art and photographs, and a friendly rescue cat, to find out more.

To begin at the beginning… Cheryl was born at the end of 1940, with the war raging in Hitler’s favour. 

“Every day the newspapers carried headlines of 700 deaths, 1200 deaths … as the U-boats took a terrible toll on the convoys in the Atlantic.

“One of my first memories is of standing in our breakfast room, switching the light on and off, and chanting, ‘the Japs are coming, the Japs are coming’.”

Cheryl grew up in East Kilda, Melbourne, which was a very refugee-heavy area. “When I was about 10, there was a huge influx of people from Europe, and many came to West St Kilda. I mixed with many nationalities. 

“I was very present and aware at a time that was fleeting – Australia was so ‘English’ and unchanged at the time, so the contrast was huge.

“These refugees changed the face of Melbourne, and we Australians had little idea of the traumas and losses these people, with their strange hairstyles and clothes, had been through. One major gift, I later realised, we gave these wounded souls was our casual “she’ll be right, mate” approach to life. We generally let them be, allowing them the space to heal.”

Cheryl began dating a Latvian and when she was 21 her mother died suddenly. “She was my best friend, my everything. I’m 83 now and I don’t think I have ever gotten over the loss.”

My boyfriend said at the time, “Never mind darling, next year we’ll be in Darwin. 

“He knew I dreamt of moving away to Darwin. When I was 16 I had tuberculosis and was in a sanatorium for nine months. Next to me was an older woman from Darwin who was homesick for the place and her lost love, and, being a romantic dreamer, I fell in love with it all through her stories.”

However, Darwin would wait. Cheryl married her Latvian boyfriend and lived with his family on the other side of the city. “I became cut off from everyone I knew, my culture. It was almost like a ghetto area with so many Latvians, and I became fluent in the language to speak with my mother-in-law.”

Cheryl’s mother-in-law had a mum and five sisters back home, and had no idea what had happened to them once the Iron Curtain came down on a large part of Europe. The loss was huge, as it was for so many others in the community.

“Four decades later I met one of those sisters, in Riga, who told me of the pain of not knowing what happened to her sister and her six beautiful children, until one day in the mid-1990s, 50 years later, the phone rang, and it was one of those children.”

There was a strong voice in the community of, ‘When we get Latvia back’, and this would upset Cheryl’s husband. “He thought it was pie in the sky and would never happen. Of course, it did happen, in 1991, 12 years after he took his own life.

“The homesickness was palpable and alcohol was a way of coping in this strange new land. Sadly, my talented and charming husband fell into this trap, and because of that and unresolved traumas he has suffered as a child in a war-torn country, our marriage didn’t last.” 

Cheryl finally made the move to Darwin when she was 34, with her husband and children, “just after it had blown away!” and they lived in a caravan as accommodation was rare.  It was here the marriage broke up.

“I fell in love with Darwin though,” Cheryl smiled. “I was home. The atmosphere there is totally different from anywhere else in Australia. It was a truly integrated city.”

A busy life followed. “Having bought a bookshop (The Parap Bookshop) and with two teenagers to care for, it wasn’t until the mid-‘90s that I noticed something unpleasant happening in politics. The first wave of Pauline Hanson shocked me to my core.

“Having watched my country slowly wake up and embrace newcomers and celebrate differences, I felt those wonderful advances were being torn down by hatred and stupidity. Racism increased enormously, the divisions being encouraged by Prime Minister John Howard. I hope that future historians report accurately the disservice he did to Australia.”

Cheryl finally left Darwin in 1997 and moved to Brisbane, “I would sell clothes I made at markets, with my daughter, but I never wanted to stay in the city. 

“Once I made the decision to move to Maleny everything fell into place. I’ve been a stall holder almost every year at the Maleny Music Festival, which was run by my close friend Noel Gardner, where I sell my hand-made and imported clothes. And I paint, mainly to please myself, although I did have an exhibition at the Upfront Club.

“I also find myself, full circle, involved with refugees once again, through the Welcome to Maleny Refugee Advocacy Group. President Lisa Macdonald is the driving force, and I was with her from the beginning, eight years ago. 

“We became more efficient once Ann Koenig came on board, and we are now classed as a charity, so people can give tax-deductible donations. We are just a little band of volunteers, entirely altruistic, but we see such heart-warming results and have many requests from families who are feeling persecuted and hoping for a better, safer life.

“It’s so vital to have understanding and empathy for others. Since vicariously experiencing what it was like all those years ago, I realise how important it is. 

“And something that I love about living here in the hinterland is that all the fundraising comes from the local community. How’s that? Pretty special.”

Welcome to Maleny (W2M) has a fundraiser coming up this October, ‘Sunday’s Dress’ – details in our Creative Cuts pages.