Ian and Wendy Rowe have cared for their daughter Lynny who was born without arms and legs in their humble Melbourne home. Picture: Craig Borrow
Source: Herald Sun

EARLY one morning last spring, a well-known lawyer with political connections met a tough property developer on a bayside beach and hatched a plot as they walked.

Talking fast and low, the power-walkers schemed how to get innocent people to hand over money and building materials, and collude to move an old couple and their daughter out of their family home in a quiet Nunawading street.

The plot worked.

Next Wednesday, the first stage of the pair’s plan will unfold when a much-loved family is finally coaxed out of the weatherboard house they’ve called home for 55 years.

Just days after the gentle couple and their daughter leave, demolition workers will tear down their little house.

Cement-mixer trucks will pour a slab and teams of carpenters, plumbers and brickies will descend on the quiet street.

By July there will be a big new brick-veneer dwelling where the little timber one was – all without a word of protest from neighbours or the council.

The developer, the lawyer and their political contacts will have beaten the system – which is a good thing.

Because the new house is not some profiteering scam.

It is to be built for the old couple, Wendy and Ian Rowe, and their profoundly disabled daughter, Lynny.

What’s more, almost everyone involved is doing it for nothing.

From the shearing shed to the Supreme Court, it’s the Australian way to “pass the hat” to help a friend in trouble. B

ut it takes a big hat and deep pockets to build a house that way.

And a lot of generous people.

This is how it happened.

Regular readers of this newspaper might recall Lynny Rowe.

She is one of the most disabled people in the world.

We told her story last June.

We told how Lyn was born with no arms and no legs almost 50 years ago, just as the thalidomide birth-defect scandal broke. Doctors urged Wendy and Ian to “forget” the baby because she would “die within six months”.

The Rowes ignored the awful logic of that option and took an awe-inspiring leap instead — devoting themselves to their helpless baby for the rest of their lives.

They lived without complaint for decades, quietly and gently looking after the daughter who could never look after herself.

And they had three other daughters, too.

The punchline of the story was that two years ago one of Australia’s best-known plaintiff lawyers heard about the Rowes and came out of early retirement to fight for them, angry that thalidomide – the drug that caused the world’s greatest medical disaster – could inflict so much suffering for so long for such little compensation.

The lawyer is Peter Gordon.

He is representing Lynny Rowe – and others like her – in a pivotal court battle against the German company that invented thalidomide and sold it to a trusting world more than 50 years ago.

But this story is not about Gordon’s legal challenge, vital as it is.

And it’s only partly about his property developer pal, Campbell Rose.

Rose is the man who helped keep the Western Bulldogs afloat and prosperous in tough times.

That’s when he met Gordon, the former Bulldogs president who had previously saved the club from amalgamation.

Rose left the Whitten Oval and is now chief executive of Stralliance Developments; Gordon is now concentrating on helping thalidomide victims instead of his beloved Bulldogs.

But the two have much in common.

They like getting things done – fast.

And they don’t like taking “no” for an answer.

Gordon told Rose a public figure (who wants to remain anonymous) had been so moved by the Lynny Rowe story he had called to offer help.

The public figure was confident he could persuade generous friends to “kick in” to renovate the Rowes’ house.

Gordon was touched.

When he told Rose about it, Rose immediately offered help.

But when Rose’s building manager, Peter Rielly, inspected the Rowes’ old house, he knew it was beyond saving.

The stumps had rotted.

Floors were skewed, doors did not shut, and walls were cracked.

The Rowes had spent all their spare time and money on caring for their daughter, not on renovating.

Rielly was blunt.

He told Rose, who told Gordon, who told the public figure: it’s a total rebuild or nothing.

That’s when Rose had a lightbulb moment.

“Well, we build houses – we’ll build it!” was the way Gordon recalls his friend’s reaction.

Stralliance builds skyscrapers and shopping centres – but its subsidiary, Watersun Homes, does anything “from a dog kennel” to a million-dollar luxury house, Rose says.

He spoke to his company’s principals, Benni Aroni and Gary Caulfield.

They agreed.

Rose hit the telephone, calling contacts in the building game.

He told them about Lynny Rowe, sent around a brochure that reproduced the Herald Sun story, then asked what they could do to help.

Within days he started putting ticks beside names of Watersun’s suppliers and “tradies”.

The list grew and grew.

By this week 22 businesses had promised to do their bit – and more are volunteering every day.

From West Side building surveyors to Sita Bins, from big companies like Bunnings and Boral to smaller contractors like Tony Rongwood Plumbing, Watersun is listing them all in a website dedicated to the Rowe house project.

By the time Rose got back to Gordon with the good news, his friend Anton Middendorp, of the Middy’s Group, had got together with Clipsal to offer an automated system so sophisticated that a limbless person can turn on lights and heaters and open doors using voice-recognition technology or by blowing into a mouthpiece.

Meanwhile, occupational therapist Michelle French visited the Rowes and listed every modification a house would need to make it user-friendly for a limbless person.

She briefed Watersun’s architectural draftswoman, Deeyana Davids, who adjusted one of the firm’s standard house plans to allow room for an electric wheelchair to move easily from room to room through wide passages and automatic double doors.

She made the kitchen bigger so a wheelchair could navigate around benches, and designed a roomy bathroom with automated plumbing gear – and a reinforced roof to take the modern electric winch that will lift Ms Rowe around.

But the project is going to take some money to complete.

Tradespeople have apprentices to pay, furniture has to be bought, government fees have to be paid, landscaping done.

This is where the public figure comes in.

He and Peter Gordon are lifelong opponents in both politics and football but are both in Lynny Rowe’s corner.

There are rumours they have recently been caught calling each other “good blokes”.

Gordon is chuffed that the public figure has passed the hat around his friends. So far, they have tossed in $150,000, with the chance of more.

It means there will be no shortcuts.

The house that jacks-of-all-trades built will be state-of-the-art.

More importantly, perhaps, it tells us something about the state of the heart.

 

For information see www.thelynrowe project.com.au