A family home with heart.
Sixteen years back now, surfing’s famous Wright family, daddy
Rob, Mama Fiona and kids, Mikey, Tyler, Kirby and Owen moved from
Culburra on the NSW South Coast to the warm-water waves of
Byron shire, setting up on almost seven acres a little south of
Lennox Point.
The joint at 5 Skennars Road,
Skennars Head, was built back when the little
sub-division was all undulating green fields and long before the
place got turned into the usual shitbox housing development that
pockmarks Australia. They don’t just hurt the eyes and squeeze the
bank account but each squared off, crudely built structure ruins
the souls contained within.
Here, a family home with heart.
The place got listed for sale one month back when Rob Wright’s
dementia got so bad his boy Owen, who’d been caring for him for the
last five years, had to put him into a dementia unit.
In a post on Instagram, Owen, Rob’s favourite kid,
wrote of the struggle of seeing a beloved parent disappearing
before your eyes.
“He’s surfed here forever. Every morning. He was still surfing
here three years ago. And five years ago he got diagnosed with
dementia. He hid it before that. He already knew before that, but
he hid it from us.
“But we found out about it five years ago and he was surfing all
the way up until two years ago. And today we’ve come down to
Boulders to say see you later to Boulders, because we’re off to the
Home today. We’re taking him to the nursing home to get some better
care.
“We fought pretty hard, didn’t we Poppy, to keep you out of
there. That was your wishes. You said that to me years ago, ‘I
don’t want to go in there. I don’t ever want to go into one of
those places.’ So we fought pretty hard to keep you out. And we did
pretty well, I reckon.
“Because the condition he’s in now is non-verbal, can barely
walk, doesn’t get out of bed much. You know, dementia can be pretty
messy and incontinence is a part of that, not knowing how to feed
yourself. Losing bodily functions. That’s something I wasn’t aware
of when this started. I thought it was just memory. And seeing how
far it goes is quite shocking, but we did our best to keep him out
of the Home for as long as we could.
“It definitely took a toll on me personally and emotionally, but
you do anything for your mums and dads. And I guess today is a big
day for us, hey Poppy? We’ll put you into the Home, get some care,
get some nurses around and maybe meet some new people.”
Listed with hopes of three mill or so, the estate just secured
four-and-a-half million dollars, well north of the expected three,
three-and-a-half.
As O said to his Dad in the
same post,
“What a journey mate, what a journey. So, it’s been a pleasure.
It’s been a wild ride, for sure.”
And from Owen’s book Against the Water,
“That relationship (with Dad) was the reason I surfed, it was
the reason I pushed, it was the reason I rebelled, it was the
reason I pushed again. It’s part of the reason I’ve retired. And
it’s part of the reason I made it back out of the head injury.”
