‘YOU CAN SEE HOW POPULAR THEY ARE ... YOU DON’T GET THAT FOR NOTHING.’ Peter, who has now retired from full-time bus driving, is sipping his coffee in the corner of the café. He doesn’t have to be up early for work any more, but every morning just before six, he comes to the café and makes sure it is safe for Jacky and Peaw to hop out of their car. If he can’t make it, he organises someone else to be there. The girls have never opened up alone since the attack. ‘I enjoy the coffee; I enjoy the company. They’re like kids to me,’ he says without any fuss. Peaw and Jacky make more of a fuss about him, though, calling Peter their Moree Dad. It’s Peter, and customers like Peter, they insist, who gave them a reason to stay and a place to call home. ‘That’s why we’re still here,’ says Jacky firmly. ‘When we first came here, it was hot,’ says Jacky, remembering the summer they moved to Moree to help Thai friends who ran a restaurant in Moree. ‘In Thailand and in Sydney it is hot and humid and then it rains. Here it is just hot and hot and hot. At first it was hard. And very quiet. After eight o’clock nothing: nothing at all.’ After three weeks they wanted out, but stayed on, somewhat ambivalently, until the attack. It
was only in the aftermath that they felt sure they wanted to make Moree their home. Jacky and Peaw own a house on the other side of town where they live with a couple and the couple’s two children. They are good friends with another couple who run a local Thai restaurant. That couple also has a child, and Peaw babysits at night while both sets of parents work. ‘I love it,’ says Peaw. ‘I have three kids now.’ Regular Mel Jensen says the women have a knack for bringing out the best in people. ‘Their best customers are probably some of the more conservative people in the community. Even guys who are quite prejudiced, they just can’t do it to these girls, who remember everyone and make them feel so important,’ says Mel. ‘They have created a place where people have met and made connections. Some mornings it might take you an hour to get out of here, because one person after another will turn up. And the men coming in: I never thought I’d see so many men get into the coffee culture.’ Les Smith, a 101-year-old mechanic-turned-poet who has spent most of his life in Moree, apart from ‘a few years during the war’, drives himself to the
Relaxing Café for a coffee with his mate Rudy five days a week. He’s seen a lot of businesses come and go over the years. ‘In the early days all the cafés were Greek. This here was a bakery,’ Les says, pointing at the homewares shop next door. ‘And here,’ pointing at the café, ‘was the living quarters.’ About Jacky and Peaw, Les says, ‘you couldn’t find better people anywhere. ‘It’s a pleasure to spend your money here. They are very kind and thoughtful. You can see how popular they are … you don’t get that for nothing; you’ve got to earn it, and they certainly have.’ Through their intentional, indefatigable friendliness, these two women have created for themselves a place in the Moree community. And in doing so they have also created a place for the community itself, where everyone is welcome to sit on the mismatched chairs, with the fake grass underfoot. The kids in the hooded jumpers were never caught, but that doesn’t really matter to Jacky and Peaw. They’re far more interested in love than revenge. If the love you give determines the love you receive, it’s no wonder everyone looks so happy in the Relaxing Café. n 75 Heber Street, Moree NSW.
Opposite page Former bus driver Peter McLellan is loved by the two women, who think of him as their ‘Moree Dad’. He turns up every morning to make sure it’s safe for them to open.
36
