Annie Louey’s dad died, then she found his briefcase | Australian Story

[Music] it was probably 3 and 1/2 years after my dad's funeral that I was cleaning out the garage and came across this Briefcase full of stuff photographs passports letters there's just so much I don't know about my family my dad was 60 when I was born M wow that hair that volume the mystery of who my dad is only started unraveling after he died the secrets were there all along in plain sight this is him when he was much younger than any of the photos we've come across before he never mentioned that he raised another family decades before he married my mom I wanted to know where they were living now and find out as much info as I could we were always told that lying was bad that you shouldn't lie in our language lying is called Big Talk gong o you're not supposed to do big talk that is one of the highest sins in our household so that's probably why I was so mad when I found out about all this stuff because it just seemed like a lot of hypocrisy all I inherited was a bunch of family secrets and my dad's old [Music] car I would describe myself as a comedian presenter and actor depends on the day really and who's asking as a teenager it was one of my main frustrations was having parents that wouldn't let me do anything basically and I kind of rebelled against that so I think I was drawn to Comedy to be able to express some of those emotions and frustration hands together for Annie loie oh St thank you thank you for coming along I'm turning 30 very soon wow yeah wow I know it is depressing it is depressing I feel so old and my mom's very worried about me because I'm not married and when she was at my age she was already married and had a kid which was me so she's been trying to give me some dating advice except she hasn't dated she had an arranged marriage with a man my dad who was 60 years old when I was born I say yeah I could be married right now go down for a drive to the old folks home and we'll have a browse see what's left after Co my family is really small it's just my parents my sister and I so my name is Anna obviously and Annie's name is Annie and it's been a big issue our whole lives it's probably one of our greatest traumas but it's bonded us one of the first and best jokes I wrote was that my parents never got through page one of the baby naming book Annie is definitely the funniest person I know and I also think of her as my best friend in many ways I remember possibly being there when she was conceived we all slept in the same [Laughter] room I've known Annie since we met in year seven at school she was always really confident she was known for being the funny one by the time I hit my teens it was very turbulent my dad was super strict on me like I was never allowed to go out with my friends the answer was always no to anything there was a lot of screaming matches heaps of door slamming I think growing up I felt very alone because my sister was a lot younger than me there was like no one to really understand me at home and every time I wanted to go out with my friends I was met with a firm resistance my dad keeping track of where I was at at all times I think I was always frustrated why can't you speak English why can't you get us to do extracurricular activities like everybody else when Annie was around 15 16 she really wanted to join the Army kets program in high school and she came home and told my parents about it and I think they were instantly disapproving it's like a slumber party but in a different location and you basically don't have adults controlling what you're doing [Music] [Applause] [Music] it was the fourth day in the bush and we were doing a survival dinner I made this file was really cracking it was a great fire and I went to make dinner and so I was peeling the the pumpkin and the knife slipped and all this Blood started coming out and I remember seeing the trees getting blurry and I passed [Music] out I fell into my own fire I woke up and my ears were ringing and I could smell burnt hair and I could only see out of one eye and I couldn't talk properly I remember them saying no Duff on the radio which is like this is not a not a like this is we just finished having dinner as a family when the phone rang it was just a real moment of of shock and um Panic they told us that she was being rushed in the back of an ambulance to hospital they told me it was first second and third degree burns the first time that I looked in the mirror I remember it looking like one of those diagrams you see in health class with the muscles it was like it been completely stripped back and I was fully red swollen I think I'd yeah lost my hair and my eyebrow and Just One Look I just passed out while sitting down because it was too much to cope with these are the pressure garments that I haven't looked at probably since I stopped wearing them we had to pretty much start the process of being a nurse but outside of the hospital um so her bandages had to get changed every few hours and there was a very vigorous cleaning process that was extremely painful I would wake up every day going I'm so grateful to be alive but at the same time I wish I had died because what I had to do every day was so unbearable it was fun funny I think Annie had a lot of anxiety around going back to school as soon as she like got home or during the night she had to put all the compression masks back on yeah I wore it from the ages of 16 to 18 I can't breathe it's so bad in here at the back anyway there you go Lord okay what what's the like to walk in my in my shoes you want to go to the shops maybe it was a few months later I could put makeup on and from then I think I just used that as a as a mask I just was probably quite depressed I'd go home and just put the TV on and I just fall asleep and that was my life for probably a good year after that she works really hard to not appear as if there was any change if she's not okay you can't really tell she covers it up a lot and she does it really successfully as well so firstly we have niads to uh doing their corals piece to kick off the coral section of corals I just turned 16 about a week before this camp and I wanted to be an actor at the time your Noble son is mad mad call she loved being on stage she was absolutely involved in a lot of school productions what teenage girl after going through an accident like that wants to go on stage and have everybody staring at her um by choice in the months that I spent at home resting I was super bored I just borrowed every DVD that I could find that was Australian comedians International Comedians and I had always wanted to give that a go I studied journalism before deciding to give comedy a go fulltime Life's Too Short you could die at any moment and why not do the things that you want to do now it's Annie Lou it was very hard to get into the sea the first open mic that I did I was the only woman after 20 men really I am glad to be here um maybe because when I was a kid and I told people people I wanted to be a comedian they laughed do you know how confusing that is I met a girl at a bar when I was in Europe she said she was Chinese and I was like you're Chinese no way I'm Chinese and then the next thing I said I managed to surprise even myself I said but your English is so good my dad didn't like to see us spending too much time on the computer he told us to read a dictionary and I set this goal to do 50 gigs in a year and it taught me so much about just rocking up and something's going to happen hey I'm Annie Louie to destigmatize the topic of death I'm taking a bunch of performers and comedians on a ride with me so get ready to hear it straight from the he's MTH now she's a TV presenter she's a radio host she's a standup comedian she's a writer she does everything hello there I'm Samuel Y and welcome to China tonight I'm Annie Louie and I'm Chinese every night I've been doing comedy since I was 16 so that is half my life I don't own anything I don't own a house but I do have a car I inherited it from my dad the car is 20 years old now and it's still going I never thought it was weird to drive a car that my dad had his final moments in 8 years ago he was driving his car to visit a friend and he had a stroke at a red light so this is a red light we got a red light this is exactly what would have happened he would have been there slumped over at the steering wheel and people behind him would have been honking the out of him and saying it's green your and then swerving around and skiding off and I just wanted to say in our defense not all Asians are bad drivers some of us are dead when somebody dies the history dies with them and that was very obvious that I had so many more questions I wanted to ask my dad probably knew he was going to take this secret to the Grave since my dad David passed away we discovered that he had two other marriages and he also had two children to his first wife they 60 year old they could be our moms and they had a dog we weren't allowed to have a dog I'm already jealous I think there's a big shock factor involved and it makes you reconsider your interactions with with the person like your dad I felt more Angry than sad I think if we had been able to talk about it we we could have all accepted that he had another life so this is the younger sister which was cut out of this photo yeah if only it was that simple to solve everything oh there you go found my family some I love having a sister so much and I think if I could have two more of her and we actually get along that would be I think that would be Heaven no that's him taking a photo of I decided to enlist the help of a family history researcher so that we can try and find my sisters have you tried storing them on Facebook or not yeah I have nothing can't find anything no luck no luck yeah I have medical records of one of the the older daughter suffering from schizophrenia and there's an address that's written multiple times in my dad's diary one of the letters was asking my dad about whether he was going to visit so I found that very sad that was the letter that was what she's asking him whether yeah yeah I do worry about how they feel about our dad what motivation do they have to talk to me I would probably be quite jealous and resentful of a dad who was absent and started a new life that would probably be the next best thing to try and find her a family friend gave me the contact for Keith She said he's one of your dad's best friends I'm really Keen to talk to Keith because he's the only person I've found who can tell me about my dad's early life the thing is we're running out of time because he has stage four cancer when she rang me she said uh I'm Davis uh daughter I was really surprised honestly I didn't even know he married the third time now your dad look look after me like a little brother and when I come to Melbourne he got me a job in uh a dim Factory by then like he was still married to his first wife yeah well just tell me tell me cuz I want to I want to know because you D is he like girls does matter he married or not he used bring bring some light to the factory him and the party and all the stuff I already told him say he you're doing a stupid thing you know doing the wrong thing to his wife but he want listen what can I do Keith confirmed that my dad left his first family and entered a relationship with another woman but Keith couldn't tell me anything about the younger daughter the first oldest daughter she's very very sensitive girl I think yeah that Mar hit her so hard she end up in the mental hospital I feel really sorry for the oldest daughter so this I suppose file on the oldest daughter says that she was admitted to a neuros psychiatric hospital she appears mentally ill facts I observed she seems very withdrawn and appears to be having hallucinations name of the informant David Louie so she was 25 now she'd be 63 in Chinese culture mental health is not really spoken about out and if they do have someone in the family who has a problem they would definitely hide it away I would say until the age of 25 I was completely out of touch with my emotions that came from my parents like being stoic was valued and to not show emotion but I think my dad took that too far to not even give a hint of his previous life yeah it makes me reflect a lot on my own mental health [Music] struggles pretty soon after the accident I started seeing a dermatologist and I've had I think about 30 different types of treatments and surgeries every couple of months and I think where I am today is where I thought initially when it happened I'd be fix in a couple of months and it's actually taken this is like 14 years on when I first came out of hospital I would say I was definitely depressed and also suicidal I felt like there was no end to the suffering and I didn't imagine I would ever live a normal life again just maybe you're you're teenage of M you when this happened and and you're still forming your sense of self and and that's the most disastrous time really to have this sort of thing happen to you what is healing quicker and what's that process like for people the physical versus the the mental I think the mental is is more important I think it goes hand in hand obviously do you feel like you're more comfortable with with the scarring now than your work back then yeah I I'm definitely more comfortable and accepting that this is close to my final form and that I can get around being less self-conscious yeah yeah when I felt like my own mental health and physical health had stabilized I decided that it would be good to help other people in 2016 I just knew that it was time to try finding a Burns community and I came across the kids foundation and I saw that they have camps every year this is the annual camp for families who have somebody who's been burnt or suffered from severe injuries she actually applied to be a volunteer at our camp she came along and told us her story my name is Annie I am a burn Survivor I was burnt at 16 she then went on to become the most amazing Mentor for the young people and since then I've really been able to pursue the thing that I discovered I love the most which is performing and comedy had my accident when I was 4 months old was burnt in a house fire um injuries to 30% of my body I met Annie at a kids camping we just got along instantly really even though I think she doesn't think she's a mentor sometimes she definitely is presenting the ad and I introduce each function so like dancing and then what are you it's been seven years of volunteering most years if they can see somebody who is Chinese a burn Survivor outgoing and wants to perform I think that a lot for children who think oh I don't look like the majority of people how are you how are youy good thanks it's been a couple of months since I spoke to Linda the researcher I'm ke to hear if you've got any news been slow but we've made some progress we've discovered where your eldest half sister is she's living in a supported living facility like an assisted care place so I contacted them to see if there was anybody there by the name of your older sister and they confirmed she'd been there for many years so she's still there she's alive and she's still there and she's still there according to them the mother's still alive and is her only visitor they didn't know anything about a younger sister does make me sad that she only has one visitor so I would love to to visit and the younger sister Still Remains a bit of a mystery I would love to go there and just meet um as soon as possible I will ask Keith for advice whether he might be able to do an introduction for us I'm thinking that we could write a letter and then drop it off there containing your phone number as well yeah would you be open to that yeah sure no worry yeah because I think I'm most nervous about uh them rejecting our offer to meet and then we we can't do anything about it would do it Keith has offered to take a letter to my oldest half sister addressed to her mother to see if they can get in contact with him he agreed to drop the letter at the Care Facility where my half sister lives I go I go in near by myself okay h hopefully would be the luck I might be able to see her I mean that would be wild that be quite a okay Discovery if they're just walking around without [Music] ises I don't want to get disappointed in case I've been dreaming of a reunion that doesn't happen I think that would be that would be sad but I'm preparing for all all scenarios I think if I met them now I would just want to hear about their lives and find a way to create a sense of Peace amongst us because there's obviously a lot of I'm sure trauma that's been involved Keith just texted me and said can you please call I have bad news unfortunately the second sister had passed [Applause] away I'm sorry to car caring you guys that and she die of uh breast cancer four years ago it is very yeah shocking to here Keith told us that the surviving sister was not interested in meeting up with him and I can only assume that there's not much of a chance she would want to meet up with us either okay see you bye bye wild yeah I think that gets me emotional cuz I'm like oh I already imagined saying to her like I don't normally hug people but I want to give you a hug yes I just like I wish I could take all my pain away I'm sorry for what our dad did even though I didn't know yeah I feel really sad but um yeah and they had such a hard life as well so what really felt like the saddest thing about the whole thing was just if like the mom passes away and she like the oldest sister just has no one I guess all I could do is say that I'm here and if they ever want to contact me that just going to be there for as long as we're alive and hopefully it works out I think the best outcome is that everybody is just a little less [Music] lonely in Chinese culture traditionally it's quite taboo to go digging up the past I've opened up a can of worms and I can't put them back I don't really know what my dad would be thinking if he could see us doing this there's the voice of the the dad I knew in reality and then the voice of the the beyond the grave dad and beyond the grave dad is much more forgiving I think and encouraging whereas in real life dad he would be like can you stop talking about me and our family Affairs every time I come here um I reflect on you know would your dad be proud of you I think it it doesn't actually matter because um yeah when I come here I'm proud of myself I feel it was worthwhile to go through all of this because I'll never be wondering where they are or what happened to them I don't think the story is done I'm still open to having any kind of reunion if they want to [Music] I do drink I started drinking the day I started comedy and my parents started drinking the day I started comedy too did you know I used to be a math shooter but I worked out very quickly you don't need to be qualified to be a ma shoor you just need to look like this this is how you get to go to rich people's houses and eat their [Music] shades

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 1,335,869

Keywords: abc news, australian news, abc news indepth, documentaries, long-form journalism, annie louey, australian story, comedian, comedy, annie louey comedian, annie louey melbourne, louey, louey family

Id: NT-WLvn-Ae4

Length: 28min 48sec (1728 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 27 2023