A SELF-DESCRIBED “pocket rocket” with a great love of beauty, Lea Crammond has taught thousands of Wimmera children to cherish music, sitting side-by-side them at the piano.
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Mrs Crammond, 61, has lived in Horsham with her husband Peter since Easter, 1985, after she begged him to move the family “somewhere warmer”.
“Hamilton is really cold… Horsham can be 10 degrees warmer on a summer’s day,” she said.
The couple, who have two children, Dean and Lyn, met when they were 13 and 15, respectively.
“Peter was my brother’s best mate and my mother said ‘you’ll end up with that boy’ and she was right,” Mrs Crammond said.
“We have been married for 40 years -- Peter was 23 and I was a month off turning 21.”
The close bond the Crammonds share has got them through some tough times, but so too has a positive attitude and a great love of community.
“I love living in Horsham, it’s the longest I’ve lived in any place and when Pete and I got here, we felt it was home,” Mrs Crammond said.
“There’s a real community feeling and Horsham just seems to wrap its arms around people and support them.”
Born in Melbourne, with time spent growing up at Bulla, and then later, Bendigo, Mrs Crammond is one of four children.
She remembers, as a child, sitting watching her paternal grandmother play the piano, with her back against the side of the instrument, feeling the vibrations.
“My grandmother, who died when I was seven, was a piano teacher, and I didn’t know that,” Mrs Crammond said.
“She told me when I was eight that she would teach me to play.”
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, but Mrs Crammond’s mother, a “pragmatic sort”, who raised four children alone, got her daughter into piano lessons at the age of nine.
“Music can make me laugh, it can make me cry,” the long-time Horsham Music Academy teacher said.
Another big influence on her life was a Miss McMurray, who taught her class of seven children at Bulla State School.
There were just 24 children at the school overall.
“I remember her playing the Washington Post on the piano and thinking ‘I’m going to do that one day,’” Mrs Crammond recalled.
“She really, really influenced my life, I was in a composite class and I was listening in when she showed the older children how to do things, thinking ‘I’m really loving this’. I learnt to read early.”
Mrs Crammond knew from the age of seven that she wanted to be a teacher.
Music became a solace throughout her teenage years, and her mother could tell how she was feeling by the kind of music she played.
Music lessons cost $1 a week, as did the weekly payment on Mrs Crammond’s piano, which she swears she could never part with.
“I used to sew at night to make enough money for my music lessons and my mother paid off my piano,” she said.
“My mother would tell me ‘do not waste the time, it’s a privilege, it’s not a right to have lessons’.
“That piano became my best friend.”
But it wasn’t until she was an adult living in Hamilton with Peter, and was at home raising children that she realised just how important music was to her life.
“A lot of people have rough times and you need something to turn to, whether it’s your faith, or music,” Mrs Crammond said.
“The piano is a big beast, it’s a hard one, but it’s a beautiful one.
“I did stop and start my music, but when I got married and had Lyn, I went back to study, I really wanted to do it, I was passionate.”
Having to arrange day care in order to be able to have a piano lesson meant it was something she appreciated all the more.
As a music teacher, Mrs Crammond said it was “lovely and very special” to sit beside a child and teach them one-on-one.
“I’ve always respected that,” she said.
As well as a life filled with music, Mrs Crammond has had her fair share of battles with ‘the big C’ -- cancer.
She said she was in awe of Peter, who is an engineer at Wimmera Health Care Group and had always made sure to take “good care of him,” but it was also important to make time for self-care.
“Peter is just the love of my life, he’s a beautiful, beautiful man,” Mrs Crammond said.
“I’ve had breast cancer in the past two years and he came to every single appointment with me.
“He would never complain, not once, and when I woke up, he would be beside my bed -- often with a computer with him, catching up on work, but I didn’t care -- he was there.”
A mastectomy and reconstructive surgery followed and “for all intents and purposes” Mrs Crammond is cured.
“I’m a glass half full gal -- always looking on the bright side of things,” she said.
“My mother had died of bowel cancer at 56, when I was 30 and 10 years later, my brother died of lymphoma.
“It was shattering.”
But Mrs Crammond turned her experiences into something positive, deciding to volunteer with Wimmera Hospice Care Auxiliary after watching the “angel nurses” care for her brother in his final hours.
The average age of auxiliary volunteers are people in their seventies and eighties, and, at 61, Mrs Crammond is very much the “baby” of the group.
But she has been president for the past four years and enjoys giving back.
“The other members have done their fair share over the years, and these days you do have to be fairly computer literate. I also like to go and talk to organisations about what we do.”
Mrs Crammond said Wimmera Health Care Group would provide a wish list of equipment and other items, and the auxiliary would cover the cost.
However, hiring items is becoming more popular, and the hospital runs a leasing program, which the auxiliary also covers the cost of.
The work the group does cannot be understated -- it covers off on four local government areas, including Horsham Rural City, Yarriambiack Shire, Hindmarsh Shire and West Wimmera Shire.
“Our service travels huge distances to give care to people living in their homes,” she said.
Wimmera Hospital Auxiliary’s next big fundraiser is a bus trip in October to Wickliffe to visit historic bluestone homestead Narrapumelap and its gardens.
Mrs Crammond said people could call secretary Betty Corbett on 5382 4791 for more information, or to book a ticket.
“The group has some outstanding people, I just love ‘em all,” she said.