Danny and Sam Noonan:“We have to do what we can to get governments to act.”Dean Dampney
Danny: We first met when we were five,at a school for the blind. I got back in touch when I was about 13. By the second phone call,she said,“My mother and I think you’re disgusting and don’t want to talk to you.” According to her,I invited her over to skinny-dip. We ran into each other again in our early 20s.
I’ve been losing sight since I was young. Sam’s mum had rubella during pregnancy,so Sam has always had sight loss. She’s had it tough,growing up with a disability and a single parent. She’s as broken as I am,which means we can support each other in different ways. You can get a chip on your shoulder with a disability. It affects you when you get rejected by people because you can’t do the same things they do.
We have two daughters,19 and 23,and three grandchildren. Being a blind mother,married to a blind father,with non-blind children,was a challenge for Sam,but mostly in terms of acceptance from other people. They’d say,“How cruel are you? They’ll never have a proper life.”
We came up with solutions for things – like how to measure out formula – and Sam is a baby whisperer. But it was demoralising for her,having people think she couldn’t look after her own child. She got post-natal depression after the first birth and it became clinical depression. One of the worst times for her was when Rylie,our eldest,got pneumococcal meningitis as a toddler and went into a coma.
I’ve been a working musician most of my life and Sam sings,but she’s also worked for Vision Australia,translating into braille. We’ve only been climate activists since about 2019. The,and here we had the bushfires. They woke Sam up to it all – to politics,the climate crisis – and she wanted to get proactive.
She’s become more radical than me,involved in lots of[protest] actions,both with Extinction Rebellion and now Fireproof Australia. She has locked on,and sat down in traffic for blockades,to get the message across,and been arrested as well as fined. I do worry that some guy who’s had a bad day at work,or is on ice,or who hates lefties,will decide to do something stupid.
There have been numerous[trolling] posts about Sam – things like,“The one on the left is blind. Run her down. She won’t see you coming.”
This cause can take over your life. Hence us,a couple with blindness,staying in a share house in Sydney for months[with other activists] earlier this year. It was more difficult for us,not being in our own house,but we have to do what we can to get governments to act.
“There have been numerous[trolling] posts about Sam – things like,‘The one on the left is blind. Run her down. She won’t see you coming.’ ”
We both suffer from depression and anxiety. There’s a much higher rate among people with a disability,partly because of the stigma,but it also goes along with climate anxiety and watching the National Disability Insurance Scheme and things like that being dismantled. Still,I think we’re in a better place now than we have been for a long time. At least we’re giving something a go.
Sam and Danny during one of their sit-ins.Supplied
Sam: Danny was one of those cheeky boys as a kid and I was a goody-two-shoes. When I met him again when we were older,there was an obvious attraction,but he also used to embarrass the hell out of me because he’s very mouthy. It took him a while to realise people are willing to like him if he just shows himself as he is. He tends to come across as a bit full of it and swaggery,but it’s a cover-up.
Danny calls himself “the Catholic surprise”;he arrived eight years after the third child in his family. He has an older brother who’s also blind from the same condition[retinitis pigmentosa] and another with a severe intellectual disability.
When we had children,we found other people’s attitudes more challenging than the children themselves – other people doubting our abilities,or the way we’d do things. And the amount of times we’d cross the road with a two- or three-year-old and someone would say to them,“Isn’t it lovely you’re helping Mummy and Daddy cross the road!” We were like,“Seriously? Would you let a toddler judge when you should cross the frickin’ road?”
“Danny is the person I can be myself around. He’s dealt with me putting knives to my throat and carrying on like a drama queen.”
People meant well,but they unwittingly put too much responsibility on the kids. We wanted the kids to be kids,not helping us all the time.
I know Danny found it difficult when we had the first baby and I had post-natal depression and people were hovering. At least I could cry and get sympathy,whereas he would just get stressed and aggro. As he’s got older,he has sometimes said things like,“I was a shit father.” I say,“No,you’ve made mistakes,but so have I.”
Our oldest child went off the rails for a couple of years,which was hard. I have had bouts of depression and got frustrated at life. Danny is the person I can be myself around. He’s seen me try to drown myself in the bath. He’s dealt with me putting knives to my throat and carrying on like a drama queen. He’s seen all that and talked me out of it.
I really wasn’t political until 2019,although Danny was. It was after ScoMo won the election and after going to climate strikes and seeing quite young children there. I thought,“These little ones are standing up and trying to get the grown-ups to listen,so some of us need to be listening,and doing something.” I know some people find our[civil disobedience] tactics annoying,but it’s a last resort,like sounding a fire alarm. Without it,you wouldn’t know there was an emergency.
When you’re new to something,you throw yourself in and think you can change everything straight away,then realise you can’t. There’s a risk of burnout. Danny tends to read everything and get anxious. My answer is to turn anger into action:“I’m going to lock onto a coal mine and it will stop it for an hour” – and that’s really satisfying.
He worries about me,especially when I’m sitting on roads and there’s traffic creeping up closer and closer. But I don’t think he’d ever try to stop me.
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