Family of Tanya Blundell left devastated by her tragic death
Tanya Blundell was a beloved daughter, sister, aunty and friend. On Father’s Day, she died from drowning. This is the tragic story of what happened in the lead-up to her death.
Gold Coast
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Chris Blundell sits on her youngest daughter Tanya’s bed. She holds a teddy tight to her face. It was one of Tanya’s favourites. It still has her smell.
On a shelf beside the bed, a ten dollar note and some coins.
“It’s funny the things you keep,” Chris says. “This was her last money”.
Tanya, 39, drowned three months ago. It was Father’s Day.
She was a loved daughter, sister, aunty and friend.
The story what happened in the lead-up to that moment will chill every parent to their core.
A BRIGHT CHILD WHO LOVED SPORTS
Chris and husband Colin, from Parkwood, have had to clear out Tanya’s unit. Go through her belongings.
A month ago they found a box full of medals and ribbons, won when she was a student at Musgrave Hill State School and Southport High.
“She was an amazing athlete,” Chris says.
“From Year 4 to Year 7 in primary school she was always age champion.
“Then when she got to Year 8, to high school, and there was somebody else that came along that was going to take that away from her she said, ‘oh I’m going to have to go into field now and do high jump and long jump’.
“Her second jump at high jump, she broke the school record.
“She went into the Queensland championships and she was extremely bright.”
Tanya also loved the water, regularly going surfing with her brother.
But in her final years of high school, her mental health took a turn for the worse. She became anorexic.
“That was the start of problems with her,” Chris says. “She was in and out of mental health.
“She was in hospital with anorexia for many months.
“That was basically the start of Tanya’s story.”
EVERYTHING TAKEN AWAY
Tanya’s problems escalated when she found solace in a dark world.
A world which, for shocking reasons, she was never able to escape.
A world dominated on the Gold Coast by crystal meth, otherwise known as ice.
“We were dealing with it (ice) at least 10 years, 15 years maybe,” Chris says.
“Ice is the worst I’ve ever seen, of anything that I’ve actually seen. And I’ve seen a lot of people not actually doing it, but coming off it or being with it.
“Gold Coast Hospital became Tanya’s second home. The mental wards up there.
It (ice) is highly, highly addictive.”
Without the drug, Tanya was “beautiful and caring”. With it, she was different.
“The behaviour changes. The thing is just horrid. It really is,” Chris says
“Ice ruined everything. It didn’t just ruin her, it ruined family. Just everything.
“It takes everything away from a person.
“She was in rehab. Tan had rehab so many times.
“She made multiple attempts to stop.”
Tanya’s attempts to rid her life of ice were hindered by where she lived her final years.
A vulnerable woman who badly needed to escape the drug culture instead found dealers and users constantly banging at her door.
That door was to a unit in a “nightmare” social housing complex at Errol Ave in Paradise Point.
‘ABSOLUTE HAVOC’ AT NIGHTMARE UNIT BLOCK
Chris doesn’t know everything that Tanya got up to at Paradise Point. She doesn’t want to.
She frankly admits her daughter was “no angel”.
She adds that Tanya was responsible for her own ice use.
“No one made her take it. It was her choice,” she says.
But she is in no doubt that living in a unit at the Errol Ave complex contributed to her problems, making it harder for her to quit and stay clean.
“I can’t blame Paradise Point, wholly and solely. But being in that confined space, with quite a few of them down there ... it (ice) was part of the culture,” Chris says.
“I think that when you get a group of people, they’ve got the same likes. It just escalates.
“... She’d be partying with them or whatever and then she’d get to the stage where she’d say OK, I’m not doing this any more, I want to stop.
“And they would be sort of trying to drag her (back) into it, even though she wanted to try and stay away from it.
“And we would tell her, ‘OK, don’t answer, lock your doors, don’t answer, don’t let them in. And if it gets too bad call the police.”
Chris says there were about half a dozen units in the 18-unit complex occupied by residents who were the source of “absolute havoc”.
She says those people were offered support from multiple services, but turned it away.
They had their own agenda, and wanted Tanya to be part of it.
They would knock and holler at Tanya’s door and smash her windows.
“My daughter had windows smashed on multiple times just because she tried to alienate herself from the others and wanted to stay clean,” Chris says.
Terrified, Tanya would call police. They attended many times, but it was no panacea. “Very little was actually done,” Chris says.
Complaints were made about the problem tenants – but they were allowed to stay.
“Not everybody in those units was like that. Just that select group that really made it difficult,” Chris says.
“I found that (the Department of) Housing, they knew the problems, they knew the deal.
“I know that there’s not a lot of places that they (the troublemakers) can go to, but you know, it should be three strikes and you’re out.
“Some of them should have been out of there months ago.”
The Bulletin understands a number of people have been evicted from Errol Ave in recent weeks.
I ask Chris if she believes her daughter would still be alive if this had happened earlier.
“Absolutely,” she says. “Without a doubt.”
THE MYSTERY FINAL HOURS – AND A KNOCK ON THE DOOR
Chris last heard from Tanya two nights before her body was found.
She had only recently returned to Errol Ave from another spell in hospital. Housing had been trying to find her somewhere else, but she had returned to Paradise Point.
There was no inkling of what was about to come.
“She rang me the Friday night before Father’s Day,” Chris says. “She was, ‘Hey, what’s happening Father’s Day’.
“I said: ‘I’m not too sure Tan, I think we’re probably going to do breakfast, but I’ll let you know.
“And then she just said, ‘alright, love you’, and that was the last time I heard from her.”
Tanya never showed up on Father’s Day. Instead, it was police who came to the family’s door. And her father Colin answered.
“I kind of figured. I knew that one day it would happen. I always said, I’m going to get a knock on the door one day,” Chris says.
“But you’re never ever ready for it.
“... I wasn’t here when they came. I was at work in Brisbane. And I got a phone call (from Colin).
“He didn’t tell me exactly, he just broke down, he said you’ve got to come home, the police came.
“As soon as he said that, I just knew. From then on in, our life changed.”
A coroner’s report said Tanya died from drowning. Police said no foul play was suspected. That is all the family knows.
“I don’t know what time she actually passed. They put it down as Father’s Day. I wish they could have put it down the night before,” Chris says.
“The police did interview them down there (at Errol Ave).
“Apparently they saw her down near the park.
“And then there was a couple of hours missing that nobody saw her.”
GUILT, ANGER AND GRIEF
Chris says Tanya’s dad has taken the loss of his daughter hard.
Their other two children – a son and a daughter – and her three grandchildren have also been devastated.
And she too is suffering desperately. Sometimes she feels guilt. Sometimes anger.
“It has been hard,” Chris says. “My husband doesn’t say too much, but he struggles with it quite a lot.
“You’re always going to feel some kind of guilt, what you could have done, why didn’t you do this. Why didn’t they call?
“I go through stages where I’m so angry with her, and then I’m like, can you please just ring me?
“I used to go crook because she’d ring me like sometimes, I might not get a phone call for a couple of days, then I’d get 12, 15, 20 in a day.
“... For the first couple of weeks after she passed away I used to go there nearly every day. I don’t even know why. But we had to clean the unit out.
“I have to say Housing was brilliant on that point. They were really caring, they didn’t push us. There were a couple of things there we weren’t taking and they said, just leave it there, we’ll get rid of it.
“I’ve still got so much of her stuff in the garage.”
Among those items, the medals, the photos, the teddies and clothes that still carry her smell.
“The thing about ice, it’s just so horrendous,” Chris says. “These people, they just don’t understand what it’s doing to their own families.
“What the nurses put up with, and what they put up with in the mental health places, they put up with a lot of stuff. They (users) do get pretty violent.
“The units at Paradise Point in particular. The violence was pretty bad there.
“It was a nightmare that place.
“She (Tanya) was trying to do what she could do. She didn’t have anywhere else to go really.
“She felt there was nothing else left for her I think.
“But she still wanted her family – and they wanted her.”
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