Over time my brothers Tony, Chris and Michael were born. As children we lived on Ramsay Street in Haberfield. Being so close to Algie Park, it was our playground. Two other boys, Bruce and Trevor joined the group. It was quite a bit later that our sister, Margaret came along.

Tony and I are very close in age. There is fifteen months between us. There was a couple of incidents over the years where I injured Tony. On one occasion, we were in the back shed. I reached up to grab a rake and when I pulled it down, it hit him on the head. He went inside the house, crying to Mum. None of us were ever encouraged to cry and so we were all tough as nails, in a way. Tony was crying and Mum must have been doing something in the kitchen and she said, “Oh you’re alright.” Anyway, when he turned around, there was blood running down the back of his head.

One time when we were even younger, I picked up this thing in Dad’s workshop. It was a stick in a tin of cement that had hardened. I chased Tony up the yard with it. As he opened the back door I hit him with it. We were both little kids. He got a hairline fracture of the skull. We used to dine out on all the stories about all the things I did to Tony.

My brother, Christopher went on to study at the Seminary. When I came back after my first stint in New Guinea, he was there. He said to me that he didn’t think he could cope with the solitude of the priesthood. I told him he should just get a leave of absence for a year. And he did. He never went back.

So I left the job within this time and decided I was going to go with a friend to work at Thredbo for a season. In the end, my friend didn't come but I went anyway.  I got a job there in what they call 'Bottom Station'. This became a place where we danced all night. We'd then have to back it up and work all day the next day. It's amazing what you can do when you are young. I made some good friends there and it was quite an interesting place.

I saw sights that I had never seen before. My father came down to check to make sure that the staff were reputable. He decided they were. I used to work in the bistro and would do breakfasts. My family nearly fainted with shock by the fact that I got up early in the morning and did that. I'd never had much sleep when I was there. So when I had a day off I used to sleep for nearly the whole day.  That then rejuvenated me and I was able to start all over again. But when Dad came down they told him where I was, where I lived and he came back to them and said, "She's not there, she's not answering the door." They laughed and they said, "No you have to go in and shout at her if you want to wake her up." Dad comes back, opens the door and shouts. I got up and then we went down to meet all the friends again.

After I graduated from University I taught a Stage Three class at Domremy College in Five Dock. I worked there for two years.

Then that’s when I decided to go to New Guinea. I had seen advertisements for opportunities to go. You had to go to a day where they talk to you about it to see if you were suitable. Anyway, I passed muster. So very quickly I was on my way to New Guinea. It was quite amazing. I had to pack a trunk because I was going for three years. And in it, you had lots of clothing. This was a volunteer position, although I must say that I did get twenty dollars a month for ‘personal needs.’ My mother didn’t say a lot but my father was ropeable. He tried all sorts of things to stop me from going. He said things like, “The family is your responsibility. You should be here to look after them.” I thought, what are you doing here? Anyway, it all happened very quickly and there wasn’t a lot of time for him to work on changing my mind. So off I went. I must say, to be honest, on the plane trip to New Guinea, I suddenly thought to myself, What have you done?

I used to have to climb mountains to go and see people who were sick. On one occasion, I saved a child’s life. Some people brought a young girl to me. Blood was spurting out of her foot because she’s walked on a broken bottle. I did my best to stop the bleeding but I wasn’t totally successful. So I carried her on my back from where we were to the nearest road. I stopped a truck that was passing by and asked the driver to take her to the hospital. They wouldn’t at first because if someone died and you were with them, the way of things in these parts at the time was that you were deemed responsible. In the end, I got them to take her. I had been too scared to put a tourniquet on in case she ended up losing her foot. So I got the passenger of the truck to hold her foot up. Anyway, she made it to the hospital and she recovered. 

After a year in Yamayufa I was sent to Chimbu to set up a school. I had two young men from Rabaul who were assigned to teach with me at the school. So there were the three of us at the school. The local doctor there was called the ‘Doctor Boy.’ He was more of a traditional Papua New Guinean doctor (i.e not a western doctor). All the children seemed to have conjunctivitis. I remember waking up one morning and I couldn’t open my eyes. At this stage, there was another volunteer that travelled and worked with me. She was a very holy person. She spent a lot of time praying. I went to the Doctor Boy to help me with my conjunctivitis. My off-sider was doubtful about his ability to fix my problem but sure enough, he did. There were all kinds of strange things in Chimbu. My off-sider soon left and so I was there, in charge without a guide.

Someone must have alerted the local authorities. When speaking to the authorities I asked whether I was going to go to jail for hitting the councillor. He said, “Quite possibly, Judith.” It’s funny because prisoners had to put stones on the roads in order to make the roads. They did this every Monday. I had visions of myself every Monday going out and doing this stone business. Anyway, it all got sorted out. The official said that the councillor had to give me some food and I had to give him a white shirt. They knew that I received boxes of clothes from St Vincent De Paul for the locals. So we met in the garden. I gave him a white shirt, he gave me food and we shook hands and everything was lovely. Those were the days.

Culturally things were very different in Chimbu and more specifically, Womatne, which was the name of the village I was in. Someone had died. There was a funeral. The locals dug a grave for the deceased. But what I noticed was that aside from digging a hole straight down, the diggers also dug down, on an angle. I asked why they did this and I was told that it was so that the dirt didn’t fall on the faces of the departed.

One of the things that happen to you when you are nowhere near your ordinary civilization is you become rather superstitious yourself. One very strange thing happened. I was going to Gogelme one evening. My motorbike broke down on the main road. It was a moonless night – pitch black. I started to walk. All of a sudden, a man appeared with a lantern. He said, “Abenoon Mrs.” He asked if I was going to Gogelme and I told him I was. He said, “I’ll light the way for you.” So we walked together and as we approached Gogelme, he seemed to disappear. I couldn’t work out where he had gone. After school each day,  I ran classes for teenagers who never had schooling in their younger years. I taught them Pigeon English and Crop Rotation. Anyway, the day after this strange evening, when I sat down with these older students, they said, “You walked to Golgeme last night.” I confirmed this. They said that the man who I met on my way saw me walk past his house and he was worried about me. Very soon after this, the man died. I was shocked and I thought Oh no I’m going to get the blame, which was often the way of things there at the time. So they said that he had already passed away and the figure who came to light the way for me was his ghost.

In 1973 when I arrived back in Sydney from Papua New Guinea, we were invited to a PaIms evening in Haberfield. Mum came with me. I stayed for about three minutes and then I left. They spoke to Mum and said, “See if you can find her and get her to come back because if she doesn’t settle...” Anyway, whatever did happen, I did settle.

Sister Roberta was the Principal at St Joan of Arc. It was she who gave me the job at St Joan of Arc.

There were a couple of nuns at the school but the rest were just teachers like me. So I seemed to be, for a while anyway, only on Year 4. Later on, I’d teach year 5 and 6. Only once did I teach younger children, when I had a year 3 class. It was quite an adjustment having just come from teaching year 6.  I remember filling the blackboard with words and the students came in and said, “We can’t read it.”

On the tour we went to Paris. We were taken to a show in Paris. I’ve never seen so many naked people in my life.

We went to Switzerland which is a place which looks as beautiful as it does in photos and calendars.

We went to Italy. I saw Venice while we were there. When we were in Rome, a man on the street pinched me on the bottom. We saw the Sistine Chapel in Rome. To get a good view, we laid on the floor and looked up at the ceiling.

The tour took in Germany. I remember being at a coffee shop in Munich. Everyone was so dressed up and most people had a dog sitting next to them. I’d never come across that before. I went to Poland, Warsaw and Krakow.

We travelled up further into the mountains. From there we travelled to Sofia. In Sofia there’s a huge cathedral named Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. What the people told us was that when the communists came, they dug the ground and buried all of the accoutrements from the church. So now they were digging it up. Then I walked down another street and came to another street. All of the churches have paintings on every wall. It was when leaving another church, a gypsy grabbed my arm. I said, “Let me go or I’ll call the police.” She let me go. It was here in Sofia that I did a lot of my shopping for family back home. Then I travelled through to Romania. 

We went down the Reine and then we went to Heidelberg. It was good fun.

Then I went to Niagara Falls. When going to Niagara Falls from Canada, you step into America. When checking my passport at the border, the passport inspector asked me, “Where are you from?” "Australia I replied." “But this is an Irish name,” he responded. “Yes but I’m still from Australia and that’s where I live,” I said.

I’ve been to Hawaii. I went there by myself. I couldn’t believe how cheap it was to travel around on a bus.

Mum and Dad were always very fond of each other. They spent a lot of time talking. I remember one night they went out somewhere and Dad came home and I said, "Where's Mum?" And he said, "Isn't she home?" I said, "No." A little while later she turned up and it turned out that either she or Dad had danced with someone else and the other one was cross about it. So they had to make up when they got home. But they seemed to be always very fond of each other. Except, that is when there were elections on. The only times I can remember them arguing were when there were elections. This was due to the fact that they supported different parties. Surprisingly, my mother who grew up in a house where money was never a problem or anything, always voted Labor. My father, who grew up in a household that was quite poor, was a Liberal voter. So that was the only thing they ever argued about. They never changed their allegiance to their political parties.

My father grew up in the Eastern Suburbs and in Penshurst.

In 1939 or 1940, he had gone to volunteer to go to the war. Dad failed the medical. Not only did he fail the medical, because they said he had such high blood pressure, but they put him straight into hospital. The sergeant said, "We like them to live to reach the front." So of course obviously he didn't go to war.

Dad learned a trade. He was a plumber, gas fitter and drainer or whatever they call them. He did that and he worked with another man. He was working in his own business and he had some apprentices at various stages. This was in Ramsay Street. One of his apprentices was a Spanish fellow who'd left Spain to get away from Franco and the civil war that was happening in Spain at the time. Another apprentice was Mr Darby, an older fellow, hence we called him Mr Darby.

We had a big yard. I remember Dad was able to spread out all the guttering and everything. In the laundry, Dad had put a shower in so that when we came home from the beach we could just wash all the sand off ourselves. One day I slipped and hit my head in the laundry and so my father, never doing things by half measure, removed the shower from the laundry.

If we fought over anything, my father just took it away. So there was never a chance of getting it back because he’d just take it away for good, if you fought. When we were a bit older we used to go to the movies on Saturday afternoon. We'd see movies like Batman, and lots of cowboy films. You'd go to that and at interval, you would get some chips and an icy slice. An icy slice had two pieces of wafer with some ice cream in the middle. So that was Saturdays. And by the time I was 12, I was looking after children and even a baby. Anyway, I seemed to be quite capable of lots of things. If we were really naughty through the week Dad would say, "No movie." On a Saturday, he'd come home from work and we'd all be playing. He’d say, "Why aren't you at the movies?" And I'd say, "Cause you told us we couldn't go." So then he was lumbered with us all being in the yard.

My father also used to sing. He used to sing Gilbert and Sullivan. Someone said to my father once that my brother Michael was a good singer. Dad said, "Oh yes, but not as good as me."

Dad was about sixty-five years old when he died. He had a heart attack. Mum called me and said, "Come and listen to your father breathing." He'd had a heart attack a long time earlier but he had recovered. The thing I remember about that is we all thought, oh he'll be fine. The ignorance. And Mum said, "It's all right for you but who will I have to talk to?" My parents used to talk a lot to each other.

I went in and walked straight out and rang the priest and the ambulance and mum said, "Is it that serious?" And I said, "Yes." The only reason I knew it was serious was from TV. I recognised that heavy, laboured breathing. His face was so calm. The priest arrived first and he gave my father the last rites. He said when he had finished doing it my father stopped breathing.

So when the ambulance came they attempted to resuscitate him but he was gone. At least he didn't look like he was in any pain. His face was nice and calm.

It took me about two weeks to really believe he was dead. I'd keep seeing people walking along the street in the sort of clothes he wore and for an instant, I'd think it was him.

Mum was a great mother but she was much better with babies than older kids, for some reason. I don’t mean that you were loved any less, it was just that it was as if she didn’t quite know what to do with us when we were older.

My father had a heart attack and passed away. The next day my Mum had a job. The first time she worked, she worked in a grocery shop. I’m not positive about the order in which some of these things happened. Another job she had was at a hotel at Leichhardt, across from ‘Marketplace.’ I don’t know what she did there, specifically. She always had a job. Then she gained employment at the post office in Haberfield.

Mum was very kind. She brought us all up to help other people. She was a good worker, she was clever and she was musical. Mum loved her family. She loved her grandchildren.

Mum worked until her late 70’s. Then she became sick with early dementia. She didn’t want to go into a nursing home. So we bought this place I live in now in Ashfield and I looked after her. Physically, Mum was very fit. One of the things that happened was that Mum went somewhere and a woman in the street approached her and asked her where she was off to. Mum replied that she didn’t know. So the lady looked in Mum’s bag and there were details for the aged care facility at Concord in there.

So when I got home from teaching there were three cars from the aged care facility parked out the front of our place. Mum would go there to participate in programs and activities for people with dementia. She’d been there earlier that day doing some activities. They told me that she had to go into a nursing home. They said this because they felt that she was at risk of being run over or something I suppose.

I said to them, next week I’ll be on school holidays and so she doesn’t have to go yet." Their response was, “We’re not interested in you or what you want. She’s our responsibility.”

Anyway, it turned out alright, thank goodness because she didn’t go into the nursing home until the following January and she was at a nursing home nearby. I was able to go there of an afternoon, take her clothes home, wash them and then bring them back, take her for a walk. All of these sorts of things.

That all worked out well. I could go there a couple of afternoons a week and on the weekends. I could do her washing. But then the people who owned the nursing home sold it. This is the horrifying thing – we were notified that my mother had been moved to a place in Greenacre. Anyway, I tried every single thing to get her moved somewhere else and all they would say to me was, “She is already in a nursing home.” That meant that I could only go on the weekends and in the school holidays. My problem with the nursing home there was that you never saw the same staff member twice. That’s the thing with a lot of these places. Therefore, people don’t get the medication they’re supposed to get because the communication between changing staff members is insufficient. I’d go crook at the staff there. I’d say, “Where did you get the clothes my mother’s got on? They're not her clothes." My mother was a small person and so I made sure that the clothes I had made for her fit her well. “It’s hanging off her. Obviously, they’re not her clothes. Get it off her now and put her own clothes on.” Then I said, “Take note of the fact that some of the clothes match each other and so they can go together to make a complete outfit.” Oh, I was dreadful. So I complained when things were wrong. I said, “After all, it’s my mother. That’s what you’ve got to remember.”

She was going downhill. Margaret and I were with Mum. We were there for a few hours. Margaret asked them if they thought Mum would die that night. They said no. So Margaret and I went home and then at five thirty in the morning I got a phone call to say she'd died.

A number of years ago I'd been working quite happily teaching at St Joan of Arc School. Then I started getting things wrong with me. I had a few bouts with cancer. Luckily not related to each other. So I'm still here. I retired because I had to have operations. A year later I was better, for which I'm most grateful. So I then decided to do some voluntary work at school and one of the doctors said to me I should do some voluntary work at Concord Hospital. So I've continued those. I haven't always done exactly the same thing at school. Mostly, nowadays I do maths but sometimes some reading for them.