My Aunty Cherie was only a few years older than me so I just called her Cherie. Both Cherie and Kerry attended high school at Maroubra Junction - the school that my father had attended previously. At this point, I was still in Primary School at St Aidan's. Of Dad's siblings, the next up in age were the twins, Bill and June. Dad has an older sister named Pat. She is still with us but lives in Wisconsin in the United States. Dad also had a younger brother named Kerry. As a young man, Kerry worked for Holden Motors. He had a cadetship with the company and they put him through university. Kerry is a very clever man. He now owns one of the largest chains of preschools in South Australia. Kerry married a woman named Joan. She was working in Brisbane as a nurse and the two met when, during his mid-twenties, Kerry was transferred there with Holden. 

After having saved for years, when I was about nine years of age, Mum and Dad bought a house at 270 Maroubra Road. Nanna, Cherie and Kerry all came across to live with us. After a while, with a little help from the family, Nanna Mahony was able to buy a three-story terrace house in Petersham. She had male borders there to help with the costs. I remember not being allowed to go upstairs because of all the private rooms. Her full maiden name was Alma May Wood. She was highly intelligent. As a child, my nanna won a bursary to attend a private school in Sydney. At the time, she lived in a country town in NSW, near the Victorian border. Her father wouldn't let her go because she was the eldest of the Wood family and her mother needed help with the younger children. She loved classical music, art and was a real Science enthusiast. Nanna was a great conversationalist and could talk to anyone about anything for hours. As a I child I can remember her telling me all about black holes. I had no idea what a black hole was. She was lovely, my Nanna. 

Eventually, Nanna got to the stage where she wanted to come to Sydney, so she packed everybody up and travelled north. They rented the house on Edgar St in Kingsford, which is the house that we all ended up sharing. During the time that I was growing up there, Nanna Mahony, Cherie, Uncle Kerry, Uncle Billy and Aunty Shirley lived there for a large of it. Aunty Val, Aunty June and her daughter Jennifer were there a lot of the time too. We had such a lovely big family. 

I started school on the following Monday. I remember my mother crying as my class walked into the building. I couldn't wait to go and see what all the kids were doing. The very first person that spoke to me was the little girl that was to become my very best friend in the whole world, forever and a day, Adele. Her first words to me were, "Hello, what's your name? My name's Adele. My sister's a teacher here. We'll get more rides on the rocking horse if you're my friend. This was in 1955.

Through the school, I used to have weekly elocution lessons. I would then put what I was learning into practice by participating in public speaking competitions. At these events, each student had to select a piece of writing to memorise and recite. You would get a list with about five different choices. Of those, options included excerpts from a book, a poem, or some other reading. You would then learn and practice your chosen piece. On the competition day, you would get up on stage and recite your piece as evocatively as you could. It was a lot like voice acting, I guess. You had to bring your story or character to life, putting in a bit of dramatic flair and taking on the voices of characters. There would usually be about eighty competitors and their parents, from schools all over Sydney in attendance. Once you finished and came back to your seat, you had to sit and wait, listening to every other speaker. Then they would hand out the marks and give you your ranking. I was always nervous but I managed to get through and I ended up with a wall full of those lovely certificates with the big red seals on them.

Some of my closest friends today are those that I made at St Aidan's Primary School.

Cheryl and Geoff would go to the milk bar and have a milkshake. Mum and Dad always gave us money to donate at, with a little extra for us to buy a milkshake and the newspaper for them on the way home. There used to be a milk bar right across from the Catholic Church. It was a beautiful little milk bar. The man who ran the place was named Mick. He had these incredible handmade chocolates you could buy. So we would go there, or I would meet Cheryl and Geoffrey there, we'd have a milkshake and then head home.

One of the things I loved about the church and going to Mass was the feeling of continuity and the fact that everything was always the same. Also, I derived joy from it. I enjoyed the scripture stories.  At certain times of the year, we would pray and raise money for those in need. They used to run a competition to see who would attend Mass most frequently during the month. The nuns would give us a rectangular piece of cardboard that had the calendar month drawn on it. When we went to 7 am weekday masses, that day at school, the nuns would put a pinhole in the date to signify that we had attended. At the end of the month, the person with the most pin holes received a holy card. I earned many holy cards over the years. 

I was always in the church choir. Once a month, for an 8 am Sunday Mass, the choir would sing from the church loft which was located at the back of the building. For these Masses, we wore red cloaks and were called the ‘Holy Angels’. 

The church had a lot of marches. We’d carry all these beautifully embroidered holy cloths with gold trimming on them and march from our school in Maroubra Junction to the catholic school at Randwick, or vice versa. We did this on different feast days. We went to Mass every Friday.

In about 1963 I started high school at Brigidine College in Maroubra. The campus was located on the same street as my primary school, but was further up the hill, on the other side of the nun's convent. It wasn't a very big high school. The classrooms were demountable buildings with louver windows. So in the summer, it was very hot in the classrooms. 

I have great memories of high school. My friends and I all loved music. The Beatles had a big impact. I had a lovely group of friends of whom I'm still close to today. So I'm very lucky. When we get together or talk on the phone, we laugh about things that we did back in the day. We did some funny things back then. At school we would go swimming and play tennis.

Art was my favourite subject. From a young age, I attended private art classes on a Saturday. We did a lot of mosaic work with tiles in high school. There was also a strong focus on the master painters. I’ve always loved Degas. He featured many ballet dancers in his paintings and I’ve always found them to be exceptionally beautiful. I loved sketching as well. A lot of our homework for various subjects involved completing projects. For the visual aspect of these projects, we would have to draw a lot of the illustrations and diagrams ourselves. I loved this part.

From second year, we were put into classes that were academically differentiated. I was in the ‘A Class’, which had a strong focus on Advanced Mathematics and French. Unfortunately, these subjects clashed with the cooking and sewing courses - skills that would have been beneficial to me in the years to come.

When I reached the end of the Third Form, I had every intention of coming back to complete my fourth year of high school. During the end-of-year summer holidays, however, I was offered a full-time job at a printing factory. Adele, my friend Trisha and I had been working there over the holidays and we were all offered full time positions there. We all left school to join the workforce.

At the end of Year 9, I took a full time job working at Seaborne Printing in Alexandria. Seaborne printed school exercise books. A friend of Adele’s worked there and they were looking for a few girls. Tricia, Adele and I applied. Tricia was lucky enough to get the job in the office - which would have been the best job. Adele and I were very happy to work alongside one another in the warehouse.

The first thing I was asked to do there was to wrap the exercise books in brown paper and write the names and addresses of the package recipients. Schools would order, say, 600 exercise books - you'd wrap that exact amount and they would be sent off to the school. After I had been doing this for a while, Adele and I were asked to complete a task together. This involved collating the pages of books together, adding the covers and then stapling it all together. As we did this, we sat side by side and could talk all day while we worked.

Not knowing that in the not-too-distant future, I would marry one, but I enjoyed watching the printers and typesetters at Seaborne doing their work. It was interesting to see how they applied different colours and the typesetting for various jobs.

But I enjoyed the work and getting paid every week was just amazing! In fact, once I started experiencing the newfound personal and financial freedom that having a job brought, I decided I didn’t want to go back to school to complete my fourth year. The expectation to finish school wasn’t there for most students back then, certainly not for girls. When I told my parents that I wanted to leave, they said that they were happy for me to do so, as long as I had a job.

After the Christmas rush was over at Seaborne Printing, they didn’t need us. So Trisha, Adele and I all went on to other jobs. I got a job at a beautiful jewellery store in Eastlakes. The store also sold dinner sets, ornaments and gifts for children. Something I loved to do there was decorate the display tables with different dinner sets. I was in my element! As I got older, they had to pay me more and the frugal manager of the store told my boss to hire someone younger. If you were under sixteen back then, employers didn’t have to pay you very much at all. On my breaks in the lunchroom, I would often chat with the staff from Gilchrist’s, the wool shop next door. We got along very well. When the manager heard that I would be looking for work, she offered me a job on the spot.

I enjoyed working at Gilchrist’s but the travel was a bit of a pain and so only stayed on there for a few months. Before leaving, I started looking at job advertisements in the paper. I’ve always loved animals and so when I saw an assistant’s position at a nearby vets, I applied for the job and got it. The veterinarian practice was on Bunnerong Road in Pagewood. - walking distance from home. The job involved taking appointment bookings, sterilising equipment, assisting the vet during operations and cleaning the kennels. I found the work very interesting. I think I was earning about $17 per week, which was pretty good back then. I was required to work a six-day week and the days were long, often running from 8:00 am to 6:30 at night. I worked there for over a year. At this point, I was seeing David Trewin and we wanted to spend more time together. 

I left the vet’s and took a job at Repco on Palmer St in Kings Cross. Repco was an automotive parts wholesaler. It was here that I learned to operate a switchboard. 

After having left high school, I was still only fifteen and so my parents maintained relatively strict rules regarding when I could go out. I was seeing David Trewin, a man whom I would go on to marry. My parents allowed me to go out to the drive-in one night a week with him but I had to be home by 11:00 pm.

It was far more common to marry young back in the 1960s. Quite a few of our closest friends married around this time. So as newlyweds, we all did a lot together, socially.When we first got married we spent the next twelve months living with my Nanna Ridge. She lived at 54 Royal Street, Maroubra. It was pretty harmonious actually. Nanna was very quiet and we had our own bedroom. She also gave us a room in which we could store things, as we saved and prepared for buying and furnishing our own house. Ever since my first job, I had made a point of buying something every pay day for my glory box. So it was pretty full at this point, with towels and sheets and a million other things. Working at Grace Brothers brought a lot of temptation in that department. I’d see things go on sale and I had to grab them or lay by them.

During the time we lived with my Nanna, I worked for my friends Gladys and Peter Faulkner at the Esron Motel. For five days a week, I’d be behind the desk from three in the afternoon until eleven at night. The Esron was located on the corner of St. Paul and Dudley Street in Randwick and it overlooked Coogee Beach. The view was beautiful. In the late 1960s the Vietnam War was in full swing. We often had a lot of American military servicemen, who were on R & R, staying at the motel. I met some interesting characters during this time. There were pool tables and the boys would be out there playing, smoking and drinking until I closed up. So at eleven o’clock, I'd lock everything up, put the keys in the safe and drive our little Mach 2 Zephyr home.

After we married, David did his promised stint, working at his parents’ toy shop. But when Stan returned after his recovery, David decided to stay on at the shop. I remember he would ride his fancy microfibre bike to and from work. David was a bit of a health freak. He played a lot of squash. He was always doing something. 

We were finally ready to buy a house. We wanted to borrow as little as possible from my mother in law and so we sold the Volvo and bought a Toyota Crown. Later on down the track, we bought another Volvo - a 144 Volvo. We had this until we separated.

David’s Aunty Gladys was the matriarch of the Carr family (David's mother's side of the family) and we just loved her. Aunty Gladys had been married but divorced and they didn’t have children. She was a mad golfer and drove this little, grey Austin A35. Gladys was a buyer for Myer, purchasing high-end ladies' wear like fur coats. She would often travel overseas for work, which was a rare thing back in those days. 

At this point, all I wanted out of life was to get married and have children. I was surprised when we didn’t fall pregnant straight away. Out of all of our friends, we were the first to get married. All of my friends started having kids and before long, I was asked to babysit. I was so eager to be a mother.

Eventually, we sought medical advice. My Mum took me to see her gynecologist. We saw a range of doctors who carried out tests, not only me but also on David. During this time, I decided that I wanted to foster a child or some children. I’m not working, I thought. I can look after one or two kids, if they’re siblings.That would be amazing! Welfare came to meet with me and said that I was too young to foster a child. They also felt that because I didn’t have any other children, there was a good chance that I would become too attached to any child I fostered, and if it was a shorter-term foster situation, it would be hard on me. They asked if I had considered adopting. I said that I hadn’t because up until then I was sure that I would be able to fall pregnant and have a baby. They left some paperwork with me and told me to discuss the possibility with David. When I spoke to him he suggested that we fill in the paperwork and see what happens. So we did.

Around this time, some of the tests that David had revealed he had a varicose vein wrapped around one of his testicles. This was significantly lowering his sperm count, and therefore affecting our ability to conceive. He had to go into hospital and have a procedure to remove the varicose vein. It was very painful for him but following the surgery, his sperm count increased considerably.

I told my gynecologist that I would cancel the adoption application. His advice was to leave it and see what happens because there was still no guarantee that I would fall pregnant.

The welfare department used to have someone come out and check on us all the time. I guess to make sure we were good people. I remember on this one occasion they asked David why we wanted to adopt a girl . His response was, looking in my direction, “Because she said we have to.” And so of course then I'm trying to cover it up. I said, “Well, no, it's not that, it's just that the form asks you to select a boy or girl. And so if I have to choose one of the two, my preference would be a girl. And they said that if you were pregnant and having a baby, you wouldn't know what you are having.” Then she said, “Why don't you put either?” I'm thinking of all these frilly dresses hanging up in the wardrobe that I would have to take back. I said, “Well okay then.” If you do that you might be able to adopt sooner. So beside the word girl, we added boy and initialled it.

I was given the advice to ring up from time to time to ‘check and see how you’re going’. When I rang up, they said, “Oh yes, you're down for a boy.” I said, “Hang on, wasn't it either?” And she said, “No, you are down for a boy.” I said, “Oh, okay. That’s right.” I just left it because I didn't want to be taken off the list or lose our spot. So then I had to take all those girl-specific baby items back. We had already wallpapered the nursery with pink rabbits and little blue bows. We had the hugest crossover curtains, like the Queen Mother would have.

In the interim, I took on a lot of part-time work for a company called Centercom. I was getting a lot of work at the Esso oil company in Botany. I ended up becoming permanent on the switchboard there. The management knew that I was waiting to become a mother and that the adoption could happen at any time. They said, “Stay with us until they call you and leave that day. We will still pay you up for the week. And that's what I did. 

I got a phone call from David on a Wednesday, and he said, “There's a lady from the Welfare that is going to ring you.”

And I said, “Oh what does she wants.” He wouldn’t tell me anything. 

He said, “Oh, she's just gonna ring you. I've given her your number, but I thought I'd let you know.” And he wouldn't tell me any more about it. But he knew what was happening. She had told him.” He said he’d see me at my parent’s place after work. I hung up and then the phone rang. It was the lady from welfare. She told me that my little son had been born. She told me that he was born on the South Coast in a place called Pambula on the 7th of January (1974). She also told me how much he weighed at birth. She explained that David and I needed to go into her office the next day to sign all the paperwork. Once this was done, we could drive down and pick him up the next day. 

We were so happy and so my concerns about not being able to fall pregnant fell by the wayside. Jackie had heard about a specialist by the name of Dr. Graham Bosch, at Paddington Hospital who was helping couples to have breakthroughs in falling pregnant. She cut out an article and gave it to me. She begged me to ring him up and arrange to go and see him. So I did. 

The first thing Dr Bosch had me do was to monitor my temperature to see when I was most fertile and try to conceive at these times. Before I knew it, I had fallen pregnant. I couldn't believe it! Everything was going well with the pregnancy but then at nineteen weeks and a half weeks, I lost the baby. It was a little girl. The umbilical cord had gotten stuck around her neck and she died. Losing a baby at this more advanced stage of pregnancy was just before you had to have an official burial.

Mum was very protective of me after David and I had separated. So I was apprehensive to tell her about Philip and I. I needn’t have worried though. Mum was thrilled, as was my Dad. 

Soon enough, Philip moved from Balmain and moved into our semi in Hillsdale. He didn’t get along very well with one of our next-door neighbours. Philip was a truck driver and would often park his truck in our smallish street. This aggravated the neighbour and Philip, being the stubborn man he could be, continued to park where he pleased.

We were happy for quite a long time but in the end, we were just too different. He was a big drinker and storyteller. In hindsight, I think I was a bit gullible. But ultimately, we were just too different.

One day my sister, Cheryl phoned and told me about some affordable houses she’d seen in Kurnell. She asked if I’d be interested in taking the day off to go and have a look. As children, my parents often took us to Kurnell for holidays. They had a friend who worked at the Doncaster Hotel in Kensington who owned a holiday house on Silver Beach Road, overlooking Botany Bay. Back then you could take a ferry across the bay from La Perouse across to Kurnell. Jackie would often come with us. In our teens, friends would catch the ferry across to meet us. We’d explore and play in the park and then get Hamburgers for lunch. The holidays in Kurnell were wonderful.

Philip was working for a trucking company in Mascot. His workmate, Nick Reese lived in Kurnell. Nick was married to Georgina. She and I became good friends and still are to this day. Georgina has three girls, close in age to my boys. While we were still waiting til we could move into the house, we popped into the Reeses’ for a cup of coffee. They took us on a walk. I found Georgina to be a lovely person and Nick seemed very nice. They told us about how great the local public school was. At this point, Adam was in Year One at St Agnes’ in Matraville. It would have been too tricky to get him along to the nearest catholic school every day, which was in Cronulla and so we enrolled him to start at Kurnell Public School. We enrolled Graeme into Kurnell Pre-School.

Cheryl and Gerry were in the process of painting the house. They were up to working on the back area of the house. They had been invited up to see friends for the weekend in Richmond. Gerry said that he would leave the paint to dry and had left all of the paint cans out. He was going to put them all away when they got back.

When Philip and I separated, I wasn’t coping very well. I realised that I really needed to be home with you kids and so I left my job. I starting running the school canteen at the boy’s primary school. I did this for a few years.

My next job was at the Museum. It was really close to home, being located inside the ‘Kamay’ National Park in Kurnell. I worked there as a cleaner, three mornings a week from 4:30 am to 9:00 am. This brought in enough income for us to live quite comfortably.

Unfortunately issues between my kids and Reg’s emerged. One afternoon Reg’s son Gary and my son Adam, had an argument which became physical. Gary picked up a wooden deck chair and hit Adam over the head with it. Adam wasn’t seriously injured but, it gave me a big scare.The tension and the problems with our kids continued, however, and with the deck chair incident in the back of my mind, it ended up becoming the tipping point. A few months later, we broke up. It was a very painful time. I really loved Reggie.

A couple of months later my dad passed away. Although we weren’t together anymore, Reggie was by my side through it all.

Throughout our time living in Kurnell, our week always involved driving back and forth to Mum and Dad’s in Maroubra. In 1984, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Her appetite had been waning for some time. She knew something was wrong but was putting off looking into it. It was my father’s 60th Birthday on the 1st of January that year. Mum had her appointment with the doctor in February. She was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. They believed the mass to be very small and operable. She went in to St Luke’s Hospital in Kings Cross for the surgery. I remember sitting at home and worrying. I thought, I can’t just sit here. And so I jumped in the car and drove to the hospital. I went up to her room and I’m so glad I did because she was very nervous about the operation. We sat and talked for a while, which I think helped. She gave me instructions about what to do if there were complications during the surgery. Mum would get a few very small hairs that would grow on her chin. She said, “Your father doesn’t know I get these and so make sure you pluck them so he doesn’t see them.”

During the operation, the surgeon discovered that the cancer was much more widespread than first thought. Cancer was harder to determine in those days. She came home from the operation with three broken ribs and was in a lot of pain. Over the next five months she never really got out of bed.

The whole dynamic within our family changed. We clung tightly to Dad, spending a lot more time with him. Dad had been diagnosed with a heart condition when he was in his 50s. It turns out that he was born with a leaking heart valve but had never known about it. If it wasn’t for a very good friend of Mum and Dad’s, Cedric, the diagnosis might have come too late. Cedric was a prominent heart surgeon. Dad had been feeling tired all the time and Cedric told him to come into the Royal North Shore Hospital for a check up. And that's when they discovered the leaking valve.

The next day we got a phone call to let us know that Dad had died. It was the 17th of February, 1989. It was such a terrible shock! We couldn’t believe he was gone. Dad and my Uncle Bill are the only siblings that have passed away. His sisters are now all in their 90s and are going strong.

At what was a real time of limbo for Ron, he was living in a hired caravan, the van residing at the premises of the trucking company he worked for. After seeing Ron a few more times, and in learning of his living situation, I knew he was going to have to find a more long term place to live. He was paying child maintenance for his three children and financially, he was doing it pretty tough. This was a short time before the kids, Adele, Melissa and I were due to fly out to the states for our big holiday to the U.S. I offered our house as a place for him to stay in while we were away for the next six weeks. He was grateful and accepted the offer. Funnily enough, my ex-husband, David, was also living at our house at the time.

Finally the D.A for approval to build apartments at my parents’ place went through. We weren’t quite ready to sell and so we rented the house out to Adele and her husband Steve at a minimal rate. Eventually we sold the house. I used my share of the inheritance from the house to pay off my mortgage in Kurnell and to pay off all other debts. I was sure that with the money left over, I would have enough to renovate my house at Kurnell. So we started the renovations. I took the advice of the builder, but in hindsight, I shouldn’t have. He said that rather than give me a quote for the whole renovation, the cheapest way to do it would be for me to pay the builders’ wages every Friday. He said that they would give me the receipts for the materials as they bought them. But it didn’t work out to be cheaper. It was a much more expensive way to do things because they took a lot longer. Also, I’m not certain that all of the materials I was paying for actually came to my house because I was working every day and couldn’t be there to oversee it all. The money went like water. As my money disappeared without the finishing line for the completion of the renovation in sight, it became an increasingly stressful experience. Eventually I ran out of money and we couldn’t finish the renovation.Then we made another mistake. We took out another mortgage so that we could finish the house.

Around this time, Ron and I had been over to the U.S together. We went with Ron’s brother Alan and Emily. While we were away, Ron told me about his dream of opening up his own freighting/trucking business. His brother had gone into a similar type of business himself, years earlier, and was making very good money from it. It sounded very promising. So we got together enough money to start the business. He called it R.A.S Freighters. Ron particularly loved the business name because it had two meanings. The first being that RAS were his initials (Ronald Austin Sullivan) and the second being, ‘Road, Air and Sea’ - covering the terrain that his transport business covered in importing and exporting products. Alan gave us offices in his building in Mascot. After that Ron hired two subcontractors.

Unfortunately, and we didn’t know at the time, but Ron had emphysema. As time wore on, he was so unwell that when he would get to work, he felt so tired he would fall asleep on his desk. The frequency of this inactivity continued and as a result, before long, we weren’t making much money at all. Around this time the Reserve bank raised the interest rates from about 4.5 to 16 percent. This meant that our mortgage was costing us about an extra thousand dollars per month. We struggled to make those mortgage repayments. I didn’t know this at the time though, because I thought Ron had been making the house payments. Soon enough, a letter threatening  eviction came in the mail. Ron hid the letters from, I’m assuming because he was holding out for a miracle. But by the time he told me, it was too late. 

One Friday night, we were all sitting at the dining room table and there was a knock at the door. I answered it and two sheriff’s officers stood in the doorway. They came to assess the value of the contents of the house. So they went through everything in the house, writing down the estimated value of all that we owned. This was so that if they sold the house and didn’t recoup enough money to cover our mortgage with the bank, they could take as much of our household contents as they needed to cover the debt. I have never been so humiliated in my life. We had lived there at the house at the top of Reserve Road in Kurnell for eighteen years. I had every intention of spending the rest of my life there. I loved that house and the community we were a part of there. There was nothing we could do. I had no choice but to sell the house before the bank foreclosed and sold it for peanuts. We sold the house for as much as we could, but due to the urgency of the sale, we didn’t get the best price for it.

Right up until the day we moved out of Kurnell, I wasn’t sure whether Ron and I would stay together or not. I had found a nice, two-bedroom semi to rent at 14 Formosa Street, Sylvania. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted him to move in there with Graeme and I. The morning we had to move out of the house, Ron and I had an argument. I was very upset by the reality of leaving the house for the last time and he said some very mean things. I decided then and there that I didn’t want to be together anymore.

Ron went to live with his mother for a while. Then he rented a unit with a mate of his. Ron was a heavy smoker all his adult life. He had been diagnosed with emphysema but even after periodically needing oxygen, he continued to smoke and his condition worsened. I would often visit Ron and we’d have coffee. Occasionally we’d go out for a chinese meal. At this stage Ron was driving buses for the Department of Transport. So we stayed in touch and I was glad we were able to remain friends. Sadly, Ron’s emphysema progressed over time and sadly, he passed away in 2005.

Having my marriage to Ron end the way it did, and losing our family home took a great toll on me. As time went on, I started to build myself up again. What I realised was that despite losing what I had lost, I was still an incredibly fortunate person. I had an amazing family, wonderful friends and my health.

Since finishing up on the islands, Karl had also been travelling abroad and was living in England. When he came back to Sydney, he moved in with us. At first he slept under the dining table in the living room. We had a lot of fun there at our house in Sylvania. We’d all eat dinner together in the lounge room and watch ‘Friends’ together on the tv. Having my boys, their friends and so many of my family friends around so often was wonderful and it did wonders in helping to heal my heart and soul, after all that had happened. Adam, now in his mid twenties, decided he needed a place of his own. He and Kain rented an apartment in Dolls Point. Gavin headed back up north to Queensland.

One day I was looking through my old teledex - the old personal phone books with the alphabetical index on the front. Reg’s home phone number from all those years ago was still in there. I had no idea where he was living at this point and thought the chance of it still being his current number was slim. Anyway, I phoned the number and low and behold, he answered! It had been a very long time since we had spoken. It was only a quick chat but we arranged to catch up in person. I invited him over to the house in Sylvania. For all I knew, Reggie could have been married at this point. Maybe he had had more kids. All these thoughts were rushing through my head. From time to time, over the years, Adele saw him when he came into the Westpac bank she worked at. She would tell me that Reg would ask how I was doing.

Adam and his friend Kain had moved out at this point and it was just Graeme and I living at the house in Sylvania. Months later, Reg moved in with us. It was wonderful living together. He was on the verge of retiring. His mother was very unwell with emphysema and he wanted to be able to be there to take care of her. He told me that he wanted to buy a house with his retirement money. I didn’t know that he wanted to buy a house for us. I thought that the sole reason for buying the house was because he wanted his mother to move in with him. He was interested in looking around the suburb of Dapto. We went together and every place we looked at was horrid. I said to him, “Have you thought about looking a little bit further down the coast around St Georges Basin or Sanctuary Point?” You could get a much nicer house down there for the same price. He said, “We’ll go and have a look.” For my birthday in November that year, we went away for a week and stayed at a motel in Huskisson. That week we looked at a lot of houses. We saw a house in Cammeray Drive that wasn’t quite finished. Even though the kitchen was being installed, I fell in love with the place. Unfortunately, it was out of the price range by about fifteen thousand dollars.The plan was to buy the house outright because we didn’t want to take on a mortgage. 

Around this time, Reg received another retirement payout that he was entitled to. He phoned me one day and said, “You know I’ve been thinking about that blue house. Do you still want it? I thought he was about to make a joke. 

I said, “Yes, you know I do, but we can’t afford it.” 

Then he said, “It just so happens that we’ve got enough. Can you ring the real estate agent and tell them that we’re going to take it?”  I was so excited!

 The government had recently made changes to retirement legislation and this affected Reg’s retirement payments considerably. We needed to bring in more money and so I looked for a job. In 2001, Adele was working in a management position at the Westpac back down there. She spoke to her boss and found out that they were in need of bank tellers. I applied for and got a position at Westpac Bank. I worked there for four years.

We had been coming up to Hervey Bay for holidays, staying at the Kondari Resort that Geoff was running. We loved it up there. Adam had recently moved to Brisbane, for work and Graeme and his partner at the time, Millie, were planning on moving to Brisbane at the end of the year, when Graeme completed his teaching degree and with Geoff, Deb and their boys (Bryce and Liam) being so close by, we continued to look for a place up there.

I had a look every day at houses that were on the market in Maryborough. I asked Geoff to have a look at a house at 217 Tooley Street in Maryborough for me. It looked perfect - A classic Queenslander on a quiet street. The problem was, however, that it was out of our price range. I rang the real estate agent there and said, “I really like this house but it’s more than we can spend. Do you have anything similar, but for less?” I told him how much we could afford. I also mentioned that we had a loan with the bank in place. He said, “I’ll call the owners and offer them the figure you’ve given me.” Ten minutes later he called back and said, “They’ll accept your offer!” He asked if we were coming up to have a look at the house. I said we would. Now, all of this had happened while Reggie had been out getting some groceries. So when he got home, I had some serious explaining to do. I didn’t want him to feel rushed but this thing had escalated very quickly. Mind you, we hadn’t signed on the dotted line or anything. It seemed like the perfect place and if we were able to buy it at the price agreed, it would be a bargain. We booked tickets to fly up and have a look. The next day, Reg, Chris, the grandkids and I drove up to Goulburn racecourse so Reg could race his car. Meanwhile Geoff had met with the agent to look at the place. He called me up while we were at the track and said, “Margaret this house has got your name all over it!” He told me all about it and said, “It’s even got Mickey Mouse head shapes cut into the interior of the balusters as you walk up the stairs to the front entrance.”

It took a while to sell the ‘Blue House’ in Sanctuary Point and we rented the house out until it was sold. It sold almost a year later. Reg and his son, Chris are very close. Chris and his wife, Haia, decided to make the move up to Maryborough as well. The children were all still quite young so changing schools wasn’t going to be a problem. So they moved up as well and rented a nice house nearby. Together Chris and Reg modified the big space under the house and converted it into a workshop. They spent lots of time down there working on their cars and still do, to this day.

Not long after we moved to Maryborough, I got a job working for St Vincent De Paul. I was sorting through donated clothes, helping with the accounts and working at the cash register. I made some nice friends there - local Catholics who had been there for years. They took me under their wing. We would share recipes and sometimes I’d go to Mass with them. As staff, we had first dibs on buying clothes, bric a brac or furniture and as much as I liked working there, I don’t know if Reggie was as happy about it. I would often ask him to bring his trailer when he picked me up so that we could bring home the new couch I had just bought.

Even though my boys moved back down south, I still had my brother, Debbie and their boys nearby and by this stage, we had made lots of wonderful friends in Maryborough. And I've always got my nephew Shane, his wife Candy and her mum, Gemma, who are all so very dear to me. So I’ve never been sorry we moved up here. This is a very happy house for me. I feel it all the time. It’s just home.

In 2004, I was diagnosed with cancer. Two types were found: renal and uterine cancer. I had surgery to have the affected kidney removed. Soon after that, I had to go back into hospital to have a hysterectomy. I was off work for around six months. Just before Christmas that year, in 2004, I returned to work. My health still wasn’t one hundred percent and so I found working the long days and full weeks really exhausting. I had been promoted at the bank to Head Teller. It’s a hard job. You’re in charge of all the money for TABs and the pubs and their poker machines. So your physically dealing with a lot of money that is made up of a huge number of coins. Bags of coins. I was still recovering from the hysterectomy and so continually lifting heavy bags of coins and carrying them down to the safe was painful and exhausting. I spoke to my boss and explained the difficulties I was experiencing. I asked her if there was anyn way I could move from being the head teller to a regular bank teller on the line. She said, “If you can’t do the job you’re being paid to do, then leave.” We needed the money and so I persevered for as long as I could. It became an increasingly unpleasant place to work and I would often say to Reggie, “I just wish we could move up so we can be nearer to Geoff and the boys.” And so that’s what we did.

At this point I was looking at houses online in Maryborough, every day. Geoff was doing the same. We both noticed the house that became our home. It looked perfect but was a little out of our price range. I phoned the real estate agent selling the property. I said, “I love the house but it is out of mine and my husband’s price range. Do you have anything similar that is within our budget?” He said let me talk to the owners and I’ll get back to you. On this particular day, Reg had gone down with Chris and the grandsons to race his car in Goulburn.

It was too much for me at that point and so I resigned. We needed that extra income so I was on the lookout for a job that was more manageable for me at that point. 

In 2005, Adam had been doing very well with his work at Suntory and was given a big promotion that required him to move to Brisbane. Graeme had almost finished his teaching degree and told me that he and his partner at the time, Millie, were looking at moving up to Brisbane. Millie was from QLD and so all of her family were up there. The idea of being states away from my boys, and the fact that my brother Geoff, Debbie and their boys were all up there led me to thinking about a possible sea change. In October that year, we went up to Hervey Bay in Queensland, for Geoff’s 50th birthday. While we were up there we spent a bit of time looking at houses. We found one that we really liked in the relatively close town of Maryborough, but after we had it inspected, found out that the place had had termites. Going by the houses we saw in that short time of looking, and the prices that were being asked, we knew that we wanted to find a place to live in Maryborough.

Then I was offered a house cleaning job. We decided we’d do it together to make it quicker and less strenuous. We only charged her for the price of one person though. We thought, we’ll charge them the price of a young, fit cleaner. This way they’d get two oldies for the price of one youngy. It was nice working together. We did this for a couple of years. We also did some cleaning work for a family down the road, cleaning their house. In addition to this, we worked as cleaners at the shopping centre here in Maryborough, three days a week. We were making decent money and it all worked out really well.

Going back to when Cheryl was first with Gerry. She was still in her late teens. They decided to move to the U.S. They started out in Hawaii. I remember the day they flew out Mascot, so clearly. I was devastated. Airline tickets back then were incredibly expensive. Staying in regular contact was difficult as well, due to the price of international phone calls. It’d cost $150 to call her at Christmas time. Things certainly weren’t like they are now. So when she left to move overseas, I felt a huge sense of loss. While they were in Hawaii, they got married and baby Shane was born - which was wonderful! From there they moved to California and bought a house in Vacaville. A couple of years after that, Cheryl fell pregnant with Barbie-Lee. At this time, Jerry was getting out of the Air Force. So they decided to come back to Australia for a couple of years. The two years turned into many more than that. When Barbie was just a little baby, less than a year old, something terrible happened. Barbie-Less passed away suddenly in her sleep. It was Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This hit them so incredibly hard. Our family and Gerry’s back in the states were rocked.

Cheryl and I often worked together. For a long time, we joined forces and the Hansens moved in with us at Kurnell. I enjoyed every day that I got to spend with her. Sometimes she’d get a bit annoyed with me because I'm a bit of a cleaner. You know, I'd be waiting for you to come home from work. I'd have had the kids all day if I wasn't working. And I'd have the tea ready. And I'd be wanting her to come home so we could chat. And all she wanted to do was go downstairs, have a shower, put her jammies on, eat dinner and go to bed. As sisters, we didn’t have to put on airs and graces. We could just be ourselves. It was such a happy house and I enjoyed every day we were together.

When Geoffrey came along, he became the apple of our eyes. He was such a dear little boy. But as he got older, he got really cheeky. But that was his sense of humour, too. Jeff and I are very similar in a lot of ways. He was only thirteen years old when I got married and moved out of home. So I didn’t get to see the day to day teenager, growing up.

My parents were very welcoming whenever friends visited and as years progressed, I had more and more friends wanting to come over. A lot of my friends thought we were rich. We seemed to have a lot of everything. The truth of it was that it appeared that way because Dad used to buy everything in bulk. As kids, my friends would come over after school and we’d have these big tins of Westerns ‘Wagon Wheels’ biscuits, like you'd see in the grocery shop. As a refrigeration mechanic, Dad was always visiting shops and factories - fixing their big industrial fridges and freezers. The people he worked for would offer to let him purchase products in bulk, at a discounted rate.

Loved your story. You have always been a wonderful friend, or as we called it “My second best friend.”
Love you Margie.
- Georgina Bowler-Rees

Every time I rang Edgecliff I would speak to Margie and we would chat (possibly at the expense of neglecting other calls !!! Hahaha) and we got to know a lot about each other. She was 10 years and 1 month older than me and she had 2 beautiful boys, Adam & Graeme who lit her up every time she mentioned them. She is still so incredibly proud of her "boys" and rightly so.

As it happens, my sister had recently married and her husband had just been signed to play Rugby League for St George Dragons. They were housed in a property the Club owned on Jubilee Avenue at Kogarah so I organised to meet Margie in person one weekend while I was visiting my sister.
The rest as they say, is History.

THE KURNELL DAYS (Becoming part of the Mahony & Hansen Families...........) As I didn't drive, I would catch the train from The 'Gong to Sutherland and Gerry would pick me up at the Station and drive me (as only Gerry could - like we were being chased by someone - possibly the Police !!!) and I'm sure we did the trip from Sutherland to Kurnell at warp speed !!

This was the start of my being welcomed to the Mahony & Hansen clans as once you were with them, they came as a "package deal". Adam would have been maybe 7 or 8 and likewise, Shane about 8 or 9 & (Princess) Desi and Graeme were both about 5 or 6.

It became one of my favourite things to do as a gal from the "Country" in Wollongong to experience many new "City things" with them all.

Our trips (or should I say treks) to the Easter Show each year were epic. We would get there before the gates opened and not leave until the last of the fireworks had finished - Usually with Chezzy leading the charge!! That woman had an endless & boundless enthusiasm for Life!!!

I loved laying in Margie's water bed with her at Kurnell and there was always country music blaring. We would often all snuggle up on the big comfy lounge & watch videos. Marg loved nothing better than a good old 'rom-com' - she still does. Her all-time favourite though was Inspector Poirot. Funny, I don't ever remember watching regular TV there - probably because we were all so well entertained without it.

The Texan BBQ King, Gerry, would host his fabulous barbeques. It was the first time I had ever seen "Beer Can Chicken". His Texan beans were also something else!!! It was always such a welcoming home and Margie & Chez were certainly the Hostesses with the Mostesses. Margie was constantly having to run "interference" between Gerry's Finnish friend, Matti Tikka as he would often flirt with me and Margie took it upon herself to be my Big Sister and warn him off !!!????. Being the eldest of 3 girls myself, it always felt nice that I had a "big Sissy" in Margie and also in Chezzy. 

FAMILY TIES ........I was fortunate enough to meet Margaret and Cheryl's parents, Barbara & Rex Mahony not long before Barbara passed away. I have such fond memories of spending time in 'The Tavern' at their home on Maroubra Road. You can easily see where Margie, Cheryl & Geoff got their social & entertaining skills.

Along the way I met Geoff's beautiful wife Deb. Margie is so proud of the family they made with Bryce & Liam. We all got to go to Texas for Desiree's wedding to Lamont and had a blast tagging along for the Honeymoon in Vegas & then to San Antonio. Marg's friends Adele Morris (Pickering) and Georgina Rees were also there and it was just the best time! Margie had only just scraped in timewise to be allowed to fly due to having had a kidney removed only a relatively short time prior. Come hell or high water she was going to make her precious Niece's wedding as she had to give Desi her ruby "snail ring". To say Margie made the most of that trip would be the understatement of the Century!

Shane grew up and married Candy and Margie was so happy that Shane had found his soulmate. Candy & her Mum, Gem, had been friends of Reg's for many years and so it was nice to all mesh together. Margie is so proud of both Shane and of Desiree. The joy in seeing them, as well as her own two boys, do well in their lives was so important to Margie. 

Margie's circle of friends was and still is extensive because she just has the ability for everyone who meets her to fall in love with her.

Two very special people I was blessed to meet via Margie are Jacquie & Geoff Hawke. I count myself so lucky to become part of the friendships with these two incredible people and as such, Margie's circle of friends were once again added into my own Life.

THE LATER YEARS ...........Margie has seen me through relationship break-ups, the birth of my sister's children (my 4 Nephews) and the birth of their children. She consoled me when I lost my Sister-In-Law and then some years later, my Ex-Partner and then 3 years ago, my own Dad. She told me once that when he came to pick me up from a visit to Kurnell, she thought he was a "good sort"!!! She was slightly embarrassed to admit that but it didn't bother me. Margie has always been a sucker for a man with a beard, nice, kind eyes. Men that are like a big teddy bear.

I'm sure that is why she loved it when I met my now Husband, David, 11 years ago. She could see that he would be MY teddy bear and she knew he was "the one" I had been holding out for. She got to love him as much and possibly even more ????) than I do I suspect. He, in turn, is blessed to have "joined the flock" as yet another Margie fan.

We have been lucky to have had a few visits to Maryborough since Margie & Reg bought 117 Tooley Street and every time I pull up in front of that House, I feel like I am "HOME". Last year David & I planned a "surprise visit" to Maryborough and I didn't even tell Reggie. I just phoned her out of the blue and asked her what she was doing. I said "Gee I wish we could be sitting having a cuppa on your verandah" and she said " me too Bubby girl". My reply was "Well put the kettle on and come to the front door!!!" Honestly, her shrieks of delight will stay with me forever. I could not believe just how happy one simple surprise could make someone. I think we hugged each other for 5 minutes straight and in between laughing and crying, it was just like we had never been apart. Such is our Friendship!

MRS CHRISTMAS ???? ???? ........I had "gone off" Christmas for many years as it just lost its sparkle & appeal for me BUT anyone who knows Margie knows just HOW MUCH she loves her Christmas and twinkling lights and the joy that having these things for her to enjoy is priceless. You can't help but be swept up in it with her. She really does have such an abundance of pureness and happiness to share.

Life has certainly dealt Margie some absolutely shite hands over the years - that's the truth. BUT she used to tell me (and still tells me to this day) to play the "glad game" and to be glad for everything & everyone good in my Life and not to dwell on what I don't or can't have or change. I try to take that onboard as much as I can as she is a very wise lady who has lived by that Motto herself.

THE "NOT YET THE END" .......... Thankfully Margie's beautiful sons have set this in motion. Graeme, for creating such a special space called "People Pages" and Adam for suggesting that anyone who wanted to write a tribute that their gorgeous Mum could read now while we still have her is genius. Everyone should be so lucky.

I, like everyone else who has been touched by Margie, will be in her corner forever and a day as I refuse to even IMAGINE a World without "My Margie" in it. It had better be a long way off, otherwise whoever is "in charge" upstairs will have me to answer to !!????. We still have so much to laugh about and there is a huge need for countless "Margie hugs" to come yet.

"Love you til the End "!!!!!!!!!!!

Tracey Knight