The grandparents living with us were those on my father's side - the Mahony side. My father, Rex, was one of seven. My father and his brother, Billy are the only ones that have passed away so far. The ladies are all in their 90s and look like they're only in their 70s. So they're very well preserved, the little Mahony women. 

Dad was a refrigeration mechanic and worked for himself. So it was not unusual for him to head up to Delungra when the lambing was all on or when there was plenty of shearing to be done. I've got lovely memories of the farm. Collecting the eggs, watching the chicks hatch, and feeding the little lambs with the glass bottles. There was a big old horse there called Tom. Poor old Tom would have about five of us kids at a time, riding on his back. But he just kept walking around with us hanging off him. It was wonderful on the farm. The house had a sleepout verandah and this was where we all slept. We would put on concerts and plays for the family. Sometimes we go there for Christmas. This was always lots of fun. Unfortunately, my nanna and my pop separated. Nanna came back to Sydney and, along with her younger children, Cherie and Kerrie, lived with us for a couple of years after that.

As a little girl, we went to church every Sunday. I remember one Easter Sunday, I met Mother Antonio from St. Aidan's Primary School. She was one of my mother's teachers at the school when she was young. I was wearing a little royal blue velvet dress with a white lace collar, white socks and little patent leather shoes. Mother Antonio said, Oh, what a lovely little girl. Why aren't you at school? Mum said, "Oh, she's only four." Mother Antonio didn't seem concerned by this and asked, Would you like to go to school? And I remember saying, yes. She said, "Bring her along on Monday." Mum told her that we didn't have a uniform. Sister Antonio said, "She'll be right. Wear that pretty dress, you'll be fine."

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 wa 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.

Dad was very handy with woodwork. He had made her a gorgeous beauty case out of wood. She tipped all her things out of it and gave it to me to use as a school case. I thought it was wonderful.

I admired the Brigidine nuns that taught us. Nearly all of the them were Irish and came over together from the same area in Ireland. They were very young, fresh faced and spoke with broad Irish accents. When I think about it now, some of the nuns would probably only have been 18 or 19. But they were lovely. Always kind to me. I never got smacked. Never got into trouble. I just liked school and really enjoyed certain subjects, such as Art and Religious Education. God was everything at the time.

In about 1963 started high school at Brigidine. 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 louvre 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 which I'm still close to today. I still talk to all of them at least once a month. 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. During this time I continued to have elocution lessons. These lessons took place at school, before the start of the day. 

I was in a couple of choirs at school and through the parish. We used to go on buses down to the Conservatorium in the city and to Lady Macquarie's Chair. Cheryl, Adele and I were always involved in poetry reading competitions. We would have a lot of days off school to compete in these competitions. A book would be sent out and you would learn poems and read them aloud at the competitions. 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.

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 read as evocatively as you could. It was a lot like voice acting, I guess. You had to bring your story or character to life - put in a bit of dramatic flair and take on the voices of characters. There would usually be about 80 competitors and their parents in attendance. Once you finished and came back to your seat, you had to sit and wait, listening to every other reader. Then they would hand out the marks and give you your ranking. 

For our second-year play, we did ‘Wind in the Willows’. I played the policeman in the court scene. Everyone in the class was involved. We made the sets and did everything. 

A large proportion of my friends today are those that I made at St Aiden’s Primary School. 

I was always in the church choir. Once a month, for a 7 am Sunday Mass, the choir would sing from the choir loft, located up the back of the church. For these Masses, we were called the Holy Angel and we wore red cloaks. At other times of the liturgical year, we were called the Children of Mary and for these Masses, we wore blue cloaks while we sang in the church. 

The church had a lot of marches. We’d carry all these beautifully embroidered holy cloths with gold trimming on them and we’d march from our school to the school at Randwick or vice versa. 

We did this on different feast days. We went to Mass every Friday. Friday was church day and sports day. 

Art was probably my favourite subject. From a young age, I attended private art classes on a Saturday. I remember we did a lot of mosaic work with tiles. At school, our art teachers talked to us a lot about the masters. I’ve always loved Degas. He featured a lot of ballet dancers in his paintings and I’ve always thought them exceptionally beautiful. But I loved drawing. A lot of our homework for various subjects was completing projects. For the visual aspect of these projects, we would have to draw a lot of the illustrations ourselves. I loved this part. 

We had a musical appreciation lesson once a week. This usually involved analysing classical music. I remember we were often asked to identify instruments as they were featured within a musical piece being played.  

I was in the ‘A Class’, which focused on Advanced Mathematics and French lessons. Unfortunately, these classes clashed with cooking and sewing classes, 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, along with Adele and my friend, Trisha Sant, I was offered a part-time job. 

In my earliest memories, there was always lots of family around. Uncle Billy spent most of his time with us. He'd go up to the farm and help Grandpa. And then they get into a bit of a tussle l because they often locked heads together. And then he’d come back down to us again and he'd sleep on the enclosed veranda out off the lounge room. But then Grandpa would need more help because he was in the process of fencing the property, which was a big job. So Uncle Bill would travel back up to Delungra, clear land, get rid of rocks and continue with the fence work.  Eventually it was all finished. 

That homestead they built together is still standing in Delungra. My nanna got she got a kit home ordered from an American company called Hudson Homes. So it arrived in kit form and between the family, they built that house. It was a beautiful house, very similar to the one I'm living in now. Same sort of setup, just the verandas went right around three sides. 

It was around the June of 1960 that we moved from Edgar Street in Kingsford to 270 Maroubra Road, Maroubra. When I saw our new house I remember thinking it was the most beautiful house I'd ever seen in my whole life. I couldn't believe that we were going to be able to live there. The house was originally built back in the 1940s. It was a federation-style house, but beautifully done. The fellow that had owned it, Mr Furness, was a builder. So a lot of the furniture in the place was built in, which was quite rare in those days. This included the cupboards throughout the house and the bunk beds in Geoffrey’s room. There were beautiful leadlight windows everywhere, all the ceilings featured ornate plastered flowers. It was such a beautiful house, and it became a very happy one. We had a lot of fun there.

I enjoyed going to church as a child. When I was quite young, I'd walk all the way to our church, the Holy Family Catholic Church in Maroubra, from our house in Kingsford, which was about a kilometre away. I can't imagine parents letting young kids do that in this day and age. But when I was about nine years old and we moved into the house on Maroubra Road, it was then only a short walk to our church. I'd take Cheryl and Geoffrey. Sometimes they would refuse to come into the church, but I would never miss it. To me, it was like a mortal sin to miss Mass. 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. 

At the end of Year 9, I went and got a job with a printing factory by the name of Seaborne Printing. 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 hoping to be able to work together so we were very happy to work alongside one another in the warehouse. 

The first thing I was asked to do there was wrap the books. 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, they had me work alongside Adele using a machine where we had we had inserts and we’d put them on this machine and then it would slide up to the end. Then it'd be stapled and someone would take it off. I enjoyed watching the printers work and was interested in seeing how they applied the different colours and the typesetting for different 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 school, they said that they were happy, 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. They 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. From there I went on to work for a veterinarian at a practice on Bunnerong Road in Pagewood. I had seen an advertisement for the job in the newspaper. I love animals and it was much closer to home so I applied. 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. They were long days. I often started at 8:00 am and finished at  6:30 at night. At this point, I was dating David Trewin. He would often drop me off and pick me up from work. I stayed at the Vets for over a year.

Then I took a position at Grace Brothers in Broadway. David worked for a printing company, further up on the same street. So we would drive together he would drive for a printer where he was every tear so he would drop me off at work in the morning go up to work. And then I would get the bus up to him if he had to work overtime and sit in the car on the side street and wait for him and we would come home together. So it worked out really well. I worked in an office in the photographic department. Photographs of receipts, showing customer purchases made on store credit would be taken and the photos would be developed into miscrofish. This meant that if customers questioned a bill they received for a purchase, we had photographic proof and could say, “Yes you do, here is your signature for the purchase.”  I enjoyed the process of developing the microfish. When the girls did all the collatingof the dockets, they would bring them to us in these big drawers. I would use this machine and put the photograph of the dockets onto pieces of micro tape. And then I’d go down to the darkroom out the back and mix up the mixture. You'd have this black box and you put these little these celluloid pieces of that and then once they once they would develop then you'd hang them on to a like little clotheslines with clips until they dried. Then you'd put them through the fish and make sure that they were all clear. I became the supervisor of that department. I stayed there right up until I got married. I loved working at Grace Brothers. It met a lot of great people and I made some wonderful, lifelong friends. One friend I met at Grace Brothers who was particularly dear to me was Jo Woods.  

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 had started dating David Trewin, a man I would go on to marry. I was allowed to go out to drive in movie theatre one night a week with David but I had to be home by 11:00 pm.  

I met David one Saturday morning. My parents were out. The doorbell rang and I answered it. David stood there in the doorway. He was looking for my best friend Jacquie, who was over, visiting. She was such a pretty little thing and all the boys had a thing for Jacquie. Not that she was promiscious. They would follow her around like bees to a honeypot. Not that she was promiscuous, her beauty and charm meant that everyone wanted to be around her. The next day he came back again, but to see me. I remember my parents were concerned at first because he was a lot older than me. He was 22 when we first started going out. 

I had been out with other guys before David but it was never anything serious. I used to go to the dances on a Sunday at the CYO (Catholic Youth) at the Holy Family Church Hall. They’d have great bands playing. That’s where I first saw Little Patty perform. It was at a CYO dance that I met my Ray Cuddy. Ray was to become my first real boyfriend. He was a very smart dresser, always wearing a gray suit with either a pale mauve, pale blue or pale pink shirt. We dated for about six or seven months but tit became clear that he wasn’t what I was looking for. When I met David, I was already seeing another fellow by the name of Frank Clark. He was a tow truck driver and had his own business down at Taylor Square. Frank used to race his car out at Richmond. He invited Jacquie and I to go with him one night. After that, I’d often go out there with him and well, that’s how we got together. I left Frank to start seeing David but after a while, feeling torn, broke up with David and went back to Frank. But I couldn’t get David out of my head and realised that he was who I really wanted to be with. So things got serious with us and on my seventeenth birthday, we got engaged. Not quite two years later, just before my nineteenth birthday, we were married. 

At the time, friends getting married were choosing to have their receptions at lavish wedding venues. My parents said if we had the reception at home, they would pay for everything. David and I talked about it. We were just desperate to be married and so we jumped at Mum and Dad’s offer. 

We were married at 6:00 pm on the 6th of November, 1969 at the Holy Family Catholic Church in Maroubra. The priest who married us was Father English. It was a beautiful wedding. My mother in law, Nellie made my wedding dress. She was a professional seamstress and tailor and it was just magnificent! I felt so beautiful in it. Nellie also made all fo the suits and the dresses for the entire bridal party. Cheryl, Jacqueline and little god daughter, Gina were my bridesmaids. Geoff Hawke and Johnny Trewin were the groomsmen. 

Nellie Trewin had all the girls in the family toyshop (Trewin’s Toys) making these beautiful big, crepe paper flowers. We had them all around the backyard of our house. Dad and Mum hired a big red carpet to go from the back door right up to the tavern. They had tents out the side. My mother worked her fingers to the bone, doing all the catering - and the food was magnificent! She even made the wedding cake! My Auntie June lent us cutlery and dinner sets. 

After the wedding, David and I drove up to Broad Beach on the Gold Coast for our honeymoon We stayed there for seven weeks. My parents best friends, Roy and Nancy gave us the keys to their holiday house at Broad Beach. and we stayed there for seven weeks. I had only every been the Gold Coast as a child, when we went up there as a family and stayed in a caravan. 

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. 

Just before getting married, both David and I had thrown our jobs in. David was going to work for his father, Stan at Trewin’s Toys, because his dad needed to have knee reconstructions done. He had had a motorbike accident when he was in his late teens. As long as I’d known him, he walked with a limp. So David said, “I'll finish up at my printing job and I'll come and work for you. When you’ve recovered, I'll go back to printing.” I was thinking that once we were married, I’d fall pregnant straight away and so I too handed in my resignation at Grace Bros. I desperately wanted a baby. 

When we first got married we spent the next twelve months living with my Nanna Ridge. This was 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. I had a big glory box filled with towels and sheets and million other things. I had made a point of buying something for my glory box, every pay day, since I first started working. Being 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 did work. I worked for Gladys and Peter Faulkner at the Esron Motel. For five days a week, I worked 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 staying at the motel, on R & R. 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 their little Mark 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 stayed on at the shop. He would ride his fancy microfibre bike to and from work. He was a bit of a health freak. David played a lot of squash. He was always doing something. 

About six months after we married, we decided to buy a nice car. We went down to Kings Cross and put a deposit on a 122 Volvo. We had to wait for five months for it to arrive from Sweden. It was beautiful. It was red and had black upholstery. 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 split up. 

David’s Auntie Gladys was a lovely lady. She was a bit cranky but we loved her. She had been divorced and never had children of her own. Auntie Gladys was a mad golfer and drove this big, old, black, Hudson car. She 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. We’d go over to her place on a Sunday and she’d play the piano, while we all circled around her and sang along. 

Shortly after we returned from our honeymoon, Auntie Gladys passed away, quite suddenly. She had owned a lot of stocks and in her will, she left quite a substantial amount of money to David and his siblings. She left us with enough money so that with the inheritance and a little extra financial help from David’s parents, we had enough money to put a big deposit on a house. We got a bank loan and bought our first home at 109 Paine Street in Maroubra. 
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, my Mum took me to see a gynecologist on Macquarie St in the city. This was my mother’s gynecologist and he was as old as Methuselah. At the time I was quite overweight, which probably didn’t help me to fall pregnant. We saw different doctors and they carried out test on me and then they did some 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, I would become too attached. 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 that 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  went up considerably. 

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

Adopting Adam was the most joyful thing I had ever experienced in my life. When David and I got home after picking him up, we sat on the floor of his bedroom, staring at him in his little colonial cradle all night. We never went to bed. We just sat there staring at him. We couldn't believe it. 

Originally, I had given my preference to adopt a baby girl. There was a shop in Maroubra called Guys and Dolls. I spent about $160 there, which would have been a lot of money in those days. I had laybuyed pink nappies, pink dresses, and pink socks. All this beautiful stuff for a little girl. I would go down every time I got paid and pay some off the laybuy. 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. And they said to David, and I could have kicked him because he could be inappropriate at times. And they said, “David, why do you want to adopt a girl?” So what does he say? “Because she told me I 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’. So one day I did. 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 were having a good gonna have a girl and now you're going 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 with little blue bows. the hugest amount of crossover curtains, like the Queen Mother would have.  

You gotta you gotta call out of the blue. In 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 going 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.” Then he told me that he would see me at my parent’s place after work. The phone rang. It was a 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. 

So when I got back to my parents’ place, mum and dad had organised for everybody to go down to Pambula to meet our little boy. And so even though I would have liked to have just experienced this with your dad, you know, on our own, it turned out much better the way it happened. 

My Dad drove. David and I were in the front with him. David’s mother, Nellie was in the back and my mother was on the other side. We left right after the paperwork was signed and headed to Bateman’s Bay. This meant it was only a short drive the next morning to get to Pambula. We stayed at a motel named ‘Zorba the Greek’.  

The next morning we went on to the hospital at Pambula. The nurses brought him out to us. They had named him Matthew. I looked at him and straight away I could see that he was just the perfect baby. He was such a happy little baby. I couldn't have gotten a better baby in the whole world. It was meant to be. 

On the way back home, with Adam travelling between his two grandmothers, I can remember Mum saying to me, “If she pulls that Moses basket closer to her again, I'm going to have words with her! She keeps pulling him over to her side.” 

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, Dr. Graham Bosch, at Paddington Hospital who was helping couples to have breakthroughs in falling pregnant. She cut out an article snd 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. 

Not too far down the track, we were in the process of moving house to a bigger place, around the corner, on Nagle Avenue. I was working part-time on the switchboard for a delivery company. Adele was minding Adam while I was at work.  I didn’t know it then but I was pregnant. I took my temperature and it stayed up. I rang the doctor and he said, “Do nothing.” The pregnancy went smoothly, and then, coming in two weeks early on the 9th of August, 1976, our son, Graeme was born. 

I had been looking after my baby niece, Desiree, who had been born in January of that year.  So she was about eight months old. I'd said to my sister, Cheryl, “I'll need a couple of weeks to get the baby’s clothes ready.” So she organised for Jacquie to look after Desiree for what was going to be the last two weeks of my pregnancy. I was sure I was going to be having a little girl. I was set on having my ‘Amanda’ There was a lot of clothes shopping and general preparation to be done for my little Amanda. That’s right, I was sure that I was going to have a little girl. So I had baby Desi up til the Friday of that week. 

That Sunday afternoon Adam, David and I were at the park. David was flying his model aeroplanes. When we got home,  I started to feel a bit funny. I went to bed, telling David that I felt a bit off. I got into bed - a water bed, which was all the rage back then and my water broke! David sprang into action. My parents were away on holidays, down the south coast for a wedding and so we took little Adam to David’s parents, who lived in the same street as us. We raced over to the Royal Hospital for Women in Paddington.  

I really didn’t know what to expect. It was a long and painful labour but I gave birth as 8:03 am the next day. Graeme was beautiful and healthy, but massive, weighing 11 pounds and three ounces at birth. Back in those days, unless they suspected there was a problem, you didn’t have an ultrasound. So we had no idea that Graeme would be as big as he was. I remember the doctor apologising, saying, “Oh my goodness, I didn’t know he’d be this big!” Due to the stitches I needed, I was in hospital for ten days.  

The day after you Graeme was born, my parents came to meet Graeme. They were so excited! They came with a lovely little silver bracelet for him - and because he had flaming red hair, Mum had the name ‘Little Red’ engraved on it. Her nickname was Big Red.

Life was exciting. We had just moved into a new house, which was bigger. Lots of my friends had babies. The street was full of young parents with kids. I’d take Adam to playgroup every week. I was a full-time Mum and it was lovely. We had a nice pool at new house and so we swam every day. 

A couple of months after Graeme was born, I found out that I was pregnant again. My doctor had said that if we wanted to have more children, not to take precautions because there was a greater chance of falling pregnant after recently having had a baby. I was thrilled! 

A couple of weeks later, out of the blue, David and I were sitting on the couch - little Graeme was on my lap and he said, “I don’t know what we’re doing here anymore.” I didn’t understand what he was saying and I asked him if he wanted us to sell the house and move. Did he want to change jobs? He said he wasn’t happy and that it wasn’t me - it was him. It turns out he was having an affair with one of the ladies who worked at the toy shop. She was a relatively good friend of mine and used to cut my hair. David used to service her car as well.  

So that was the end of my marriage to David. I thought I’d never get over it. Not long after this I lost the baby. So we had to sell the house, which was also devastating for me.This was a very difficult time in my life. But I got through it and my life got better. 

With the little bit of money that I got after we sold the house, I was able to buy a semi on Neilsen Street in Hillsdale. My boys and I lived there happily for the next few years. 

At this point I was living in Hillsdale with my boys. I had been on a couple of dates but wasn’t overly enamoured with anyone - until that is, I met Philip Walker. He had been in the army. My sister, Cheryl had worked in the accounts section for a branch of the defence force that supported personnel and veterans, offering household items that could have and pay off, without having to pay interest. While Cheryl was working there, a customer had asked her out. He said, “Would like to make it a double date with my mate and his girlfriend?” When the man and the couple arrived at my parents’ place to pick her up, my mum invited them in for a drink in the backyard tavern. Well, they stayed there til after midnight, drinking and having a great old time. Cheryl was not too happy about this. But Philip and my mother really hit it off. I don’t think Cheryl went out with that man again. 

At the time, Philip was living in Balmain and was working as a delivery driver, providing various necessities to takeaway shops all over Sydney. When he was in the eastern suburbs, he would drop in and visit Mum. One day I dropped baby Graeme off to be babysat at Mum’s because I had a specialists appointment. Philip was there. As I left I said goodbye and told Philip that I’d see him next time. He said, “Oh no. I’ll still be here when you get back.” I was having a party at my place that night. When I got back to pick Graeme up I invited him over for the party. He came along. We had a great time and too drunk to drive, he slept over on the couch. He took that next day off work and we hung out together. He took the day after that off too and we discovered that we liked spending time together. 

Mum was very protective of me after David and I had split. So I was apprehensive to tell her about Philip and I. Mum was thrilled, as was my Dad. 

Soon enough, Philip moved from Balmain and moved into our semi in Hillsdale. Philip 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. “Oh yes!” I said.

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, overlooking Botany Bay, on Silver Beach Road. Back then you could take a ferry from La Perouse across to Kurnell. Jacquie would often come with us. In our teens, friends would often catch the ferry across to meet us. We would explore and play in the park and then get Hamburgers for lunch. We had wonderful holidays in Kurnell.

We met with a local real estate agent and she took us around to look at about six or seven houses but none of them really grabbed me. I asked her if she had anything else. She took us to this house located at the top of the hill on Reserve Road. It was a five-bedroom, two-storey house with the most beautiful views of Botany Bay. As soon as we walked into the house, I thought, I want this house. The problem was the until I sold the house in Hillsdale, I would have the deposit for the house in Kurnell. I spoke to my parents and they loaned me the deposit. We moved into 17 Reserve Road, Kurnell on what used to be Fire Cracker Night, on the long weekend of June, 1980. 

We became good friends with our neighbours on both sides of our house. Dorothy, or ‘Dot’ as we called, lived at number 15. She had a small house, situated at the back of her block of land. Dot was elderly and couldn’t walk too far. Nearly every day, she’d ask me to go down to the pub and buy her a longneck of beer and drop them over to her. Often an afternoon, when Philip got home from work, he and Dot would sit on our verandah, look out at the bay and have a couple of drinks. 

She told me one day that she was thinking of selling her house. She didn’t want a lot of money for it. I think it was something like $22,000. It was a small, two-bedroom house with a kitchen and a little dining area.  house but was situated on a big block of land.Philip and I talked about the prospect of buying it to increase our land size. Philip could park his trucks there and build a garage on it. I was so excited and told my sister, Cheryl about it. Her voice sort of dropped. She that this would be an ideal place for Gerry, the kids and her and it would be something they could afford. So Cheryl got the finance and they moved in. 

Cheryl’s place became party central. She had a big bar in the house, a dentist’s chair and loads of funny hats. Cheryl and Gerry often had American friends over for parties. 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. 

There was a bit of controversy about the house burning down. Their insurance company put them through the griller. When they finally paid up, Cheryl and Gerry used the money to pay of the loan. They then sold the land and rented down the end of Tasman Street in Kurnell. They were quite happy there. While they were living there, Gerry’s sister became unwell and was diagnosed with cancer. He went back to Texas to see her. While he was over there, she passed away. He stayed on in Texas for months. Cheryl was on her own with the two kids and was working full time. I remember we sat down together. We were both on our own and looking after two kids. It made sense to all live together, put our money together, share the bills and pay off all our debts. And so that’s what we did. Cheryl, Shane and Desiree moved in with us. 

Cheryl was such a hard worker. She worked Monday to Friday on the switchboard at Custom Credit and on Friday and Saturday nights she worked in the kitchen at the drive-in movie theatre in Caringbah. Often, all four kids and I would get in the car and go to work at the drive-in with her. She get there early and reverse her car into a good position in front of the movie screen so the kids could all watch the movies while she worked. In between movies, the kids would go and see her in the shop there and get treats. I was full time as well. So we managed to get on top of things. We all got along really well. There were never any dramas. And then by the time Jerry came back, things were a lot more settled.

Philip was working for a trucking company 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 schoolb every day, which was in Cronulla and so we enrolled him to start at Kurnell Public School. We enrolled Graeme into Kurnell Pre-School. 

It felt like we were living in a little country town. We continued to make regular trips during the week to see my parents in Maroubra and I would still do my shopping over there. Another couple we became friends with after moving into Kurnell were Peter and Julie George. For a bit of extra money, I would look after their children, Lyndal and Rebecca, before and after school.  

Once both of my boys were in primary school, I started to work again. I would work as a casual telephonist on the switchboard at Custom Credit. So if someone was away or was going on holiday leave, I would come in and cover their role while they away. From there I was offered a position with National General Custom Credit in Edgecliff, calculating quotes for vehicle insurance. I worked there for a long time. 

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 in working as a cleaner at the Museum, located in the ‘Kamay’ National Park in Kurnell. I did three mornings a week from 4:30 am to 9:00 am. This brought in enough income for us to live quite comfortably. 

Throughout our time living in Kurnell, we were always 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 and her in take of alcohol had increased. 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 belived 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 she ends up in a comas after the surgery. Mum would get a few of 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.” I laughed my head off. 

Unfortunately when they opened her up for the operation they discovered that the cancer was very widespread. Cancer was harder to determine in those days. She came home from the opertion with three broken ribs and was in a lot of pain. Over the next five months she never really got out of bed and we lost her on the 30th of June that year. It was a Sunday morning. Dad called me quite early and said, “I think you should come over.” I dropped my two over at Adelle’s place. She passed away at about 7:00 am that morning. I was massaging her feet when she went. Dad was so overcome with grief that he could barely put one foot in front of the other. 

We had to organise the funeral. We had a friend who owned a funeral parlour in Bondi and so he looked after us. We chose the same type of coffin that Mum had chosen for her Mum because we knew she liked that one. 

The whole dynamic within the family changed. We clung tightly to Dad, spending a lot more time with him. Dad was 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 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. 

I first met Reg in 1986. I went to a Friday night dance with some girlfriends. My friend Barbara  brought a male friend from her tennis group along. She asked if we minded, telling us, “He’s single.”  It just so happened that when arrived at the dance, the only vacant seat was next to this gentleman. I said hello and introduced myself. Making conversation I said, “Do you like to dance? I love to dance!” 

“No, I don’t dance,” was his reply. 

I thought. “Oh, ok.” But anyway, we talked his kids and I told him all about mine. He told me about his love of tennis and cars. He asked if my kids played tennis and I said that they did. He suggested that we get together and play. We didn’t exchange numbers that night. He phoned Barbara and told her that he thought I was nice and he asked if I had asked her about him. I did like him but I hadn’t spoken to Barbara about him. He asked Barbara to give me his number, which she did. 

Reggie called me and asked me out for dinner. I was so nervous because I hadn’t been dating very much. Anyway, I remember as I was getting ready both my boys were sitting on my waterbed in my room. I opened my wardrobe and I must have tried on about nine different outfits. Graeme said, “No, no. Not that one. The other one.” And Adam said, No Mum, this one!” 

He arrived that night in this big, loud, sporty car! It was white with two blue stripes running vertically along the center of the car. The boys were very impressed! When I got into the car, I noticed that he had installed a protective, racing roll cage in it. I quickly put my seatbelt on. Surprisingly, he was a very cautious driver. For our first date, Reggie took me to the Bamboo Gardens chinese restaurant in Sans Souci. The date couldn’t have gone better. We started seeing one another from that point on. 

Unfortunately, he never got to meet my mother because she had recently passed by then. But he became firm friends with Dad. Reg is a mechanic by trade and worked for the NRMA for a long time. When he was working in the area, he would pop in to visit Dad to say hi and would often help tinker with anything that needed fixing on his car. As long as I’ve known Reggie, he’s never been a drinker but he loved to hang out with Dad in the ‘Ye Oldee Koldee Tavern’ and have a soft drink. 

A couple of years later we got engaged and celebrated with a huge party at Dad’s place. We spent a great deal of time together but Reggie still lived in his unit in Randwick. He looked after his kids a lot and with shift work for the NRMA being based around the Eastern suburbs, it made sense.

Unfortunately, issues between my kids and Reg’s emerged. One afternoon Reg’s son Gary and my son Adam, had an argument that 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. A couple of months later my dad passed away. Reggie was by my side through it all and this helped immensely. 

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.  

After Dad died, Cheryl, Gerry and the kids moved to San Antonia, Texas. Geoff at this point, was living on Dunk Island, working as the General Manager there. We looked into selling the house on Maroubra Road. We were advised that because the house had ‘duel frontage’, with DA approval, we could sell it more easily and at a better price, as a property with approval for the building of an apartment block. So I had to go to an architect, who drew up plans for a building design. This design was then presented to the council. It took three attempts for it to be passed by the council. 

I had to get a bank loan to pay for the architect, D.A. and the real estate agent’s costs for advertising and running the auction. 1989 was a tough year. I had always wanted to take the kids to America and so just before the start of the school, Christmas holidays, we did. Adele had always wanted to take her kids overseas. Her eldest, David, was already working and living out of home and she brought Melissa along with us. It was a wonderful holiday! We flew to Los Angeles and went to Disneyland, Knotsberry Farm, and Universal Studios. We even crossed the border into Mexico to check out Tijuana. From there we flew to see Cheryl, Gerry, Shane and Desiree in San Antonio. We had the best time there! As a thank-you gift, I bought the Hansens a huge Christmas tree. To accommodate the huge number of Hansens, we hired tables and chairs I remember we had roast pork and lamb. It was a wonderful Christmas, there together, with every member of the extended Hansen family there. 

On our way home, we stopped for a few beautiful days in Honolulu, Hawaii. It was a really special family holiday.

Dad needed to have open heart surgery and Cedric performed the surgery, himself. He was a handy friend to have. When Mum had her operation at St Luke’s, it was Cedric who had organised for the specialist surgeon to do the procedure. 

He got through the surgery. The recuperation afterwards took about six months. Luckily, Dad had his own business and so he could choose his hours and make sure he was bringing in enough money to cover his bills. 

Even after he was back working again, he would often say to me, “l don't feel the same.” He said, “I can hear it clicking all the time, the new valve. Click, click, click, click.” He said it really spooked him. 

Dad’s sister, My Auntie Pat, who lived in Wisconsin in the U.S, came to Australia for a visit in 1989. She and her new husband stayed with Dad at the house in Maroubra. This was good for Dad. He really loved his sisters and brothers. Because he was the eldest, they all looked up to him. When they'd visit, they would all sit around the silver tea pot and drink copious amounts of tea all day, talking their heads off. 

Dad and his sisters had planned road trip down to Albury, where they had all grown up. I popped in to see Dad the night before they left to make sure he had everything packed. They left the following morning. The next day, which would have been the 16th of February, 1989, I got a phone call, letting me know that Dad had been taken to Albury Hospital because he was having heart problems. Since Dad’s initial heart surgery, he had problems with fluid building up around the heart and he would often have to go into hospital to have the fluyid drained. So we didn’t think his admittance into the hospital in Albury was particularly serious. We figured he’d be in there for a few days and then he’d be out. Dad would need to fly home when he got out and we’d need to bring his car back for him. We booked train tickets to head down to Albury. 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 two that have passed away. His sisters are now all in their 90s and are going strong.

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 at 14 Formosa Street, Sylvania to rent. 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 of his adult life. He had been diagnosed with emphysema but even after periodically needing oxygen, he continued to smoke and his condition continued to worsen. 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 the our family home took a great toll on me. As time went on, I started to build myself up again. I realised I was that despite losing what I had, I was incredibly fortunate. I had an amazing family, wonderful friends and my health. 

We had a lot of great times at Formosa St. Graeme and I lived there together. We’d often have friends over. 

Adam had been living in Canada, working on Ski Resorts. Then he travelled around the world with a group of his mates. When he returned to Australia, he and some of the boys he had been travelling with, moved in with us. So at one point, we had Adam, Kain, Gavin, Graeme, and I, all living in this two bedroom semi. Life was never dull! 

Graeme was playing in the band he had formed after high school. He was also working a few part time jobs as a: drumming teacher at a music school in Caringbah, and doing telemarketing for a Gym and a Mortgage Broker. In August of 1997, we celebrated Graeme’s 21st birthday, with a surprise party. All of his mates were there. 

Since finishing up on the islands, Karl had also been travelling abroad and had lived 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. But soon enough, Karl, a skilled carpenter and general, ‘Jack of all trades’, built and installed an additional wall (framing, gyprock and all)! 

We had a lot of fun there at our house in Sylvania. We’d all eat dinner together in the loungeroom and watch ‘Friends’ together on the tv. So it was a great time to heal my heart and soul - just spending lots of time with my kids and family. 

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.