The problems of birth

Brought up in a very religious environment.

Serving the Mass as

an altar-boy

I was born in Perth on 15 November 1929. At the time my parents were living in Goomalling. My mother's pregnancy became complicated by renal problems and better medical and nursing care were required than were available in Goomalling. The renal failure was so severe that the prospects of Phyllis surviving and of the pregnancy coming to term successfully seemed remote. Subsequently Phyllis certainly believed that her survival and the birth of her son were due to the prayers of Sister Mary Claver.

In later life she did say that she had always hoped and prayed that I would be a priest. Whether she had actually committed herself to dedicate my life to the priesthood I cannot say. Certainly, I was brought up in a very religious environment in which priests and nuns were treated with great respect - and to have a priest or nun in the family was considered a special blessing from God.

I was encouraged to become an altar-boy and by the age of eight or nine knew all the appropriate responses of the Latin Mass. I used to "serve Mass", as altar boys were said to do, not only on Sundays but quite often on weekdays before school.

School life in Goomalling

Boarding at New Norcia

Becoming interested in the priesthood.

Miriamme and I attended the local Catholic school in Goomalling, staffed by Presentation nuns, some of them straight from Ireland with such a heavy brogue that we could scarcely understand them. The local parish priest was usually seconded from the Benedictine Abbey of New Norcia. These Spanish monks were often quite unfamiliar with Australian mores and visited our home regularly for advice.

Mum always managed to get involved in school and parish affairs wherever she was, and Dad was respected for judgement and financial expertise. One priest, Dom Gregory Gomez, O.S.B. remained a life-long friend of Mum from Goomalling days. He was later elected the Lord Abbot of the Monastery in New Norcia.

In 1942 I won a scholarship to attend St Ildephonsus' College, run by the Marist Brothers, in New Norcia. I boarded there, together with one hundred and eighty other boys, for three years, completing the Junior Certificate. I rather suspected there was some collusion in this scholarship between my parents and the Benedictine monks. The monks funded the scholarship and may have seen me as a likely candidate to join their ranks. I was already voicing my interest in the priesthood.

At this time Dad and the family moved to Perth where he had taken up a position as Government Auditor. I went home from New Norcia for holidays but never actually lived in Perth. We seemed to visit Perth from Goomalling for holidays on most summer vacations and this had enabled us to keep contact with our cousins. Rottnest Island was one place where we used to meet, but I cannot remember how many times.

1945: Study with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in New South Wales

Restrictions on life-style

At age 18, formal training to replace "worldly" values with more spiritual ones.

From New Norcia I went to Douglas Park in New South Wales to a minor seminary of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. This was in 1945. Australia was still at war with Japan and Dad had to pull some strings with a Catholic organisation to get me on the transcontinental train: only classified personnel were travelling because of war-time restrictions. It was in the days of steam - air conditioning only in the dining-car - and long delays in transit because of troop train movements. We would wake up in the morning in the four-berth compartments covered with soot and red dust!

I spent two years in the minor seminary, returning home only for the Christmas vacation. In those days, students studying for the priesthood were subject to many restrictions even when home on holidays. No dancing, mixed bathing, or cinemas were allowed. Even my own parents, with their religious idealism, found this hard to understand. Certainly it limited my potential for normal social development at that age.

At the age of eighteen I finally left home permanently and entered the Novitiate at Douglas Park for a year of training and probation. This was a year of intense religious formation. In a sense, it was all part of a "brain-washing" process, calculated to replace family ties and "worldly" values with more spiritual ones. However, I put such words in parenthesis because the objective was not to disown the past but rather to transform it to the extent that family relationships became more spiritual and deeper. Unfortunately, the suppression of the human factor was strong, and the religious Order was presented as one's new family, replacing the family one belonged to "in the world".Having lived away from home since the age of twelve, I had little opportunity to share the years of adolescent development with my sister and brother. Miriamme was three years older, Edward, seven years younger. I spent a lot of time on my own in Goomalling, bird-nesting, setting rabbit-traps and devising my own adventures in the bush. For these reasons my memories of childhood and adolescent years are episodic; I suppose it is true to say that I never did have the opportunity to get to know my parents and siblings very well. From the age of eighteen my only contact with my family was through my mother's letters and, occasionally, those of my Father.

1948: The major seminary at Croydon, Victoria

1951: Study in Rome.

1954: Ordination

Doctorate in Theology

In 1948, having been formally accepted as a member of the Sacred Heart Order, I was transferred to the Major Seminary in Croydon, Victoria. The usual training programme for a priest was three years Philosophy (including related subjects such as psychology, sociology and general science), and four years of Theology. There were about forty students in the Seminary.

In 1951 I was sent to an international college of the Order in Rome to study at the Gregorian University run by the Jesuits. In Rome I obtained a Licentiate in Sacred Theology after four years and then began working on a thesis as part of the requirements for a Doctorate in Theology. My health was not always the best in the later years in Rome and it took me four years to complete the thesis and other requirements. A few times I took extended leave from study and worked in parishes or schools in England and Ireland. The thesis was an enquiry into the theological content of the Revelations of Juliana of Norwich. It was never published. I had been ordained priest in Rome in 1954.

1958: Return to Australia.

Work for the Order

1960 - 1972

Leaving the priesthood

I returned to Australia in 1958 and worked for twelve months in a parish at Henley Beach, South Australia. From then on I held a number of positions in the seminaries of the order in Australia:

1960 - 1965: Croydon, Victoria, as one of the lecturers in philosophy and theology, and later as bursar, as well.

1966 - 1972: Canberra, A.C.T., where a new seminary had been opened to house the first three-year students (Philosophy), who were also to attend the Australian National University. I held various positions there, as lecturer, bursar, director of student formation; and eventually as religious superior. I was also a member of the Provincial Council - the Order's central governing body in Australia, and of the Archbishop's Senate of Priests in Canberra.

In the circumstances, leaving the Order and the priesthood in 1972 was a traumatic step and appeared to be a major defection from a position of such responsibilities. Suffice it to say that I had already felt incapable of discharging those responsibilities before deciding to leave. The reasons for so feeling are too complex for me to attempt to analyse.

1972: Working at Caulfield Hospital, Victoria.

1988: Retirement

Family

At the end of 1972 I began work as administrative officer in the medical department of Caulfield Hospital, a regional Rehabilitation and Geriatric centre. I retired early from this position at the end of 1988 to look after the house, while Caroline went to work, and to care for her brother, James Perry who was mentally disabled (due, apparently, to trauma at his birth on 14 November 1953). He had come to live with us because his parents were too elderly to care for him.

In 1993 this remains the family situation. Caroline continues to work. Our three children - Georgia (born in August 1973), Matthew (born in January 1975) and Lewis (born in February 1979) - are full-time students, and James continues as part of the family.

		{Quotations by Edward were made in 1992}
Brief outline of Edward's Life ¹ 1993		dward, the second son of Edward John Chown and Phyllis Rumble, was born on the 20 April 1937 at Goomalling, Western Australia. He married Dawn Mayberry on 26 October 1964, and they had five children: Deirdre, twins Annette and Gail, Hayley and Raena. He spent much of his life working for Local Government. For nine years he was Shire Clerk at Esperance, a small town on the south coast of Western Australia. In 1983 he and his family moved to the city of Perth where his children completed their education. He is now¹ Deputy Executive Director of the Western Australian Municipal Association. g
Very early years at Goomalling With older brother and sister, he felt an only child		When Edward was born, his father was Secretary of the Road Board at Goomalling. He was seven and a half years younger than his brother Joseph and eleven years younger than Miriamme. Miriamme, the daughter of his Aunt Maudie, was adopted by his parents after Maudie died. In one sense he felt like an only child both because of this age difference and because both Miriamme and Joseph were absent at boarding school for some years. His family came to Perth in 1942 when he was five years of age. While Miriamme and Joseph retained memories of Goomalling, his own memories are few. He recalled being envious of his big brother:
Early memories from Goomalling		I remember envying my brother Joseph for bringing home birds eggs that he obtained from trees. . . all these different speckled eggs. He'd punch holes at both ends and blow the insides out. I can remember his very interesting collection. He also remembered a time before starting school when he lit a grass fire: My first experience with matches was out the back, playing in the grass, when I lit a fire. Suddenly I had quite a big blaze on my hands. I came running into the house, calling: Mum, somebody's lit a fire. There's a fire out the back! Mum said, You didn't light it, did you? To which, of course, I had to admit that I had. I can remember that creating a bit of a stir. Two other Goomalling experiences gave him a shock and implanted themselves indelibly in his memory: returning from a holiday to find a favourite cockatoo lying dead on its back in its cage with its feet in the air, and having a playmate of his own age die from diphtheria.

Moving to Cottesloe: The Star of the Sea church and convent		When the family moved to Perth, Edward lived at Mendip Flats, 58 Forrest Street, Cottesloe. Soon he was at school and involved in his parents' church. His mother was a staunch Catholic and often went to Mass daily. The Star of the Sea Catholic Church was nearby in Stirling Highway on the other side of the railway line. It was an easy walk across the line to the Church or to the Star of the Sea Convent School that he attended. In those days the trains on the Perth to Fremantle line were coal-fired steam trains. Returning home from school or church, Edward sometimes found chunks of coal fallen from the trains. These he would collect and take home for the open-fireplace. His mother prized finding anything of value like this, especially during the restrained conditions of war time.
Becoming an Altar boy		By age seven, Edward was serving as an altar-boy at church, and the association with the Church became of importance to him. This lasted into his adult years. It gave him a set of values that remained with him throughout life, although his active practice of religion declined.
St Louis School		When he was about ten years of age he transferred to St Louis School in Claremont, run by the Jesuit Fathers. By this time he rode his bicycle to school, as traffic problems were not great in the late 1940s. Like many boys, Edward did not enjoy school. He recalled: I can remember that I certainly did not like going to school. I had hay fever rather badly as a child. One term I missed so many days with hay fever that I was called before the school inspector. He reported that I had been absent for a third of the school days. That gave me a bit of a fright. After being confronted by a school inspector, I think I started fronting a little more regularly! He enjoyed swimming for his House at school and he enjoyed football in later school years, but felt that he had no special skills. Several times he won the annual class award for "Conspicuous Effort", without ever coming first in a particular subject. However, his love of swimming stayed with him throughout life.
Losing his right eye at the age of 15.		By 1952 his parents had moved from Cottesloe to Nicholson Road, Shenton Park. Edward was in the third year of high school and about to take the "Junior Certificate" - his first public examination, when a calamity befell him. While stepping out from behind a tennis shed behind the Church at Shenton Park he was struck in the right eye by a stray tennis ball. He recalled: At the time, I lived in the hope that I wouldn't lose the eye, and I suppose that in some respects I welcomed the opportunity to have time off from school during that final term.
Completing Schooling		But lose the eye, he did, and this set him back for some time. First, he lost three months schooling, never took the Junior examination, but went straight on to the last two years to take his Leaving Certificate. After the experience, and the break from study, he found it very difficult to start again. He gained his certificate, but felt that his work dropped in standard. He moved from science subjects to history and economics. g

Choosing a career:

Taxation Department

At the age of seventeen he was ready to join the work-force, but had no clear idea about what he wanted to do. Half-heartedly he thought about becoming a teacher. His father introduced him to various departments in the Commonwealth Public Service. He could join Customs, Foreign Affairs or Taxation. He opted for the Taxation Department.

Edward - or "Ted" as he became known - spent seven and a quarter years with the Taxation Department. During this time he studied accountancy through the Perth Technical College. He also became a registered tax agent.

He worked initially in the "Default" section that dealt with people who failed to lodge taxation returns. Then he moved to "Recovery" section where people had lodged returns but failed to pay their tax. Later he became an assessor. Since he had his Leaving Certificate he joined the Department as a "Third-Division" officer, and so was spared some of the more menial tasks undertaken by fourth-division officers. Nonetheless, the work was tedious at times. When checking wage-type returns he was expected to maintain a tally of one hundred and eighty assessments each day, which was one every two and a half minutes. There were no calculators in those days, and everything had to be done by hand.

Some returns had legal complications; Ted always added up, and checked everything carefully. Being very conscientious, he found it hard to keep up the pace of some of the other assessors who were not so particular.

Learning about real life:

¹To "dob-in" someone is to inform on, or to commit a person to something without their prior agreement.

Apart from this, he enjoyed his time with the taxation department, and found it a learning experience in more ways than one. For example, he was surprised that people would "dob each other in."¹

Working in the default section I was amazed to find the number of people who wrote to the Department saying that so and so down at the hotel brags about how he's running chooks in his backyard, and selling the eggs, and selling off the chooks and making so many dollars a year. . .

People were required to state their taxable income regardless of how it was acquired. Ted remembered one man who, year by year, stated his occupation as "Gold-Stealing". The Taxation Department's job was to collect tax, not to inform police of illegal activities. For example, there were the brothel keepers.

assessing brothel keepers

Of course we had investigators. They spied on some of these illegal activities. I can remember reading a departmental file where the inspectors counted how many people went in and out of the house. They then tried to tot up how much each would have paid, and so arrived at some kind of assessment. They compared this with the amount that the brothel-keeper was spending, the car she drove, her house, and asset accumulation.

On joining the department we all had to take an oath that we would not pass on any information that came our way.

The need to leave home at age 24 and gain

independence

Assistant Shire Clerk at

Three Springs

There were several reasons why Ted left the Taxation Department. One was the tedious nature of some of the work. Another was that, at age twenty-four or five, he felt stifled by living at home, and felt in need of gaining his independence. Through the help of his father he gained a position in Local Government. For six months he became assistant shire clerk at Three Springs. This was north of Perth, inland, and slightly south of the coastal town of Dongara.

Ted had vivid memories of the Dongara area as his family had a holiday there when he was twelve. Then, they rented a little cottage at Port Denison Beach. It was on this holiday that he discovered the joys of fishing. Each night they would put down cray pots, and each morning collect upwards of two dozen crayfish. From a row-boat he fished over a reef that abounded in skipjack and silver bream. Now, years later, while stationed at Three Springs, he drove the eighty miles to Dongara, but could never recapture the fishing success that he knew as a child.

Chief clerk at

Esperance

(1964)

At the age of twenty-five he gained the position of Chief Clerk in the Shire Office at Esperance, a much larger town on the coast, 720 km south of Perth. He stayed there until the end of 1964 when he became Shire Clerk of Cranbrook. Later he returned to Esperance as Shire Clerk.

A busy period of

growth.

When Ted arrived in Esperance, he found himself in a shire that was growing dramatically. The area to the east of Esperance was a sand plain originally of not much productive use. In the 1950s the use of subterranean clover, fertilisers and trace-elements showed that the land could be made productive. The town attracted enormous publicity in the early 1960s when an American Entrepreneur, Art Linklater, and other American investors, successfully established large land holdings in the area. The success of their farming methods caused an influx of farmers from all parts of Australia. Ted recalled:

There was quite an American invasion during the fifties and sixties. This had implications for our Shire. The office grew rapidly and new staff were required. When I arrived, we had six or seven staff housed in a little old building. During the two and a half years that I was there I became the Assistant Shire Clerk.

The trials of living

as a single man:

During most of this time, Ted was a single man and lived in a variety of quarters. He recalled:

On my arrival, I took lodgings in the Pier Hotel, but could not afford to stay there long. I moved into Essington Guest House in Dempster Street. It was immediately opposite the old Shire Office, so I just walked across the road to work. Today, it's the site of Woolworths, and a major shopping complex.

The guest house was fairly rough, but it was cheap, and we were given three meals a day, so for many months I put up with the itinerants, the drinking and the other activities.

At length, I moved out of the guest house to share with a carpenter, living in a half finished house. The place was a pig-sty, and a fair bit of drinking took place. Neither of us showed much interest or skill in cooking and we lived on hamburgers and pies. From there I moved to share a house at the Bay of Isles caravan park. It did not take me long to realise that I had to get a wife.

Meeting Dawn Mayberry

Marriage

26 October 1964

Ted was active in the local Catholic Church and took part in a drive to raise funds. He was given a list of people to contact to seek pledges from them. He called at the Esperance Hospital and there he met Dawn Mayberry who was on the nursing staff. Through youth groups, such as Junior Farmers, they came to know each other well, and were married in Norseman, the home town of Dawn's parents, on 26 October 1964. Ted recalled the night of their marriage:

After the Church service in the Catholic Church, the reception was held in the local hall. It was Dawn's moment of glory, and I could not drag her away from the hall until well after midnight. We had booked a bridal suite in a hotel in Coolgardie, about 160 km north of Norseman. We arrived there for our pre-arranged booking at about three in the morning. The place was in darkness. The electricity was off, and I can remember wandering round with matches trying to find our room!

Shire Clerk at

Cranbrook for

six years.

Ted and Dawn did not live long in Esperance before he was appointed Shire Clerk of Cranbrook. He spent six satisfying years there and then two and a half difficult years as Shire Clerk at Gnowangerup before returning to Esperance as Shire Clerk. Cranbrook is a small sheep and wheat farming centre, 320 km south-east of Perth and almost 90 km north of Albany. Gnowangerup is 80 km north-east of Cranbrook.

Birth of five daughters

² For details, see the entry for Dawn and for

the children.

It was during the period at Cranbrook that four of their five daughters were born at Mt. Barker. First, there was Deirdre in 1965. A year later they had twins, Annette and Gail. Then followed Hayley in 1968. Raena was born at the Gnowangerup District Hospital in 1971. Unfortunately Dawn became very ill during each of her pregnancies, so it was a difficult time².

Of this period of his life, Ted recalled:

The trouble with a small inland town is the gossip: everybody knows what everybody else is doing; I would never want to go back. Fortunately, I did not become highly involved, because one of my weaknesses has always been my total absorption in my work.

Ted's total commitment to his work: a Workaholic

I've led a life in which I've spent not only five days a week at the office but often Saturdays and sometimes Sundays. Then there have been night meetings. Maybe it was a mistake to commit so much of myself to the job, but that has always been part of me.

Also, I suppose I have drunk fairly hard during most of my life. Perhaps you could say that I've been an alcoholic and a workaholic. To some extent it did not matter much where I lived, as long as there was an office and a pub.

He also recalled a less than happy memory of Cranbrook:

A bad experience at a

break-up party

One year we had a keg at the break-up party at the end of the day. When we finished that off with all the workmen, everybody wandered down to the hotel. I remember that I woke up the following day at home in my bed, covered in blood.

Apparently I had got into a fight at the hotel with one of the loader-drivers from the Shire! The policeman said that I could be charged with assault over the incident but, as this was an isolated case, he would let the matter drop.

I couldn't remember any of the detail but next year we again had a keg. Afterwards, down at the hotel, I played it carefully. This same loader-driver was there. I understood then why I had hit him a year before, because the things he was saying about me and about the engineer were enough to trigger me off. But, of course, this time I was more discreet.

Shire Clerk at Gnowangerup for 22 years.

The aboriginal problem

Life as the Shire Clerk at Gnowangerup was difficult, firstly because of the concentration of Aboriginals in the town and, secondly, because of the antagonism between residents in the Gnowangerup and Jerramungup districts.

At Gnowangerup at that time there were, I believe, about a thousand Aborigines in the town-site. It was the last of the Aboriginal reserves and the circumstances were disgraceful: there were little sub-standard shacks for housing, and the behaviour of the Aborigines was very poor.

The Shire was very keen to reduce the number in the town, so we lobbied Government at every opportunity to provide jobs and better housing in other areas. I remember that I introduced the word, `Deconcentration'.

We tried to spread them to other towns. I don't know if natural circumstances prevailed or whether I did an exceedingly good job but, today, the Aborigines are well spread throughout the south.

Ted regarded as a

"do-gooder" on the

Native Welfare committee

We are all racially prejudiced to some extent but, when I first went to Gnowangerup, my Catholic values made me a real "do-gooder". I wanted to assist these people. I became Chairman of the Native Welfare Committee and my subsequent actions did not particularly endear me to members of the Shire Council. Most of them had lived there long enough to have lost hope of achieving anything worthwhile.

At the end of two and a half years I, too, had lost sympathy for the Aborigines. They did not respond to our values. For example, they sat with their cans and beer bottles immediately opposite the Shire library. Each evening they would get up and walk away, leaving a horrendous mess.

Once I said to them `Stop throwing your cans and your litter everywhere. Your empty beer bottles, your wine casks. Put them in the rubbish bin. Let's try and tidy up the town. Do things for the town and you can expect things to be done back.' But they had a hand-out mentality and did not respond.

We managed to obtain Commonwealth grants for an Aboriginal employment scheme. We had lists of local Aborigines who said they wanted employment. We contacted eight of them, and told them to apply for work at 7.30 a.m. at the Shire Depot next Monday. Three turned up, of whom one was drunk. So our employment scheme got off to a very inauspicious start.

Antagonism between Gnowangerup and Jerramungup districts

Ted's other problem at Gnowangerup was the antagonism between the Gnowangerup and Jerramungup districts in the shire. At that time Gnowangerup was comparatively affluent. Jerramungup was a struggling war-service land settlement area. The tension between the two did not make Ted's life easy.

1973: Shire Clerk at

Esperance

for nine years

It was with a sense of relief that in 1973, at the age of thirty-six, Ted was appointed Shire Clerk at Esperance. The South-West was just coming out of an agricultural recession and entering a boom period. For the next nine years the shire and the town grew quickly. On his arrival, the Shire population was about six and a half thousand. It was over ten thousand when he left. Ted often looks back to that time with pleasure:

fond memories of

a boom period

I look back with some fondness on what we established during that period: the Museum and the Museum Park. The new Civic Centre, or Entertainment Centre. The heated indoor swimming pool. The land development and the Racecourse.

These projects were instigated by the Council but my own involvement meant negotiating a great many deals, which I feel left something of a mark. I can go back to Esperance and see many developments that occurred in my time, and in which I played a significant part.

heavy work load

Being Shire Clerk was an extremely heavy task because I worked long hours. Often, I would arrive at seven or eight in the morning and knock off at six at night. The worst I can remember was when I also had either five meetings or social functions in one week in the evening. Many of the night meetings were committee meetings but others were Council social functions - like a Senior Citizen's Christmas dinner. Sometimes, overseas Asian students would be brought down by such groups as Apex Clubs, so the Shire would hold a Civic Reception. We also had a big stream of politicians coming through at different times.

1979 celebrations

1979 was a year of celebration for Western Australia. It marked 150 years of White settlement. Esperance was keen to join in the celebrations and to gain publicity, as it was a growing tourist centre. The town decided to host a Country and Western Music Festival in an attempt to establish an annual festival similar to that successfully held in Tamworth, New South Wales. Ted and others put much effort into the organisation, spending $20,000 to bring big-name artists to the town. It was a great occasion for Esperance, but was not successfully commercially. The Council lost money, and did not achieve the on-going publicity that it wanted.

Skylab

Something else happened in 1979 that achieved much more publicity. The American satellite, Sky-Lab, fell to earth, scattering its debris over a wide area from Esperance to Eucla. Many farmers found pieces of metal, drums and fuel tanks on their property. Ted recalled:

The American National Aeronautics and Space Authority sent a team to Esperance to help identify the pieces and to carry out research. One day I was sitting at my desk when a rate-payer rang me: `I hear that Captain Scott of NASA is coming to your office today to meet the Shire President. Why don't you issue him with an infringement notice for littering?'

I thought the idea sounded corny but, the more I thought about it the less crazy it seemed. So I rang the ranger: `Get into your uniform, and come in with your infringement notice book'. I contacted the Esperance Express and their photographer took a photo of the ranger making out, and presenting Captain Scott of NASA with the infringement notice.

This really took off. It hit the media right around the world. It appeared in the National Geographic magazine, with a story on Esperance. Next day I received phone calls from as far away as Queensland, all over this silly little infringement notice stunt. This gave Esperance huge publicity, more than we had ever expected, and much more than all our planned events that had gone horribly wrong.

That was probably the most memorable thing that happened during the time that I was there.

The need to move to Perth for the girls' education

October 1983: Secretary to Country Shire Councils'

Association.

Ted spent nine satisfying years in Esperance but his family was growing and had educational needs. With five girls, he found it financially impossible to maintain them away from home at College in Perth. So, in October 1983, he left Esperance and bought a home at 265 Ravenscar Street, Doubleview, a suburb of Perth. He was appointed Secretary to the Country Shire Councils' Association.

There were three Associations with similar interests: The Local Government Association, the Country Shire Councils' Association, and the Country Urban Councils' Association. In 1986 there was an unsuccessful attempt to merge these into a single body. Eventually, a federation was negotiated between the three bodies, which became known as the Western Australian Municipal Association. Ted became the Deputy Executive Director of this new body.

Work as Deputy Executive Director, W.A. Municipal Association		Of his current work, Ted said: My work involves representing Councils around the State in their associations with other spheres of government. There is a lot of policy work - for example, trying to work out what we want within the Local Government Act as distinct from what the Government wants in the Act. Then there's Transport policy: what Local Governments expect in the way of funding for their roads. What sort of conditions they want, or don't want attached. Local Government is broadening its activities and there has been significant growth since Road Boards were formed back in the nineteenth century simply to establish and maintain roads. The Shire Councils grew out of these Road Boards. I find my work very interesting. Local councillors are very conservative and sometimes I am engaged in a balancing act between what I may perceive as a necessary step for Local Government, and what the industry itself sees as appropriate. The move to adult franchise in 1985 is a good example. Prior to that time, the right to vote in Local Government elections was based on property ownership. Now, every adult can vote. In one sense we have too many Councils - there are 138 of them in this State - but when we talk of democracy, small Local Government is by far the more democratic way. It gives people the training ground on which to hone their skills if later they want to move to State or Federal politics. g
At last: some time to relax		In one sense Ted was pleased with his move to the city. The children could complete their education while living at home; no longer was there the constant demand of night meetings or the need to attend so many social functions. There was more time to relax, although the habit of doing work on the weekend persisted. Over the years, fishing always remained an interest, and he returned to swimming as a means to keep himself physically fit.
but the sense that something is missing		In another sense, he feels a little dissatisfied. For all his life he has worked in Local Government circles. He is proud of his achievements, proud of the example he set by his commitment and by his level of performance. But he feels that something is lacking: Increasingly, at this stage in life I'm feeling a certain discontent with my present job, and realise that time is running out. I wouldn't mind having a shot at a business venture of some kind before I retire. I'm not really contemplating such a move seriously, but something like Real Estate, or running a video store appeals to me. But, right now, the most important thing for me is to achieve adequate material security for my retirement.
Religion and values in life		Although Ted did not continue the practice of his religious faith with the same vigour as in his youth, it provided the life-time basis for his values and actions. When he first entered the work force and was still living at home under the influence of his mother, he was involved in the Young Christian Workers organisation, being president of the Osborne Park branch. Recalling the influence of this background, Ted said: When I was president of the Osborne Park branch of the Young Christian Workers I started following down the path of trying to help the under-privileged. Unquestionably, religion has had, and still has enormous influence in my life. For example, when I started in local government, I became chairman of the Gnowangerup Native Welfare Committee in Gnowangerup, because there were big problems there. Although of latter years, I've slipped away so far as religious practice is concerned, my early religious training embedded in me firm beliefs. Today I find it extremely difficult to condone some of the practices of younger people. I have firm beliefs about what is right and wrong and this tends to make me judgemental.

ANCESTRY

Summary

{Quotations by Dawn and Edward were made in 1992}

Dawn's ancestry is as follows:

┌─13090AM Alexander MAYBERRY

│

┌─14139AM Joseph MAYBERRY (b.1877)

│ │

│ └─13090AF Elizabeth WINNETT (b.1850)

│

┌─15052AM Alexander John MAYBERRY (b.1913)

│ │

│ └─14139AF Evangaline MCCRORY

│

16019AF Dawn Evangaline MAYBERRY (b.1941)

│

└─15052AF Mabel Thelma STARCEVICH

awn, the daughter of Alexander John Mayberry and Mabel Thelma Starcevich, was born in Norseman, Western Australia on 16 February 1941. She had a brother, Kevin John, and sisters Kayleen Patricia and Dorothy Glenda. She trained as a nurse and, when working in Esperance, married Edward Chown on 26 October 1964. They had five children: Deirdre, then twins Annette and Gail, Hayley, and Raena.

Dawn's early religious experiences

As a young girl, Dawn had a religious experience at a time when she was very ill, and this had a deep and enduring influence on her. She recalled this:

I have had quite a few religious experiences. For example, when I was a child I nearly died of appendicitis. I had an appendectomy, and it became septic. The doctor opened the wound again. That night I was saying my night prayers when suddenly I had the feeling that St.Anne, Our Lady's mother, was there. I said `If you can help me through, I'll try and be faithful 'till I die, however long that is' After that, I had a good night's sleep - which, under the circumstances, I should not have had. I survived, but the experience left a lasting impression.

Another time, coming back from the outside toilet that we had in those days, I was crippled up with period pains. I finished on my hands and knees, and vomited blood at the back door. I thought, This is it. I struggled in, and Mum helped me into bed. I was lying down but suddenly I found myself looking down at myself.

Then, a little voice said, `Are you ready to come?'

I replied, `Oh, but I haven't experienced having children, or being grown up, yet' .

The voice said, `You might not enjoy it. It might be very painful.'

And I said, `Well, that's part of the game, isn't it. But I would rather like to experience it.'

`Alright.' said the voice.

Suddenly I felt relaxed and found myself back in bed. Mum came in to give me a disprin, and I said, `I don't need it, I don't have pain any more.' And I just went to sleep, and that was the end of that.

I have had several experiences like this, and they have reinforced my faith.

Dawn feels that her religious conviction comes from these experiences and not from what people have taught her; her religious practice has remained strong throughout her life.

She was also to find that, when the time came to raise a family, she did indeed have a most difficult time with each of her pregnancies.

Schooling in Norseman and at Coolgardie Convent		When Dawn was a young girl, her father was in the Australian Air-Force, stationed at Norseman. Her early schooling was in Norseman but, at the age of sixteen, after completing her Junior Certificate examination, she was sent to board at the Coolgardie Convent. She completed one year there when her father had a work-related accident and was temporarily incapacitated. With no money coming into the household she had to leave the convent and return home. She started working in a grocery shop.
The start of her nursing career		She saw an advertisement in the paper for training as a nurses aide, where accommodation, food and clothing were supplied. She applied and, at the age of seventeen and a half, left home to work at the Mt. Henry Nursing home in Perth. The course took longer than she thought and she completed it at Merredin hospital. Having decided to make a career of nursing she applied to Fremantle Hospital and was accepted to do her full training there. She visited her parents every three months. g Later she found herself working at Esperance Hospital, and joined all the youth groups that she could. By this time she was twenty-two years of age and enjoying life. It was then that she met Ted Chown. Lightheartedly, she recalled:
Meeting Edward Chown		He came to the door of the Nurses' Quarters, asking for donations for the Church. I had a girl-friend, Mary, with me. I don't know what she thought, but I spotted this good looking fellow at the door. I thought, he'll do me nicely. He had a Humber Hawk car, so when, later, a car was needed for something, I thought this a good reason to contact him again. At that time another girl-friend and I were planning to go to Launceston to do our midwifery together. I said to her. `There's a half-chance I'm not coming with you because there's this fellow - and if he asks me - I'm going to say yes.'
Marriage		Both Dawn and Ted became involved in youth groups - such as Junior Farmers - and so saw much of each other. Eventually he did ask her, and they were married at Norseman on 26 October 1964. Dawn and Ted obtained a house in Esperance but were there only a short while before Ted was appointed Shire Clerk at Cranbrook where they lived for six years. Dawn gave up nursing, as she started a family right away.

Five daughters in five years, with difficult pregnancies.

In the space of five years, she had five daughters: Deirdre (b. 13 July 1965); Twins Annette and Gail (b. 22 August 1966); Hayley (b. 10 April 1968) and Raena (b. 6 September 1969). This was a very difficult time as she was constantly ill throughout her pregnancies. Ted recalled:

For nearly the whole pregnancy Dawn became very ill. Four of our children were born in Mt. Barker during the time that we were in Cranbrook. Dawn spent weeks on end in the hospital. She just couldn't keep any meals down and became extremely thin. This meant that from time to time I was left with a bundle of little girls - so I had to get housekeepers to keep the household running.

My mother, in Perth, generally selected the housekeepers, and she did not like anyone who was either young or attractive. One, just when we were moving to Gnowangerup, was particularly dreadful. Apart from making at least one sexual advance to me, on moving day we found her drunk on the floor, and we just had to leave her there. We had a sigh of relief when she did not follow us!

On the day that Deirdre was born, Ted was just setting off for work when Dawn thought the time had come. Ted drove her to Mt.Barker hospital, about 40 km away, and returned in the afternoon to discover that he had a daughter. His parents came down from Perth, and his father was very proud when everyone said that Deirdre looked so much like him.

A year later, came the twins. Dawn recalled:

With them, I was sick for the whole nine months. Annette was the first born. But Gail was difficult. I was four hours in intense labour before she eventually came. Annette was a breech birth, which is supposed to be dramatic and bad, but it wasn't. She had no problems. But it was bad with Gail: she had a hard time.

Community Activities

1 CWA = Country Women's Association

Raising a family of five girls, joining in the social activities and supporting a husband who, as a shire clerk, was heavily involved in the community, was a full-time job. When at Gnowangerup she was active in the CWA¹, and was a leader in the Girl Guides. At Esperance she was active in raising funds for her Church, took part in the Citizen's Advice Bureau and helped to restore materials in the Esperance Museum. She joined the Penguins - a women's speaking club, and took an interest in both pottery and china painting. There was not much spare time.

She feels that in bringing up children it is the example you set that counts, not what you say. She said:

ANCESTRY

{Quotations by Joan Dougan were made in 1990}

Joseph's ancestry is as follows:

┌─14123AM John DOUGAN

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┌─15032AM Joseph DOUGAN (b.1895)

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│ └─14123AM Helen

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16020AM Joseph DOUGAN

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│ ┌─14124AM John CLAREY

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└─15032AF Annie CLEARIE (b.1895) │

└─14124AF Helen

Born 13 June 1924

Summary of his life

oe, the only son of Joseph Dougan and Annie Clearie, was born on 13 June 1924 in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A. During the second world war he joined the United States Navy as an electrician and arrived in Fremantle, Western Australia aboard the USS Orion. Before it put to sea again he was transferred to a US submarine repair base at Subiaco, a suburb of the capital City of Perth, Western Australia. There he met, and became engaged to Joan Fall. Transferred from Perth he served in the Pacific and, after the war, he returned to civilian life as an electrician. Joan joined him and they married in 1946. Between 1947 and 1960 he and Joan had five daughters. At the outbreak of the Korean war he was called up into the Navy and served for two years. Returning to civilian life he eventually had an accident at work, injuring his back. He attempted to return to work, and persisted for a time but finally decided that further work was not possible. He died on 20 January 1987.

Early childhood

Joe's parents were first-generation migrants to the United States of America and their marriage was not a happy one; he had a hard upbringing. When he was seven years of age his parents moved to Otisville, New York, a small town in the Shawangunk mountains. His parents were very poor and both had to work to provide for the family.

In 1990 his wife, Joan, recalled Joe's early childhood:

Joe had to look after himself and was a very neglected child. The family was very, very poor. Joe often related how one year his only Christmas present was a banana given him by the Welfare Department. The house in which he lived at Otisville was an old framed house on the edge of town. There was a coal-furnace in the cellar but in winter it was insufficient to heat the upstairs bedroom where he slept. In the mountains it often snowed and was bitterly cold in winter.

I remember he often told our daughters of his early life: how, without shoes and in bare feet, he had to walk to school - a good three miles or more. As a little boy he walked to school and home each night by himself. But he always made light of it, telling how he had good times with his boy friends. He was good at sports and took part in the baseball and basketball teams. I always felt sorry that he never had a boy of his own to follow his interests. All his life he was very interested in sports, and remained a boy at heart. Apart from these few things, he did not often talk about his childhood. At one time he had a beautiful dog to which he was attached, but the dog chased a neighbour's chickens. The neighbour poisoned the dog and its death upset Joe very much.

1940: The Family moves to Kearny, New Jersey

Joe enlists in the Navy during the second world war

In 1940, when Joe was sixteen, his parents moved to Kearny, New Jersey to work in nearby Harrison. He attended Kearny High School and again excelled in sports. By the time he turned seventeen the Second World War had started and, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, America became involved. Joe, as a young lad, and throughout his life, was intensely patriotic, and American, through and through. He asked his parents if he could join the navy. They agreed, and signed the papers. It was exactly a year after Pearl Harbour - 7 December 1942 - that he entered the Navy. It was 7 December 1945 when he was discharged. He regarded 7 December as an auspicious date so, when he married, he chose 7 December for the ceremony.

Attached to Submarines, he was stationed at Perth, Western Australia

Joe was attached as an electrician to the submarine fleet and soon found himself on the USS Orion, a submarine tender. After arriving at the port of Fremantle in Western Australia he had the choice either of serving as a crew member on a submarine or of being stationed at a submarine repair base at Subiaco. He chose the latter. Years later, when he visited Western Australia in 1977, all trace of the base had gone and local residents denied that there had ever been such a base. He had not realised how secret had been the American operations.

He met Joan Fall

While stationed in Perth, Joe met Joan Fall at a dance. He asked her to go one day to the movies and she agreed but said that her mother would wish to meet him first. She invited him to tea and arranged to meet him in the city after work.

Joe was young, inexperienced and had never been out with a girl before. Joan recalled the meeting:

¹5'6" = 5 feet, 6 inches

= 168cm

I waited by the Barrack Street bridge. At that stage I didn't even know his surname. Looking down Barrack Street, I saw three sailors approaching. Two were over six feet, with little Joe, only 5'6"¹, in the middle. These two sailors escorted him right up to me. Earlier that day, when he had told his two best friends that he had a date, they replied, `You? A date? We can't believe that! We'll come along with you, so you can prove it.' So they escorted this little guy in the middle, which made him even look shorter - I immediately resolved always to wear flat shoes with this guy. Joe introduced me, and they left, apologising for having doubted him.

Joe & Joan become engaged

He returns to civilian life in the US

Joe soon became a constant visitor to Joan's Mt. Lawley home. Her kid brother looked forward to his visits as he brought Almond Roca and Hershey Chocolate bars from the US canteen. With wartime rationing, such luxuries were denied most Australians. Before the war ended, Joe and Joan became engaged on his twenty-first birthday. He was stationed in Perth until one week after the end of World War II when Japan capitulated. Joe was then posted to Subic Bay in the Philippines and eventually returned to the United States for discharge at the end of 1945.

Work with Western Electric, then with perfume company Givaudan.

²AT & T = American

Telephone and Telegraph

Company

By the time Joan reached the United States, Joe was working as an electrician for Western Electric, part of the giant AT & T² conglomerate. Soon after he and Joan married on 7 December 1946 Western Electric separated from AT & T. Joe was asked if he would go with Western Electric to Pennsylvania. Perhaps this would have been his best move but, at the time, he was not keen to go. Nor did his mother want him to go. So Joe resigned from Western Electric and soon afterwards he joined the Swiss-owned perfume company, Givaudan.

Working with chemicals gave him rashes

He started as a chemical worker, being told he would be given electrician's work when a position became available. Working with chemicals, he developed severe rashes on his face, hands and body. He and Joan realised that he could not continue in such a job for long.

His desire for further training was thwarted by his parents		It was very difficult for Joe and his family living in the house of his parents. They openly expressed hostility to him for bringing home an Australian to be his bride. Joe's parents did nothing to encourage him or to give him support. Soon after Joe married he decided to improve his position by learning a trade. He wanted to train for something other than an electrician, and made arrangements for a representative to visit his home to discuss schooling with him. On the appointed day the representative arrived before Joe returned from work. Mr and Mrs Dougan senior refused Joan to see the representative, not regarding her as part of the family. They told him that he was wasting his time as their son, Joe, was no longer interested. So the representative departed and Joe did not take up further training.
He was always hostile towards his parents		This did nothing to lessen Joe's hostility towards his mother. Joan recalled the relationship with Joe's mother: Annie Dougan occasionally babysat her grandchildren and for a few summers took the three eldest children to the beach for a week with her, but she would never let me be part of the family, and I could never feel close to her. It was a shame. Perhaps I was partly to blame as initially I was homesick. Probably she sensed that I felt that no one could replace my own mother.
Lack of love in his childhood meant that he could not openly express it to his own children		Joe suffered from a lack of tenderness and love in his own childhood; this meant that he could not project it to his own children, though he loved them. He was very strict with our first three, but mellowed a little by the time Betty and Jane came along. g
Mistakenly, he was called up to the Navy when the Korean War broke out in 1951		Just as Joe was deciding to leave work at the perfume factory, the Korean War broke out. This was 1950 and, to his surprise, Joe found himself called up by the Navy. Earlier, he and a war-time friend had joined the Naval Reserve. There were two categories of membership: Active and Inactive. Active members were paid for every meeting they attended and were liable for active duty. Inactive members were not paid and were not liable. Joe attended only one meeting before the Korean war broke out. He joined as an inactive member. The Navy insisted that he had joined as an active member and called him up. It took two years for them to realise their mistake and discharge him.

He was sent to Cuba, then Rhode Island.

In 1953 he was discharged.

Joe was assigned to an aircraft carrier, the USS Cabot. He joined the ship at the Philadelphia Naval Yards where it was in dry dock. From there it sailed to Guantamino Bay base in Cuba, not to Korea. He felt miserable under the restricted conditions of the base and realised that there was a big difference between being in the Navy at seventeen or eighteen years of age, free and loose, and being a married man with two children.

The ship then sailed to Rhode Island. While there he had some contact with his mother's relatives. Eventually he was given ten days leave and told that, on his return, the ship was sailing for Italy. Joan recalled this time:

After his leave, Joe returned to his ship. Then, at six o'clock in the morning I had a phone call. It was Joe. He said, `I'm standing on the dock, watching the boat sail away to Italy.' I said, `How did that happen?' I was so happy. He said, `Well, they finally decided that they should never have called me up at all. My claim that I was "Inactive" was correct.'

It took two years from the date of his initial call up for them to straighten it out! So they gave him an honourable discharge. It was wonderful. Here I was, being sad, thinking that he was leaving for Italy for two years in the Mediterranean!

Returning to Givaudan, recession causes retrenchment.

He joins Celanese Plastics

It was in 1953 that Joe returned to Givaudan and found an electrician's job available. Then came a recession. There were retrenchments, and Joe was laid off. He immediately searched for another job and obtained one with Celanese Plastics. He stayed with them for the rest of his working life, although the company changed ownership several times and finally became Courtaulds.

Joe was a very good worker. Even when sick, he never took a day off work. His workplace was eight miles from home and sometimes, during heavy snow storms, it was impossible to drive to work. All public transport ceased. Joe would still be at work on time on 7.30 am. He walked to work, through the snow. Perhaps his childhood experience of walking to school through the snow had toughened him.

In 1979 he had an accident at work, breaking his back.

All went well with Joe until in 1979 he had an accident at work. Joan recalled the incident:

At that time there was a campaign for "equal opportunity for black employees." The experienced electricians became very annoyed, not because they would be hiring blacks, but because they were forced to hire people who didn't know what they were doing. The young blacks came on the job with the same pay as the first-class electricians, and the experienced men were supposed to train them on the job. Joe was assigned a young black boy, Dennis. He tried to train him, but Dennis wasn't interested. Often he did not show up for work.

One day, when Dennis did not arrive at work, Joe had to take down lights from the ceiling in a big warehouse. There was a Union law that a man working at height with a ladder must have a helper. Joe was a Union steward and he knew the law. But it was typical of Joe that he did the work without a helper rather than refuse to do it.

It needed a man to hold the ladder because there was oil on the floor. As he removed the lights he found them very heavy and they started to fall. Joe grabbed at them and the ladder slipped on the oil. Joe's fall was broken by some drums. He broke his back on those drums, split open his head, and was taken to hospital. They stitched up his head and sent him home that afternoon.

Joe kept saying that his back hurt, but the hospital refused to listen, saying that they had X-rayed his back and found nothing wrong with it. He was told to report to work in three days. After three days Joe could hardly move, but cracked hardy and insisted on going to work. But work proved impossible, so he returned home. It was six weeks before he managed to see an orthopaedic surgeon who finally confirmed that Joe had broken his back. By this time it was too late to do anything for it.

He was home, I guess, eight or nine months, before he was well enough to return to work. Even then, after it had knitted, the bones calcified in the spine. He was lucky he didn't break the spinal cord, because then he'd be paralysed. It just cracked the whole bone around it. I guess it was a hairline crack, which was why they didn't see it until the orthopaedic doctor examined him.

After trying to work, his back became so bad that he was forced to quit.

Joe could never again work as he had done before the accident. Eventually he asked for light duties, but was told that there was no such thing. He did not want to quit, so he struggled on. He lay on his back under machinery, climbed when he had to, even though his back was killing him. It got worse and worse and he went to several doctors. He struggled on like that, I guess, for a good three years, until finally he said, That's it, I can't work any more.

This was very hard for Joe as it had always been so important to him to go to work and pull his weight, no matter what his personal circumstances.

Holidays

In the years before his accident Joe and Joan had many good holidays. For twelve years in a row they went to the Bahamas. When their daughter Jennifer moved to Virginia, they visited her by car. Joan recalled this and other trips they had made:

When Jennifer lived in Virginia, we drove to visit her. From there we would take off through the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains, just driving around, looking. Sometimes we stayed at a Holiday Inn, overlooking a very peaceful valley and pastures.

Joe was a great one for looking at the beauty of nature, especially the sea. If we went near the ocean, say, at Rockport Massachusetts or at Nassau, he liked a room with a balcony where he could sit and watch the ocean. He liked seascapes.

Born July 22, 1926 in Yarloop, Western Australia

Summary of her life

oan, the first child of Victor George Fall and Dorothy Rumble, was born in Yarloop, Western Australia, on 22 July, 1926. In 1939 her family moved to Perth and, during the second world war, she met and became engaged to Joseph Dougan who was in the American Navy. Travelling to the United States after the war she married Joe on 7 December, 1946. Living in New Jersey, she and Joe had five daughters: Suzanne (b.1947), Jennifer (b.1950), Mary (b.1954), Betty (b.1957) and Jane (b.1960). Joan was brought up and remained a Roman Catholic all her life. For many years she was active in her Church, being an organist and a member of Church choirs. In 1960 when Joe was temporarily out of work due to a strike, Joan started part-time work. Eventually she worked full time for the Apex Trucking Company in New Jersey. She retired on 28 March 1991, and has many community interests and activities.

Childhood:

small town class distinctions

The small town of Yarloop, where Joan was born, owned by Millars Timber and Trading Company, was divided into a strict social structure. At the top there was the Mill Manager, Mr Leo Schlam, who lived in a large house on a hill overlooking the workshops, where locomotives and trucks operated by the company were serviced. Beside the manager's house there was The Cottage for visiting Head Office staff from Perth, and three houses for the office staff. Joan was born in one of these staff-houses, as her father was then junior timber clerk.

The staff and their families were not encouraged to mix with the mill workers. Joan's parents were also class-conscious. Dorothy had arrived in Yarloop complete with visiting cards to leave at people's homes if they were out when she called. This was not the way of life of those who dirtied their hands in the mill or the workshop. Dorothy felt lonely and isolated in Yarloop and centred her life upon her husband and then upon her children.

Joan was conscious of leading an isolated life without friends

Although Joan, and later her brother John, attended the State Primary School along with the mill children, she was very conscious of leading an isolated life. She recalled:

We had no friends. My mother thought that the Mill children were beneath us, and the mothers of the other children wouldn't let them play with us either. There was a problem on both sides. In that respect it was a terrible childhood. I spent my time living in my mind. I always wanted to be a boy, and imagined that I was a boy until I was sent to boarding school in 1938. I never learnt to mix with my peers. To this day I am not comfortable at parties.

1938: A year at

boarding school.

As Joan approached high-school age her parents realised that, if she was to receive a good education, they must send her to boarding school. Dorothy hated doing this, but they made the decision that Joan should go to a new Catholic girls' school - Santa Maria College - at Attadale, a suburb of Perth. Joan did not enjoy the experience:

I remember that at the boarding school meal-table there were six of us. The meat was brought to the table on a platter. The eldest always got a serve first and the youngest got the leavings, and that was me. I would always get the fatty bits that no one else wanted.

The move to the city of Perth

Completing schooling

But, if Joan did not like boarding school, she did make some good friends. With one of these, Ethel Green, she maintained contact all her life.

At the end of 1938 her father was appointed company auditor. The family moved to Perth and settled in the suburb of Mt.Lawley. Joan left Santa Maria College and became a day scholar at Sacred Heart High School, Highgate - about a mile from her home. She cycled to school each day.

Business college		In 1941 she sat for and gained her "Junior Certificate". Thankfully, she left school and started a course at Underwoods Business College. By 1942 the Japanese had entered the war. They bombed Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 and rapidly overran Malaya, Singapore and Java. Her father was captured and spent over three years as a prisoner of war in Java. There was fear that Perth would be bombed, so Underwoods decided to move out of the city centre. Much to Joan's annoyance they were given space at her old school. She hated returning to that environment. Joan had developed a passionate interest in aeroplanes. She recalled:
Always wishing that she were a boy, she developed a passionate interest in aeroplanes		In Mt.Lawley, I spent my whole time building model planes out of cardboard, and reading all the stories I could on World War I. At Yarloop I had lived in my mind and was into horses and cowboys. . . all boy's pursuits. I hated being a girl, and didn't want to be a girl. When I came up to Mt.Lawley, I transferred this to aeroplanes. But, in my reading, I was not like a young girl, romantic over the men in the Air-Force. I was the man in the Air-Force. I flew the planes. g
She obtained a job with an airline company		Before she completed her business training, Joan saw advertised an office job with ANA - Australian National Airlines, based at Perth Airport at Maylands. With her mother's help she obtained this position. Reality was different from her fantasies: There was no fancy office. It was right in the hanger, and I was stuck in a corner. My "big-deal" job was to update repair manuals for aircraft by pasting amendment pages into the manuals. I was a little disgusted at that. Eventually Joan became the stores-costing-clerk and made close friends with other girls who worked there.
America enters the second world war and Joan meets sailor Joe Dougan, who was stationed in Perth.		Following the entry of the United States of America into the war, American sailors and Marines were soon scattered throughout the Pacific region. Perth and Fremantle became both a repair base for submarines and a Rest and Recuperation centre for troops on leave. Perth streets became crowded with Americans. Joan and her girl-friends loved to go dancing at the Embassy, a very popular venue in central Perth. Once, she was asked to accompany one of her girl-friends on a blind date who did not turn up. Left by herself, she saw a young American sailor also by himself. Joan recalled: I was sitting by myself at a table. Joe was lounging against a pole on the edge of the dance floor. His ship had just come across the equator and he had gone through the traditional King Neptune ceremony during which all his hair had been shaved off. Now it had just begun to grow, and he looked horrible. If someone had said, `That's your future husband standing there.' I would have said, `You've got to be kidding.' Joe was shy but he came over and asked me to dance. Most of the evening we just sat at the table, talking. Joe asked Joan to the Movies and then they started seeing each other regularly. He was stationed in Perth until the Japanese surrendered and the war in the Pacific came to an end. Joan recalled that day: We went into Hay Street. Everybody was screaming, yelling, and there were lots of streamers . . . We just went there and watched. We didn't do anything fantastic, but we were just there with a whole crowd of people who were screaming and yelling.

Joan and Joe become engaged		The war over, Joe soon left Perth, being sent first to Subic Bay in the Philippines, before returning to the United States. One week after Joe left Perth, Joan's father arrived home from his experience as a prisoner of war in Java. He and Joe missed meeting each other by just one week. Joan corresponded with Joe and could not wait for the time when she could join him in America. Her mother was not happy about this because she guessed that a difficult future would lie ahead for her. Her father objected to her plans to marry Joe:
She fought with her father for permission to go to America to marry.		I fought with my father: First, he said I wasn't going to America. I was under twenty- one, so I couldn't go without him signing the papers. I remember a terrible scene with him. I told him that he hadn't cared about me since I was eleven, and yet now he was stopping me from something that he knew nothing about. So he signed the papers. I guess I was very independent and headstrong. Neither Joan nor John had a close relationship with their father - as was not uncommon in those days. He was reserved, had never had association with children, and did not know how to communicate with them. He had once said that children should be born at the age of fifteen. Over the important formative years of his children's lives he was often away from home while carrying out audits at timber mills, and then from 1941 to 1945 he was away at the war. Joan said that she remembered only rarely having a conversation with her father. g
Travelling to Sydney		The next problem for Joan was to obtain a passage on a ship. Many young girls in Australia had formed relationships with the visiting Americans, and there was a long waiting list of those wanting a passage on one of the "bride-ships" that plied between Sydney and San Francisco. Eventually she secured a passage and in 1946 at the age of twenty she left Perth by train for Sydney. She had an unpleasant trip as she had caught influenza. This was still in the days when each State had a different railway gauge. She changed trains at Kalgoorlie, Port Pirie, Adelaide, Melbourne and Albury before reaching Sydney. When she reached Sydney she discovered that there was a ten-day shipping strike. Fortunately she was befriended by the aunt of her school-friend Ethel Green. When, finally, the boat sailed she was badly sea-sick for three weeks.
Taking a "bride-ship" to San Francisco		Joan had led a sheltered life. She was naive and inexperienced. She had no idea how she would get from San Francisco to New Jersey. Fortunately she met a twenty-six year old nurse on the ship who was going to Brooklyn. With her help she arranged train bookings, and sent a telegram ahead to Joe to tell him when she was arriving. When she got off the train at Newark she was panic-stricken because she could not find Joe. He had been directed to the wrong platform, and arrived late.

Arriving in New Jersey Accommodation problems: living with Joe's parents		It was November when she arrived. They took a taxi to Harrison, a small, not very pretty industrial town on the outskirts of New York City. Snow had turned to slush and everything was dirty and filthy black. They arrived at Joe's parents' home, a small, framed two-family house in North Fourth Street. She was to live there with his parents for almost a year before they all moved to a larger house in the nearby town of Kearny. Like Australia after the second world war, there was an acute shortage of housing. It was impossible to find a place of their own. She did not like living in a small room that would not even fit a double bed, but there was no alternative. Both Joe's parents worked, so Joan was left to the whole house during the day and cooked for the family.
Marriage December 7 1946 Florida Honeymoon with Uncle Jimmie		Joan and Joe were married on 7 December 1946 and then had a one week honeymoon in Florida. After six weeks of travelling Joan would have been happy to stay in New York and see some of the sights, but Joe and his parents had decided that a honeymoon should be spent either at Niagara Falls or in Florida. They travelled by Greyhound bus to stay a week with Joe's Uncle Jimmie at his cottage in Florida. Much of the honeymoon was spent in the company of Uncle Jimmie in the bar at the end of a pier where he was bar-tender. This was not the romantic honeymoon that Joan had dreamed of but, at that stage of life, Joe had few resources behind him. In later years he and Joan were to take many relaxing holidays in the Bahamas.
Problems in moving to Kearny		Joe and his parents looked for a larger house and found one in 328 Devon Street, Kearny. It was large enough for Joan and Joe to live upstairs while his parents lived downstairs. Joe's mother bought new dining room furniture and encouraged Joan to buy both lounge and dining furniture. Unfortunately, when they went to take possession of the house, a young couple occupying the upper storey refused to leave. Finally, Joe had to take them to court to have them evicted. Joe and Joan's first child, Suzanne, was born on 14 September 1947 and, a week after Joan came out of hospital, they and Joe's parents moved into their new house. Until the couple upstairs left they all crowded into the ground floor - with two sets of new furniture. Joan recalled: What were we going to do with all this furniture? We had to turn my couch upside down, on Annie's couch. The chairs on the chairs. The dining room buffet upside down on the dining room buffet. There was nowhere to sit, except in the kitchen. We had to put Joe's and my bed into the dining room area. To give us some privacy Joe's mother bought a Japanese screen. We had a big, cane basinet that she bought for Suzanne jammed against a wall by our bed. The Japanese screen at the end of our bed left just enough room to walk by. In the living room all the furniture was piled up. It was terrible, but what could we do? They were crowded like this for a few months until the couple upstairs finally left. It was a great relief for Joan when Joe and his father moved their furniture upstairs and at last they had some privacy. Joan and Joe were to live with his parents until May 1960 and Joan regrets that for years after this she and Joe never had opportunity to be by themselves. They were not to achieve this until their youngest daughter Jane went to College many years later.
1951: Joe is called up for the Korean war		When Suzanne was almost three years old, Joan's second daughter, Jennifer, was born on 3 September 1950. When she was three week's old, the Korean War broke out and Joe was called up for Active Service. He was away from home for two years before the Navy realised that he had been incorrectly drafted, and gave him a discharge. Their other three daughters were born while they were still sharing house with Joe's parents. Mary was born on 3 December 1954, Betty on 23 October 1957 and Jane on 5 February 1960. g

They buy their own house in Lyndhurst		Joe and Joan bought their own home at 404 Page Avenue, Lyndhurst, New Jersey in May 1960 when Suzanne was twelve years of age. Joan was still living there in 1994 and had no plans to move. It was a large three-storey house over one hundred years old, but at last they had space in which to expand. The children went first to the local Sacred Heart School and then on to the Lyndhurst High School.
Her interest in singing Church choirs		Joan always enjoyed singing. When she was a teenager in Perth she had taken part in a local radio program that encouraged young people to develop their talents. Soon after she migrated to America, she continued this interest: I always liked to sing, from the days when I was a child. In New Jersey, when I moved to Kearny, I attended Saint Cecilia's Church and they had a choir. I immediately became a choir member, and sang in that choir for twelve years. When we moved to Lyndhurst in 1960, I joined the choir at the Sacred Heart Church. It was not long before the choirmaster asked if I would consider soloist singing at funerals, and occasionally at weddings. I agreed to this, and was paid for it. Then the choirmaster, who was also the organist, asked if I would play the organ at funerals when he was not available.
Playing the organ at the church		Joan had never played an organ but she had some experience with the piano, as Mrs Schlam, the mill manager's wife had given her lessons for one year during her Yarloop days. The Choirmaster assured her she could do it and gave her a few lessons. Soon, Joan was playing the organ. A new church parish, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, was formed in her district and she was asked to become full-time organist there for all the masses. The Church gave her a small salary. She was now running between two churches, playing the organ and singing in the choir. She gave up all commitments at the Sacred Heart Church, but continued at Mt. Carmel. Later she was asked both to play the organ and sing for funerals and weddings in addition to Masses. She kept this considerable load for seventeen years. In addition to her soloist work, she played for two choirs: an adult choir and a children's choir. Each week there were rehearsals for both. Eventually Joe became unhappy about the extent of her commitment because it tied up her weekends. She gave up the choirs and organ and never went back to them even when asked to do so after Joe had died. But she still enjoys singing in the church on Sundays. g
Joan's entry into the work-force		Joan's entry into the work-force was precipitated just before Christmas in 1971 by a strike at Joe's workplace: They had a big strike where Joe was working. In the USA when you are on strike you can't collect pay. If you are laid off, you can get unemployment benefit, but not if you strike. Joe came home at lunchtime, Friday and said, `Well, that's it. We're on strike. I don't know how long it's going to last. There'll be no money coming in . . . and with five children. . .' I replied, `Don't worry, I'll go get a job.' Joe laughed. `You? Who'd hire you? You've been home for twenty five years. Who'd hire you?' He thought it was the biggest joke he ever heard.

Kelly Services

Although Joan had not had an office job since she left Australia, she had done much volunteer work for the Parents and Teachers Association and for her Church. She had kept up her typing skills. By Friday night she had a job starting the following Monday with Kelly Services - an employment agency supplying temporary office staff to large companies. Because she had no experience with an electric typewriter she started as a junior typist.

Joan was sent to a large pharmaceutical company and enjoyed the work. Eventually Joe's strike ended and he returned to work. Joan decided to continue working for Kelly Services on a part-time basis as the money would help send her youngest daughter Jane to dancing school. Also, by working part-time, she could still meet her organ-playing commitments.

Joining Apex Trucking Company full-time

Joan became a Senior Typist and won the Kelly Girl of the Year and several other awards. She kept up this work for two and a half years, being sent from one company to another until, in 1973, the Apex Trucking Company, for whom she was then working, asked her to join their permanent full-time staff. She stayed with this company until her retirement on 28 March 1991.

During this time she progressed from typing and light filing in the dispatch office, to word processing, to handling the company accounts payable and accounts receivable work, training and supervising new staff. Working physically near the office of the President and Vice-President, the atmosphere became formal, so Joan enjoyed a move back to the dispatch office, which had moved to a new building.

From the formality of the main office, I went to the exact opposite. In the new dispatch office, the two-way radio, maintaining contact between the trucks, was going all day. Six phones ringing their heads off on my desk, everybody walking in and out from the dock, dressed in jeans, and yelling and screaming. It was informal and it was hectic, but there was very good camaraderie between the people. The atmosphere was good and they were very nice people to work with.

Joan had developed a reputation of being able to handle all situations that might occur and she could, and did, work under constant pressure. Some days she worked for ten hours without a lunch break.

Her other interests

She also maintained an active life outside work. She was Vice-President of the Lyndhurst Garden Club for two years, then secretary for two years and President for four years. For many years she has gone to a "Food Bank" on Saturdays, where volunteers package donated food to give to charitable organisations. She has an active interest in craft work, often producing work for various local craft fairs. A year before retirement she joined the Lyndhurst Historical Society - becoming recording secretary in 1992.

In 1990 she joined the Lyndhurst Women's Club, a service organisation, and became Vice President in 1993. In 1992 she joined a singing group called the Golden Tones. This comprises twenty-four senior citizens who voluntarily entertain at local nursing homes. Since 1988 she has been a member of St. Michael's English Rosary Society. She became a volunteer member of a group, known as the Inter-Religious Fellowship for the Homeless of Bergen County, in 1991. This organisation provides three meals a day to the needy through a small office in Hackensack, New Jersey. Members from churches of various denominations in Bergen County take turns to provide the meals. Once every two months Joan's group cooks a hot dinner in the Lyndhurst Methodist Church kitchen, transports it in their own cars to the office at Hackensack and then serves it to over one hundred people.

Summary

ohn, the second child of Victor Fall and Dorothy Rumble, was born in Yarloop, Western Australia, on 7 May 1928. He was educated initially at Yarloop State School and then, when his parents moved to Perth in 1939, at Christian Brothers' High School, Highgate (1939-1942) and Aquinas College, Mt.Henry (1943-1944). He studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Western Australia (1945-1949) and then worked in Sydney. At the age of twenty-one he gave up adherence to the Catholic faith. In 1952 he became a lecturer in the University of Western Australia, met Kathleen (Kay) Melson in 1953, and married on 11 December 1954. They bought a home at 318 Mill Point Road, South Perth. Then, at the end of 1957, with two young children, Judith and Peter, they travelled to the United Kingdom.

For the next three years John studied at Queen Mary College, London University, working in the field of computer-aided design. After gaining his Doctorate in 1960, he and his family returned to Perth. Later, they moved to 34 Lockhart Street, Como. In 1964 he became Sub-Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and in 1967 moved with his family to Currie Hall, a student residence at the University of Western Australia. John became Principal of the Hall in 1978, retiring from that position in February 1987, continuing in a part-time lecturing position at the University. He and Kay had a house built at 29 Paterson Gardens, Winthrop, which was a new developing suburb.

He retired from the University in January 1993.

John was always fond of music, learnt the piano for a short time in 1952; From 1958 in England he took up the recorder. In early 1970 he learnt classical guitar and in 1984 purchased an electronic organ. From 1967 onwards he had much association with overseas students, particularly those from Vietnam. Following the death of his mother in 1988, he discovered diaries of his grandmother and became interested in the family history. This register is a result of that interest.

As the compiler of the Rumble Family Register, this is one of the few entries that can be written almost wholly in the first person. Like so many brief outlines of a person's life, the summary above suggests little of the true nature of my life.

An operation at the age of three weeks:

Early coddling

¹ A blockage at the outlet

of the stomach

Although I have no memory of an operation for Pyloris Stenosis¹ at the age of three weeks - as documented in my mother's entry - I was constantly reminded of it during my childhood. My mother always said that I was delicate; I was thin and bony. She fed me on malt-extract and cod-liver oil, to "build me up".

My mother often recounted the dilemma at the time of my illness: she could either have my condition treated medically - and the last child so treated had lived ten months, or I could have an operation, with a good chance that I would not survive. Survive the operation I did, but was then treated as though wrapped in cotton-wool. My mother loved small children, and I grew up over-protected and smothered in her love. This met her need more than mine.

Life as a child in Yarloop;

Social stratification

Yarloop, the small timber town where I spent my first ten years, was a socially stratified company town. We lived apart from the mill workers in one of three houses set on a small rise next to the Manager's house. As children of the "staff", our parents did not encourage us to mix with the mill children, and they were not encouraged to play with us. Outside school hours my sister and I led a quiet and a lonely existence within our own home. We did not learn to socialise with others, take part in sport, or join in the rough and tumble of children's life. I was never a member of a gang.

I have distinct memories of a fight between two boys after school. This terrified me and I did not want to become involved. Quickly I ran home to play in the safety of my sand-patch where my vivid imagination enabled me to construct roads, bridges and tunnels under great buildings of sand.

Yarloop had two distinct sections: the top-yard at one end of town, where timber brought from the mills in the nearby hills was dressed and often dried in the kilns. At the other end of town, the workshops were at the foot of the hill near our house. Here, steam locomotives and rolling-stock were repaired. Millars Timber and Trading Company used these to haul timber on private lines from the mills.

The workshops

The workshop, even in the 1930s, was antiquated, being modelled on Victorian lines. The lathes and milling machines were belt-driven from a mass of overhead shafts, powered by a single, wood-stoked steam engine.

As I lay in bed in the morning I would hear the hooter blow for the men to come to work; then it would blow again at start time. Soon I would hear the sound of metal turning, or the thump, thump, thump of the steam hammer as red hot metal was shaped from the forge. Sometimes, on weekends, I would fossick around "scrap-iron alley" where discarded engines and boilers made ideal places for imaginative boyhood adventures. Often I would return home with long pieces of convoluted metal turnings, tinged with blue from the heat generated while being turned.

Lack of significant relationship with my father

Neither I nor my sister had much contact with our father; he had never experienced the company of small children and could not relate to them at their level. They embarrassed him. When my sister Joan was born, the men in the office congratulated him on the arrival of the baby. He responded: `What baby?'. When my mother pushed us in the pram, he walked ahead, as though we were nothing to do with him. When travelling to and from Perth by train, he sometimes occupied a different carriage to his wife and children.

In the late 1930s Dad was appointed Auditor for the timber company. This kept him away from home from Monday to Friday and, when he returned home, we children had to be quiet because he was very tired.

A most vivid recollection of my mother from our Yarloop days was the smell of Eau de Cologne. She often had "sick headaches" - probably migraines - and lay on her bed with an Eau‑de‑Cologne‑soaked cloth on her forehead. At these times we could not play rowdy games.

1939: The move to Perth.

My dislike of Christian Brothers Schooling

Corporal punishment

In 1939, our family moved to Mt. Lawley, a suburb of Perth, and I rode my bicycle each day to the Christian Brothers High School in Highgate. It was from there that I took my "Junior Certificate" examination in 1942. Immediately before the examination period the headmaster wrote to my mother:

`This boy has missed so much school, he will be ineligible

to sit for the Junior exams.'

I was always in mortal fear of corporal punishment at school. The brothers wielded their heavy straps at every opportunity. Any incorrect homework was "corrected" by one, two or more strokes of the strap. Whenever I had a cold and absented myself from school, I prolonged recovery for as long as possible.

Learning to learn for oneself

However, I spent my periods in bed studying my school work. I learnt how to learn for myself, and became independent of the teachers. When I did take the Junior examination I won a scholarship and transferred to Aquinas College for the last two years of school.

The Scholarship was important. My father had joined the RAF but became a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Java. For three and a half years my mother had much worry and very little money. She kept most of her worries to herself and gave me every encouragement in my work.

Shyness

and inferiority

At school, others regarded me as a "serious" type. I did not play sport, and did not know how to socialise. I was a year younger than others in my class. When my sister had a birthday party and played adolescent games, such as "Postman's Knock" - I hid in the back garden and refused to emerge until everyone had gone home.

University:

Engineering

In 1945, with schooling completed, I started a five‑year course in engineering at the University of Western Australia. When my father returned home at the end of the year, I felt I hardly knew him. Never did we become close, although we spent much time talking. He had the knack of always making me feel inferior, though I know that this was not intentional on his part. I developed a strong inferiority complex. It was not until years later that I discovered how common was this problem among adolescents. At the University I slowly made a few friends. I even became a committee member of the engineering students' club.

1948: A year away from home in Melbourne: Growing up ² Postmaster General's Department. The engineering division is now known as Telecom.		The Engineering Faculty required all students in their fourth year to gain one year of practical work experience. I received an offer to work with the PMG² Research Laboratories in Melbourne. So, in 1948, I left home for the first time, lodged with a lower-class, railway-worker Catholic family in Melbourne, and worked in the laboratories. This was a great experience for me, but not without its periods of trauma: during the year the railway-worker father unjustly accused me of having an affair with a member of the household, and ordered me out of the house. He later relented when he realised his mistake.
I become a University lecturer		Back in Perth, I completed my degree and later set off for Sydney where I worked for both Amalgamated Wireless Australasia and then for the Department of Civil Aviation. This was a growing period for me. At the end of 1951 I unexpectedly received an offer of a lecturing appointment from my old University, so I set upon my lifetime association with universities. I always loved teaching. g
Marriage		Still socially backward and introverted, with difficulty I was persuaded to attend a Square Dance Club. Square dancing was the rage in the early 1950s and over 10,000 people in Perth took part each week. There I met Kay Melson and, for the first time in my life, found someone to whom I could feel close. We were married on 11 December 1953. Post-war housing problems were easing and we bought a small house at 318 Mill Point Road just before our marriage. Our children, Judith and Peter were born in 1955 and 1957 and this transformed my life.
1958: Three years in London studying for a PhD.		At the end of 1957 I set out with my family to London to embark on studies for a PhD. In those days, no member of Engineering school had a doctorate and I was anxious to compare my standing with academics in Britain. We spent three years living in the outer north-eastern suburbs of London, bought a twenty-five‑year‑old car, and toured the country. We visited my father's boyhood village and home; in another village we found the tombstone of my great-great grandfather, the Rev. Edward Fall. Kay met her English relatives and so we extended our family. I worked on computer-aided design, exploring what was then a very new idea. The computers that I used were physically large and cumbersome. They were very limited and antiquated by the standards of today. In 1960 I returned to my senior lectureship in Western Australia. I had my PhD in my pocket, and was confident that I could match my British colleagues. g

1961: Return to Western Australia Rostrum and Apex Clubs Sub-Dean of Engineering		My life then developed rapidly in an unexpected way. I became a member of a Rostrum public speaking club; Next, I joined the South Perth Apex Club - a young men's service club - and immediately became both secretary and Service-to-Youth Director. Within my club I planned a successful "Careers Information Service" to schools - an activity not previously mounted in the State - and we promoted it to other clubs. At the end of the year, the City of South Perth made me `Citizen of the Year'. I became the Sub-Dean of my Faculty, a member of many planning committees in my Faculty, and, for a period, Acting Head of my Department.
Changing to a "people" oriented life, turning away from "things".		It was as Sub-Dean that I discovered that I could talk with students at a deep personal level, and that I could establish trust. My students became real people - not just entities that studied my courses and either passed or failed exams. I decided that people were more important than things. Soon, this led me away from a life of research and into a life of working closely with young people in their personal search to grow and to establish themselves. My reading became voracious and "people oriented". A clinical psychologist in the University Counselling Service gave me intensive private training, and I attended the first sensitivity training course held in Western Australia. In one sense I was the odd-man out, as all other participants were clinical psychologists. Nonetheless, I got much out of this nerve-racking experience. g
1967: Living with my family in Currie Hall, a student residence.		In 1967 my life turned in another direction. I was invited to live with my wife and family in Currie Hall - a university residence for 150 men. At this time we had not long been in a house in Como, having sold our South Perth home. Currie Hall surrounded us with young students from all faculties; people of all types, some highly successful, others weighed down with personal problems. About a quarter came from other countries, particularly from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Vietnam.
Relating to Asian students		I had many new intense and exciting experiences. We looked around to find where there was an unfulfilled gap in services of the Hall, and decided that the needs of the overseas students were not being met adequately. Kay and I threw our lot into building relationships with them. Soon they were constantly in and out of our house.
1969: Study leave abroad Camping in Europe		Study leave loomed in 1969 and again we all set out for Britain. We bought a tent and toured the Continent for six weeks with Peter and Judith. This year, without formal school, made a lasting impression on them both. It was wonderful for me to spend a year with my wife and children without the pressures of students. I returned home via USA, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Co-education and the experience of Currie Hall life.		In 1971 Currie Hall became co-educational and was the first residential college in the State to do so. I introduced Square dancing and taught this for several years. Later, we extended the Hall to house almost 240 students. The women had a pronounced civilising influence on the men: drunkenness decreased, and men came to know women as people, not as objects to be dated. The Hall became a lively, exciting community in which to live and in which young men and women could learn from each other. Many couples met and later married. In later years many former residents told me that the best friends they ever made were those they met in the Hall where everyone lived so closely together.

The Fall of Vietnam and the problems of Vietnamese students

It was in the early to mid-1970s that we came to know very closely many students from South Vietnam. These students were in trouble. Their upbringing had been influenced by the prolonged war between North and South Vietnam. Americans, Australians and others were involved. There was heated debate by Australians about the morals of the war and about conscription. North Vietnam was descending on the South and, in 1975, Saigon fell. Not knowing what would happen to their families at home, these students were much distressed. Kay and I became as parents to many of them. With a few we have maintained this close association to this day.

1977: Three months in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand

Kay and I enjoyed a three‑month period of long service leave towards the end of 1977. We travelled to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, and were entertained by over sixty of our former students. Each added to our insight into their country. We could never have achieved this as tourists.

Whilst staying on a palm-oil estate in West Malaysia we learnt that I had been offered the position of Head of the Hall, as the existing Master was retiring. I accepted this, and took up the position in 1978. Until this time, I had remained a full-time academic in the Electrical Engineering Department. Currie Hall was my voluntary, but very demanding, hobby. Once I became the Principal of Hall I negotiated with the University that I continue teaching on a 30% basis. My hobby became my full-time job and my full-time job became my hobby.

My life as Principal of Currie Hall.

Moving from our flat into the Head of College's residence on the site, we remained in this position until February 1987. It is difficult to describe the range of tasks in which I became involved. I often felt that I worked twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There was the normal administration of the Hall with office staff, cleaners, groundsman, and a complete kitchen staff. Most other Halls used contract caterers. We did our own catering.

I had a group of resident, part-time tutors who gave academic help to the students. They helped in the non-administrative work of the Hall, and acted as role models and mentors to the younger students. The Hall had a wide educative role and helped students gain experience: They took part in Hall organisation and decision making; making mistakes was part of their learning and growing process.

We structured the Hall to encourage interaction between people: people of different academic pursuits, different backgrounds, different ideals, ages and cultures. We encouraged people to learn from one another. I encouraged academic visitors to the University from overseas countries to stay in the Hall, as we had several visitors' suites. Kay and I organised dinner parties and other activities to help these visitors interact with the students. Within the first two weeks of the academic year, Kay and I invited all residents, in groups of thirty, to visit our home. There, we helped break down formalities, and assisted new residents to know the older hands.

Getting to know all residents personally: Their problems

I had a policy of trying to know every resident personally. There was a constant flow of students to see me on personal matters - either to my office or, more usually, to my home at night. I became involved in every manner of personal concern: academic problems and planning; life decisions about careers; problems with parents; health and psychiatric problems; how to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship, write a job application, or conduct oneself in an interview; boy-girl problems; loneliness and cultural problems; conflicts between residents; and, of course, the severe problems faced by Vietnamese students whose homeland was being desecrated.

My task was always to build trust, and to treat each person I encountered as important, never to brush anyone aside. If a resident came with a problem to discuss, I tried to make that the only thing that mattered, putting other concerns to one side. There was always the responsibility of helping a person to help themselves so that they learnt to solve their own problems, rather than become dependant. The mature solution to a problem was always to help someone become self-sufficient and self-confident, although that might be a painful learning process.

The need to escape:

We buy a caravan.

It was not long before we realised that it was important to escape sometimes from our hothouse environment. After returning from our 1969 camping trip in Europe, we continued camping in Australia and enjoyed many holidays with our family. By 1979 our children were independent so we bought a caravan. Often we left the Hall at midday Friday and did not return until Sunday afternoon. In my "escape‑pod" we spent two days in some tranquil rural setting where Kay and I had time to be together.

In 1981 Kay and I took a twelve‑week caravan holiday. We drove across Australia to attend a Heads of Colleges national conference in Melbourne. Before returning home, we drove to Queensland. We found this wonderfully refreshing. We took another holiday to the Eastern States in our caravan in 1988. Unfortunately my mother died in Perth while we were in Victoria.

Mistakes

In later years I realised that I made a grave mistake while in the Hall. By relating to the residents as I did, I neglected my wife and children. I gave unrestricted time to students, and too little time to Judith and Peter, who needed a better relationship with their father than I gave them. I regretted this. Kay was always loyal to me, as she saw how much I gained from the work I was doing; she devoted herself to maintaining our family, and it was not until I left the Hall that I saw the error of my ways. Fortunately, our relationships withstood this test, and I could not have had a better partner in life.

The stimulation of young people		We lived for twenty years in the Hall and there was never a dull moment. Many intellectually bright young people challenge ideas and ways of looking at life; they continually stimulated us and kept us on our toes. While in their company, it was impossible to grow old in outlook. Young people will always engage in pranks - sometimes clever and subtle, at other times damaging to people and property. As Head of the Hall it was always my task to know what was going on, even if I did not know it officially, and to know when to look the other way, when to step in to avert a potential problem, and when to take strong action. Kay's mother once stayed with us during a particular outburst of youthful and excessive enthusiasm. Later she said to a friend, `Living with Kay and John is like living in the middle of Hay Street in the centre of Perth.' The anecdotal stories I could tell are legion; I reached a point where I felt I had encountered almost every problem that young people could experience, and that I had learnt much. There were many administrative tasks, public relations or conference‑organisation activities that took my time. Later, I became the National Secretary of the Association of Heads of Colleges in Australia and, finally, convener of a national conference held in Perth. g
The decision to retire from the Hall		In 1984 I realised that the Hall and my teaching activities consumed me completely and that it would be wrong to continue unabated until reaching retirement age. I gave two years' notice to the University and retired from the Hall in February 1987. After I left, the Hall commissioned the painting of my portrait. I continued teaching in Engineering on a 50% part-time basis until January 1993, when I retired completely. In 1991 I was delighted to receive the inaugural `Excellence in Teaching Award' instituted by the student Guild of Undergraduates to encourage good teaching throughout the University. Because I was committed to the Hall, I thought I might suffer withdrawal symptoms on leaving. With Kay, I threw myself into plans to build a house in the new southern suburb of Winthrop. This was just what I needed, and my concerns slowly switched from the Hall, to establishing my new home. I suffered no withdrawal symptoms! Progressively, I have discovered that the way to live is always to look forward, never backward; never to regret what is passing, but to look forward to the promise of the future, building upon the experience of the past.
The pleasures of retirement		That future was very pleasant. Kay and I enjoyed the joint task of establishing our home. For the first time in many years we had a real home - and time. I began to see more of my children and grandchildren, and this was a great joy. I still very much enjoyed teaching and I negotiated with the University that I would not undertake committee work. Having leisure time was a new experience.
Family history becomes a major interest		In 1987 my sister Joan visited us from the United States, and I invited my cousins to gather at our home to meet her. One cousin suggested that someone write the family history. I accepted the challenge. When, late in 1988, my mother died, we found in her possession diaries belonging to my grandmother, Kate Rumble. These covered the period 1911 to 1932, and greatly increased my interest in the family history. It is impossible to count the hundreds of hours I spent in research. I delved into the past, and contacted relatives in Britain. Concurrently, I interviewed my local cousins to obtain their own and their parents' life stories. I felt a great sense of family belonging. Today my life is full, and I have a satisfying sense of completeness. For four years I maintained an association with student life by becoming the honorary secretary to the Council of St.Catherine's Women's College. I increased contact with my family, and with several former students. I enjoy playing the organ and composing simple pieces for it. In 1993 Kay and I spent two months visiting my sister and her five daughters in the United States of America. With good health, both Kay and I enjoy life. g

Values and religion:

my slow development

As a child I was brought up with great commitment to truth: to tell a falsehood was unthinkable. If I believed in something, I would commit myself strongly to it. If there was no belief, then I could not pretend. And so it was that, at the age of twenty-one, I gave up the practice of religion.

As a young child I believed religious stories literally. My first problem was at the age of seven when I made my first confession. I confessed that I forgot my prayers, quarrelled with my sister and was disobedient to my parents. The formula never changed because I was too afraid to confess anything moreserious. Perhaps I lied by omission. I felt bad about it. Later I realised I was going through a ritual that was meaningless to me. I now know that "confession is good for the soul", but what I was going through, and what most of my school mates did, was not true confession.

At the age of fourteen I became interested in the story of Noah's Ark: I worked out its cubic capacity, and realised that not all the animals could fit into it. I confronted my science teacher, a much respected Christian Brother. He told me to take no notice of what I had worked out, but to believe the bible. This lack of concern for truth struck a deep blow to my religious faith.

Having been brought up at school with stories of good Catholics, and how we should not mix with Protestants, I had the idealism of youth. No Catholic could possibly be bad if they adhered to the principles of love and concern for others. Then, in 1948, I lived with a so-called "good" Catholic family in Melbourne. I discovered that they had little concern for the principles by which they were supposed to live. On returning home I announced that I would no longer practice my religion.

What people have impressed you most?

------

To make an impression upon something is to change it in some way - to put a stamp on it. So, someone who has impressed me must be someone who, by their association with me, has changed me in some way.

Of course this definition is broader than the one usually taken. If I say that someone impresses me, I usually refer to qualities in them that I admire.

Taking the broad definition, the two people who have "impressed" me most are my parents. They have moulded me and I have modelled myself on them. This happens to children in every family. But, like most people, I had ambivalent feelings towards my parents. While I admired some of their qualities, there were others that I did not admire and, being caught in the web of association, ambivalence developed. So my parents are not the people who naturally spring to mind as those who have most impressed me.

I have been impressed both by people met personally and by those I have encountered in my reading.

The first person who springs to mind is Professor Weatherburn, my old professor of mathematics in 1946. I only had one brief five-minute personal encounter with him, and yet he had a profound influence on me.

In my second university year I became diverted from my studies. At the end of the year I failed my mathematics unit and was given a "supplementary" examination - a chance to try again about two months after the main examination. I was very worried about this, since I had never failed an exam before. So I prepared myself well for the "sup." Arriving at the University for the afternoon exam, one of my classmates approached me.

"How did you like the maths exam this morning?" he asked.

"This morning! Oh, My God, I thought it was this afternoon."

Heart beating fast, I rushed down to the Engineering School to find the Dean. Professor Blakey was returning from lunch. I panted out to him what had happened. He looked at me, in his laconic way and said:

"Well, you'll be repeating second year, won't you."

And he went on his way. I was crestfallen. I rushed to the Mathematics department to find my lecturer, Professor Weatherburn, to tell him of the calamity. His secretary said he was out, and would not be in until nine in the morning.

After a sleepless night of worry I stood on his doorstep precisely at nine. I told him what had happened.

"Have you seen the paper?" he queried.

"No."

This was truthful because, although my classmate had thrust a copy of the paper at me, I was too worried even to look at it.

"Then take this paper, sit down and do it now."

So I sat down, took the examination and passed it comfortably.

I have never forgotten the chance that old Weatherburn gave me. More than that, I have never forgotten the trust he had in me. I could easily have seen the paper and said I had not. But he considered me truthful and trusted me; he saw the better side of human nature and did not presume the worst side. The contrast with the response of the Dean of my faculty was very great indeed.

From this I learnt a powerful lesson that I put into practice whenever the opportunity arose:

Always assume the best motives

in other people;

Learn to trust them;

Believe what they say.

Many a time, when I was in the position of Professor Weatherburn, I placed my trust in the other person. Rarely was I disappointed. I found that most young people grew as a result.

When I lived in a student residence I found that the way to help a young person overcome immature behaviour was not to castigate him for his immaturity - that simply engendered resentment and increased the immature response - but to trust him, and to act as though he was already mature. Years later I read somewhere:

"If we take people as they are,

we make them worse;

If we treat them as though they were

what they ought to be,

we help them become

what they are capable of becoming."

and, remembering Professor Weatherburn and what he had unconsciously taught me, I said: "Yes, it is so."

Of course, not all persons responded to my trust. Some, as the saying goes, "would let me down". But these were very few. They were the ones whose development had been impeded by their past experiences and they were not yet capable of the mature response. Hopefully, one day they would be. Very often I lent money without security to young people. Only once did my money not come back to me.

My parents, having faced disappointments in life had the motto:

"Expect nothing and you will not

be disappointed."

My father often said:

"If you do a kindness for someone,

they are surprised, and thank you;

"If you do them a second kindness,

they thank you, but are no longer surprised;

"The third time, they abuse you

for not doing it."

I found this a cynical comment on human nature, but we can all recognise the situation. But the way we look at human frailty depends on our attitude to life.

I once had a very close association with a student who came from a troubled land - Vietnam. Phiêt said that when people did something for him he did not thank them, for to do so would be to degrade the act of giving.

He assumed that the act of giving was complete in itself. To thank the giver was to assume that a return or reward was expected and that the giver did not have the highest of motives.

We Westerners are so accustomed to the conventional "Thank you," which is often little different from the empty phrase "How do you do?" that we feel it not right to neglect it. To do so is to be ungrateful.

This betrays that often, if we give something to another, we do wish to be appreciated, and feel hurt if we are not. Thus, our motives are not of the highest; if they were, our act would be complete in itself. A future act of giving should not be conditional on being praised for our present act.

I believe that if rewards are not expected then, nonetheless, satisfaction comes in other ways.

I have steadfastly refused to be cynical about human nature. Time and again, by adopting such a stance, I have seen young people overcome personal limitations and move forward towards greater self-fulfilment. Invariably this has given me an enhanced feeling of my own self-fulfilment. If one must think in terms of "reward," then surely one could not ask for more.

Professor Weatherburn started me on the path of looking at life and at other people from a brand-new, positive point of view - and he never knew it. This brings me to something else I learnt as a consequence.

Professor Weatherburn in his small action of confirming my value and worth had a profound influence on me. As a consequence I was encouraged to act in the same way towards many hundreds of individuals, wherever possible confirming their self-worth and trustworthiness. Just as Weatherburn was probably not aware of what he did for me, so I am not aware of what I may have done for some of those young people I encountered.

It is possible that some may have been given that small impetus to personal growth leading them to go on, in turn, to influence others positively. Who knows what may have been the total outcome of that one small action by my old professor?

If I cannot think of many people who impressed me by my association with them, then the same is not true for the people whose books I have read. These influenced me greatly.

When I was ten years old I was given a series of books with such titles as: "The Wonder Book of Engineering", "The Wonder Book of Electricity". When I read about famous engineers and what they had discovered and accomplished, it had an enormous impact on me. Before my eleventh birthday I determined that I would become an electrical engineer. I never wavered from that determination.

Between 1964 and 1975 I was was most impressed by a group of writers. They contributed to significant changes in me. It is difficult to rank them in order of influence, but I must start with Viktor Frankl.

Frankl was a German Jew and a psychoanalyst who survived the war years in a concentration camp. I was impressed both by his ability to rise above suffering and by his insightfulness into the psychology of man. I read two of his books: "Man's Search for Meaning," and "The Doctor and the Soul," over and over, taking copious notes of sections that impressed me.

Martin Buber in his book: "Between Man and Man" complemented Frankl. Then there was Dag Hammarskjold, first General Secretary of the United Nations. He kept a notebook in which he made personal comments, not intended for publication. After his death the notebook was published under the title "Markings." Here I saw a man in high public office not as a politician but as a man with deep convictions and an awareness of insightful truths by which he lived. Buber and Hammarskjold took me a step further along the path of self understanding and of understanding life.

I encountered three psychologists who took me even further in understanding. These were Carl Jung in his "Modern Man in Search of a Soul," Eric Fromm's "The Sane Society" and "Man for Himself" and, at what seemed a very pragmatic level, Carl Rogers' collection of essays published under the title "On Becoming a Person."

I spent hours and days absorbing the thought of these men. They were men who, in their several ways, impressed me greatly. But this was not the end, there were two other areas of influence.

This first was a young Oxford Don, trained as a philosopher. I read two of John Wilson's books: "Logic and Sexual Morality," and "An Introduction to Moral Education."

I wondered at his clarity of thought and his remorseless logic. This changed my way of thinking about education of the whole person and answered for me many of the complex problems of sexual morality cleared of religious overtones.

This lead me encounter a book by Paul Nash: "Authority and Freedom in Education - An introduction to the Philosophy of Education." Nash led me into the world of Existential choice with topics such as:

The Authority of Work & The Freedom to Play

The Authority of Discipline & the Freedom to develop one's interests;

The Authority of the Group & the Freedom to become oneself;

The Authority of Tradition & the Freedom to Create;

The Authority of Commitment & the Freedom to Grow.

These were heady ideas for me and made me confront the problem of community and the individual in a new way.

The second great area of influence was a set of classical works. The first was a collection of religious scriptures published in a single large volume under the title "The Bible of the World." This was my introduction to Comparative Religion. I exposed myself to Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and Judeo-Christian and Islamic Scripture. Slowly my perception and understanding of religion widened.

At about the same time I purchased a set of the "Great Books of the Western World" - published by Encyclopedia Britannica. Here were fifty books, from Homer, Plato, Sophocles, Herodotus, to Freud. Again, new worlds were opened to me.

This new experience set me on the path of reading very widely. I explored related byways, pondered on the insights imparted to me and applied what I had read to my own life.

So, if I ask, what person has impressed me most, and interpret that question as, What person has most shown me the way to live and understand my life, then I cannot say whether it was Professor Weatherburn, or Phiêt, or Frankl, or the Authors of Taoist scripture. Of course, it was not one of these. It was all of these and more.

Whenever I have encountered a person in life in a deeper than superficial way so that we have exchanged something significant of each other, then I have learnt from that person and have changed. I am today what I am because of all these influences. I am today what I am because of the deep influence of my wife and children upon me, and because of the influence of dozens of young students upon me.

----------------

Which people have you loved the most,

or disliked the most, and why?

--------

What is it, to love? It has so many levels.

At one extreme one can "make love" and by this mean little more than to gratify desire through sexual intercourse - possibly without regard to the other person.

Or it may mean to "love thy neighbour as thyself" in the biblical sense - a sense unrelated to sexual activity.

Perhaps for most people, their loving is a mixture of both strands.

Loving is caring for the being of another. It is concerned with fondness and affection, a desire to share with another.

To my mind Loving is the mutual facilitating of growth, through mutual sharing and giving, without preconditions. A loving act asks for no return, it is complete in itself.

But love is more than this. It is a reciprocal seeking of unity through that sharing.

We cannot share fully that which we do not understand completely, so sharing implies deep communication. In so far as we do not communicate ourselves, we cannot fully share, and so cannot fully love.

Since there can be no preconditions in love, then this implies that we accept the loved one unconditionally. Only when trust and acceptance is complete can we give fully to each other. To the extent that we achieve this we can be natural and fully ourselves in the presence of those we love. To the extent that we can achieve this we can be at peace with ourselves and so with others. True love is life-enhancing.

A precondition to loving others is first to love oneself. If I do not like myself, then I cannot give myself fully to others. But, if I have communicated deeply with myself and reached a point where I understand myself in all my strengths and weaknesses and can positively affirm my being, then I can fully love others. To me this is the truth in the statement, "Love Thy neighbour, as Thyself."

What an impossibly difficult definition of love I have given for a mere mortal such as myself. How could I possibly say that I have loved anyone in this complete sense? What a difference there is between "liking" someone, and "loving" someone. It's easy to like someone, it's easy to respect someone, it's easy to be "in-sex" with someone, but to "love" someone -Ah -that takes a lifetime, and even then it is not accomplished.

But, like the bulls-eye of a target, it is something to be aimed for, even if it cannot be reached.

When I was young, did I look at love this way? Of course not.

What, then, did I experience?

I experienced low self-esteem; I had doubt and fear; Emotionally I had left the parental nest and its protection. I felt lonely and incomplete still needing comfort, safety and protection. I experienced sexual urge and frustration; I was attracted by physical form and by the personality of other people. I felt desire.

But, overwhelmingly, I had fear. Much had to be accomplished in understanding and accepting of myself before I could form a loving relationship.

I could not say why or how I formed a relationship with the girl who became my wife. But somehow it happened: we discovered that we liked each other and that each could supply some of the needs of the other. When, in 1954, Kay and I married, both of us were very unsure of ourselves.

Perhaps my love at that stage was based on Kay fulfilling my needs and seeming prepared to accept me; maybe the same applied for Kay. This was not love in its purest form as I have defined it; it was more the partial filling of an emptiness, but it was a start.

And how could one expect initial love to be much more than this? It takes time to trust deeply; it takes time to learn to communicate and understand; It takes time for mutual acceptance to be tested and recognised. It takes time for love to take root in the fertile soil of personal growth.

Until one grows as a person love may be partly identified with: "I need this and, if you love me, you will supply my need." This, of course, is not love. But while one is still full of Self, one may be selfish.

It seems paradoxical that one needs love to grow as a person and yet, unless one grows as a person, one cannot love fully.

I married in 1954 and it is now over 35 years later. I can say without hesitation that the person I have loved most is my wife Kay. With no one else have I shared so many things: happy moments, sad moments, moments when we thought our love and marriage might not last. We have laughed together and cried together, given to each other, shared, comforted and come to a point where our commitment to each other need not be questioned. We have come to know each other; as we have grown as persons, so we have grown closer, and the demand to satisfy personal needs has diminished.

We have not approached true love, as I have defined it, because that is impossible for a human being. I have many imperfections, I get tired and irritable and sometimes have expectations that may not be met. That is human, and part of human loving is to take account of and to accept those human imperfections. Part of our mutual giving can be to accept the imperfections we each see in the other. Our loving does not need constant protestations of love: that belongs to an early stage of personal growth. Love becomes the unspoken understanding.

Earlier I spoke of those people who have impressed me. I reserved until now, the most important person - my wife Kay - because she is the one who enabled so much of my personal growth to take place.

There are many forms of love and, using a lesser definition of love, one can love many people.

Within a family there is love. In spite of ambivalence, I loved my parents and would never reject them. There is a tie to one's children: those one has helped on the path from babyhood and have assisted in their own growth to maturity - if, by no more than stepping aside at the right time.

The complexity of relationship between parent and child can lead, particularly on the child's part, to ambivalent feelings. I know that I made mistakes in my relation with my children, not always meeting their needs or being sufficiently sensitive to them. I know that this has resulted in some difficulty for them. I also know that I love my children, and they know that Kay and I love them, and that there is a bond between us. We love our grandchildren who, with perfect childlike trust, come laughing to hug us. As each year goes by, and I come to understand my family better, so love grows.

But love is not confined to family. In one sense of the word I feel I have loved hundreds of people, particularly the young people with whom I have associated. I remember once a congregational minister, Edwin White, talking to a group of engineering students. He was speaking of the frustration felt by a person wanting to help someone whose problems arose through unemployment, when there was no way in which a job could be found for them. Edwin said: "Is it better to be unemployed and have no friend, or unemployed and have a friend?" The answer speaks for itself.

The hand of friendship is the hand of love. True friendship is marked by acceptance of and concern for the other. Is this not a form of love?

We all fear rejection. Many times I have been with someone who eventually had the courage to talk about some aspect of themselves that they disliked. For a long time they skirted around the topic, not wanting to confront it, because they were certain they would be rejected. Sometimes I was able to see the problem and help them broach it. When they found that they were not rejected, tension drained from them. Very often they saw themselves in a new light, and growth took place. If this be a form of love, then I have often loved.

And what of those I have disliked?

Perhaps I have been fortunate, since I do not know anyone that I really disliked. There are people whose behaviour I disliked, but I did not dislike the person.

But there were people whose behaviour irked me. At one time there was a young schizophrenic, who visited me and my family constantly. He had strong opinions and argued them without any sensitivity to others around him. I found him intruding more and more into my life until I felt that in fairness to myself and my family, I could take no more of it.

One evening when he came to my house I told him that I needed a break, and would not be asking him in for some time. I disliked doing this, but it was a matter of self-preservation.

Later someone said to me: "Did you hear that he committed suicide?"

I felt a deep pang of guilt. Would he have committed suicide if I had continued to let him come to my house and given him the support that he demanded?

Finally the feeling of guilt passed as I realised that one cannot be held totally responsible for the life of another. Fortunately, several years later, I suddenly received a letter from him, thus revealing that my informant had been wrong when he told me of the suicide.

I did not dislike this young man. I felt much concern for him and for his inner struggles. The problem was that I was a finite human and he was not the only call on me. I had other responsibilities as well.

In writing of people who have impressed me, and in writing of love, I realise that I am in danger of adopting a "holier-than-thou" stance - but this is not intended. Just as I said to my Father, who experienced three years of mistreatment in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, that I did not hate anyone and received the reply: Then you have never been hurt enough, then so,too, my attitudes to relations with people has only been possible because of the privileged position I have had in life. Had my life been different, my whole attitude may have been different.

If I had not been born in an affluent society where there was no real struggle for physical survival, how would I have developed? As a child never did I witness an argument between my parents, I saw only the care and concern they had for each other. If I had not come from a loving family; if I had not been provided with an environment in which eventually I could grow as a person, how would I have developed?

In the daily newspaper this morning there was an article on hard-core juvenile offenders. It described "John", a seventeen year old repeat offender. About a year ago he attacked a boy of sixteen, who was a stranger to him, simply because he didn't like the way the boy looked at him. He broke the boy's kneecaps, his jaw and his ribs, and sat there laughing at him. John came from a broken home. His parents were dead; he had been in three foster homes and had stolen from each of them. Now he was on his own.

If I had had John's background would I have behaved like John? Maybe I would. John has been emotionally crippled and damaged. Can this be repaired? or is he beyond repair? I cannot accept what he did, but neither can I accept the background conditions that perhaps led him to be like this. I feel anguish for a boy like John and say "There, but for the Grace of God, go I."

I write about trusting people and believing the best of them. Would this have been my attitude had I the misfortune to grow up in other circumstances? If I had grown up in the concrete jungle, would I have survived, or would I have been cut down? The instinct to self-preservation is the strongest instinct, and given the circumstances, this instinct may have prevented any attitude developing other than to survive at any cost.

I have not been exposed to the competitive business world. Many people in that world would laugh at my values. "You wouldn't last five minutes," I hear them say. And who can say that, had circumstances thrown me into that world, I would have been any different from them.

The only possible attitude for me to take is one of humility and of thankfulness that life has treated me so well.

Birth ANCESTRY		athleen Mary, the first child of Joseph Melson and Violet Allerton, was born at Hillcrest Hospital, North Fremantle on 18 October 1926. Her younger sister, Doreen, was born in July 1928. Her ancestry is shown below: ┌─14025AM Thomas MELSON │ ┌─15036AM Joseph MELSON │ │ │ └─14025AF Jemima (Jenny) RICHARDSON │ 16021AF Kathleen Mary Melson │ │ ┌─13012AM Thomas Castleton ALLERTON │ │ │ ┌─14026AM William Thomas Edward ALLERTON │ │ │ │ │ └─13012AF Maryann KING │ │ └─15036AF Violet Olive ALLERTON │ │ ┌─13013AM Edward CATER │ │ └─14026AF Annie Emily CATER │ │ ┌─12006AM Edward SMITH │ │ └─13013AF Mary Elizabeth SMITH │ └─12006AF Sarah WELLS

Palmyra: An Extended family CHILDHOOD: Grandparent's home.		The two girls grew up in Palmyra surrounded by their extended family: An uncle lived next door, grandparents were just around the corner, and other relations lived a few streets away. In 1994 Kay, as she was later known, wrote the following account of her life: I have very happy memories of my childhood, growing up in a close-knit family. My grandparent's home was very attractive to us children - there were always newborn kittens, ducklings, goslings or baby rabbits to play with. I recall Grandfather standing by the strawberry patch with a benevolent smile on his face inviting us to help ourselves. Sometimes he, or Uncle Bill, carved our initials on the green mandarins and passionfruit, thus marking particular fruit for us when they ripened. When I was young, they always kept a cow - I remember Dinah, Beauty and Darkie. Most afternoons after school Doreen and I walked to our grandparent's house for a jug of milk. Mum scalded this and collected the cream from the top, which we enjoyed next morning on our porridge, or on our bread and milk.

Not mixing with neighbourhood children.		Doreen and I very much depended on each other for companionship in our early childhood as our mother did not approve of most of the neighbourhood children, with their bad behaviour and language. So I became very shy and socially inept.

Starting Primary School. My World: Palmyra. The exciting annual visit to the Royal Show. Spending my savings. Guy Fawkes Night. Bonfires and fireworks. Sunday visits to my Grandparent's home. ¹tuppence = two-pence. ²Kream-betweens = A slab of ice-cream between two wafer biscuits. ³Two-in-ones = two chocolate-coated cylindrical ice-creams on sticks, joined. Parents' card-playing.		I went to Palmyra Primary School when I was five, and walked there and back each day. I adored Miss Reece, my first school teacher, and looked upon her as my second mother. In the classroom we sat on individual mats around an open wood fire while she read aloud to us from "Snugglepot and Cuddlepie". Our world - a few streets in Palmyra - was very small, but sometimes we took the tram to Fremantle. Once or twice a year we went on the bus to Perth. The really big occasion, which stands out in my memory, was the annual visit to the Royal Show. For weeks we saved our pennies. One year I saved as much as 4/6d. : Sixpence for a Licorice Bag, one shilling for a Chocolate Bag, about the same for a small kindergarten case of Mills and Wares biscuits, and threepence for a Commonwealth Bank pencil case. Mum always made us a new dress for the show but one year I was very disappointed when, after months of saving, she would not let me spend my money on a fairy doll on a walking stick; she considered it "rubbish". On November the fifth we always had an exciting event. It was Guy Fawkes night and all the family gathered around a large bonfire in Uncle Harry's garden, next door. Everyone pooled their fireworks. Fire crackers, Catherine wheels, Flower pots, double bangers, sky-rockets, jumping jacks - much loved by Grandfather - penny bombs and tom-thumbs all added to the great excitement of childhood. Almost as exciting was the search next morning for unexploded or unused fireworks. Most Sundays we visited my grandparents' home for tea. During the afternoon we all sat on the verandah while Uncle Bill played the Hawaiian steel guitar or the harmonica for us. He could play any tune we wanted and often we asked for our favourite, "Little Sir Echo". Sometimes Doreen and I were sent to the local shop with Granny's basket to buy tuppenny¹ New World chocolates, or ice-creams for everyone - usually Kream Betweens² or Two-in-One's³. Later, after tea, the adults played cards, while we children went to bed in Granny's tiny bedroom. She had a feather bed, which we always found hot on a summer's night. As we drifted in and out of sleep we would hear comments and post-mortems on the card game in progress.

Roaming in the bush		An enjoyable activity was roaming in the bushland surrounding our area - sometimes, on the weekend, with our whole extended family. At other times it was with just Mum and Dad. We picked armfuls of wildflowers and made posies, whilst Mum and Dad collected firewood. Sometimes Dad placed bags on either side of his bicycle, filled them with wood and sticks and then wheeled them home. He once said to me "We'll have a car by the time you are thirteen". I thought, "What good will that be - I'll be grown up by then!" We did not wait that long for a car because I remember Mum driving to the primary school with hot soup for us at lunch time. If it came on to rain, she often met us after school in the car.

The School Fancy Dress Ball. Mum's interest in our school.		Each year we had a school Fancy Dress Ball. I very much enjoyed practising on the school verandah every lunchtime. There were set dances, such as the Minuet, and then the Grand March. Mum took an interest in our school and was an active member of the Parents and Citizen's Association. This made us feel good. Our upbringing was more or less left to Mum. Doreen and I felt that Dad would have taken more of an interest had we been boys. However, he sometimes came home from work with ice-creams for us - and at one time he did try to teach us to play soccer.

Holidays at Kalamunda. Driving to Geraldton by car for holidays. Sleeping on the front verandah during summer. Dad made a tennis court		Sometimes, during the May or August school holidays we rented a cottage in Kalamunda. An old family friend, `Auntie' Winnie and her daughter Stella, joined us, and we travelled to the hills by bus. There we spent our days walking, or collecting gumnuts for the fire. On wet days we sat around the fire embroidering or drawing. Dad never joined us as he rarely took a holiday from work, it being in the midst of the depression years. Later, when close friends of my parents moved to Geraldton, we all - including Dad - spent several holidays with them. Once or twice we drove our car. This was quite an adventure, as the greater part of the journey was on gravel roads, and cars were not as reliable as today. Every summer, Doreen and I slept on the front verandah - screened from the street by extensive verandah blinds. The milkman often woke us up in the early hours of the morning as he scooped milk from his large can into our billycan. We then scampered around to the back garden to return to bed with a bunch of grapes - an early breakfast. Several years before the second world war, my father established a tennis court in our back garden. With much care, it became a first-class grass court and every weekend we had tennis parties. Both my parents enjoyed the game and became good players. It is strange that neither Doreen nor I became players. Possibly the war intervened when we were at an age to take an interest. Also, when my father joined the army and went overseas, it was impossible for us to maintain the court, so it fell into disrepair.

Sunday School		As children, Doreen and I attended Sunday School - any Protestant church would do from my parents' point of view. We went to the Church of Christ for the longest period, as it was the closest. We children especially enjoyed practising for the Anniversary Concert, singing in the choir and taking part in biblical plays.

Learning the piano		From the age of seven I took piano lessons from Miss Dulcie Young, the daughter of the local police constable, and continued this until high school. I enjoyed this, though I had no real "ear" for music. When I first started work at seventeen years of age, I re-enrolled with a different teacher for a year or two, but finally gave up playing the piano.

High School

⁴ the small house in which we practised is now "Clancy's Restaurant"

Religious instruction

⁵ Comptometer =

A mechanical calculator for office use, but cumbersome

to use compared with modern electronic machines.

Dad joins the army

1943: Starting work:

Watsons Supply Stores

Badminton

A change of job:

CML, Perth.

Socialising with

CML girlfriends

Kidney problem

In 1939 I started High School at Princess May Girls' School in Fremantle, travelling there on the tram. I spent three years at this school, gaining the Junior Certificate and showing an aptitude for Commercial subjects. As well as the usual academic subjects, we spent one afternoon each week at Domestic Science learning housewifery⁴, laundering - where we made soap jelly and ironed with old‑fashioned flat irons - cooking and sewing.

We also had one period each week of religious instruction given by Canon Collick from St. John's Anglican church in Fremantle. He greatly endeared himself to us by keeping well away from the Bible. Instead, he gave us the story of Oliver Twist in serial form.

My parents accepted the current attitude of the time that education beyond High School was not necessary for girls. So I left Secondary School after gaining the Junior Certificate. In 1942 I enrolled at Underwoods Business College for one year and learnt shorthand, typing and the Comptometer⁵.

It was in the year that I started High School - 1939 - that my father joined the Army. For the next five years, Mum, Doreen and I, like many families, coped with looking after house and garden without the support of husband and father. Dad was posted both to other parts of Australia and to the Middle-East, and did not return home permanently until the end of the war in 1945.

In 1943 I commenced work as a shorthand/typiste at Watsons Supply Stores in Fremantle. I stayed with this firm for three years and, although I was offered a rise in salary and the position of shorthand/typiste to the Managing Director, I wanted to work in Perth, and could not be persuaded to stay on.

For part of this time, Doreen also worked in Fremantle, and we often met during the lunch period. We joined the East Fremantle Badminton Club and this proved to be the one competitive sport I enjoyed. Later, when it was thought the Japanese might bomb Perth and Fremantle, the Watsons' office was evacuated to the factory at Spearwood.

In Perth, I worked for Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Co., where there were many young people on staff. We spent much of our leisure time socialising on picnics and other outings. This was a very happy time for me. I remember one occasion when about a dozen CML girls travelled by bus to Armadale, walking from the bus to a small picnic area not far from Pioneer World of today. We spent the day tumbling, performing acrobatics, enjoying a picnic lunch beside the stream, and then walking back to the bus for home.

During this time I underwent a major operation when I suddenly developed a kidney problem. It was discovered that one kidney had probably never functioned and had atrophied. This kidney was removed and I made a very rapid recovery.

The family moves to Colac, Victoria for one year. Meeting and Marrying John Fall Buying a house		My father found it difficult to settle down after the war. In 1949 he accepted a position as Health Inspector in the town of Colac in the Western District of Victoria. We sold our house in Palmyra and the whole family moved to Colac. Doreen and I obtained secretarial work with no difficulty and started to make new friends. Unfortunately, Dad developed some arthritic problems in the extremely cold and damp climate of South-West Victoria. This, and some work dissatisfaction, brought us back to the warmth of Western Australia after only one year. My parents built a new house in East Fremantle and we soon settled in. I approached C.M.L. and they took me back on staff. g John and I met at a square dance at the University of Western Australia in 1953. We became engaged in April 1954, and married on 11 December that year. Since I worked in the Housing Loans Department at CML at the time, we could obtain a house loan through them. Compared with many couples, we were very fortunate, as we purchased our first home at 318 Mill Point Road, South Perth several months before we married, and settled into it immediately after our honeymoon at Caves House, Yallingup. The contents of the house were basic - with no floor coverings, but many young people at this time lived with parents or in small flats or enclosed verandahs, so we had no cause to complain.

Children: Judith and Peter Three years in London		Our first child, Judith Anne was born 9th September 1955, followed by Peter John on 12th July 1957. In December 1957 we set out with the children, sailing to Britain on the S.S.Orontes. We lived in London for three years whilst John studied for a higher degree. During this period we met some of our English relatives, and also enjoyed the countryside and the historic background of the country. It was a period of personal growth for us both, and we returned home with a feeling of confidence.

Return to Australia and the move first to Como and then to Currie Hall, at the University Life with the students: Retirement from Currie Hall after twenty years. We move to Winthrop		We returned to our first house in Mill Point Road for a further three years, and then purchased a larger home at 34 Lockhart Street, Como. After a short time there, John was asked if he and his family would take up residence in a flat at Currie Hall, the University of Western Australia's Hall of Residence. Although there were many benefits gained by the children and me in this environment, it was very hard on our children as they did not have the normal neighbourhood background enjoyed by their friends. g John and I stayed at Currie Hall for twenty years and during this period met many very nice young people. Both Judith and Peter married during this time, Judith sharing a house with friends for a while before marriage. When John retired from Currie Hall at the end of 1986, we built a house at 29 Paterson Gardens, Winthrop and now both appreciate the more relaxed lifestyle of living in our own home in suburbia. g

HOLIDAYS:

1969:

Britain

Camping in Europe

Camping Holidays at

Denmark on the south coast

Three-months in Asia

Caravan holidays

in Australia

Common interests

with John

Personal interests

During our college years we enjoyed several holidays. In 1969 John took sabbatical leave, and we, with our children, travelled to Britain where we spent several months living in the village of Chalfont St.Peter in Buckinghamshire. We then set out on a six-week camping holiday to tour Europe. Judith and Peter had a year's absence from school.

We brought the tent we had purchased in Britain back to Australia with us and, in our children's teenage years, spent our summer holidays camping in the South-West at Denmark. A few years later we took our mothers, both almost eighty years of age, to camp in the same tent at Denmark. This was a great success.

In 1977 John and I visited Asia for three months travelling through Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, and meeting many past students.

After our children had left home, in 1979 we exchanged our tent for a caravan. John and I enjoyed many holidays and explorations within Australia. Now that we have retired from college life and enjoy the comfort of our own home, there is no longer the same need to escape.

John and I relate very well to each other. We share many habits and characteristics - we both enjoy keeping records and journals, neither of us is very keen on sporting activities, though we both enjoy the outdoors, and go hiking and walking. John however, does not join me in my passion for crossword puzzles and jigsaws.

I feel very close to nature, like to be in the garden and grow plants. I also like to read, mainly biographies and local history. More recently I have become a guide at Kings Park and enjoy this activity. Of course, more than anything, my family means everything to me.