Nett has told her Life Story up to the point when, just married, we were about to set off on a new life in Canada and, beyond that, to wherever it would take us. She was coming to the end of her days as she completed her part of the story so she asked me to finish the rest of it. This I am now about to do. I will be your tour guide for the remaining fifty plus years of our life together.
First, a word about our relationship at the time. Nett has already said that we had made a difficult start to our life together and put this down to having such different personalities. This was of course true but there was more to it than that.. For my part I came into our relationship with a background of being born deaf, having an unloving family upbringing, and no fewer than nine years in English boarding schools. My social life before arriving in Canberra the year before we met had been mostly limited to a church fellowship. So I was, to say the least, immature and quite unprepared for a loving and intimate relationship. I had a lot of growing up to do. For Nett’s part I was surprised at the changes that married life made to her. I’d seen her as an outgoing party girl in Canberra, as a warm and loving family member and as a tough and resilient welfare worker. She was certainly all of these things but, in our relationship she needed something more. She needed sensitive, caring, intimate love from me. I wasn’t very good at providing this at the time, so our early life together was taken up with overcoming these barriers between us. Resolving all our differences turned out to be a long process, but we never gave up on each other. The other major change in Nett was that she became much more of a homebody. She loved cooking and she was now happier with a good book or in front of the TV than she was in socialising. However she also enjoyed eating out and going out for entertainment.
So, with our relationship still very much a work in progress, we settled down to shipboard life on the P&O Orcades as it sailed across the Pacific Ocean towards Vancouver. We stopped over at Auckland, Suva, Pago Pago and Honolulu. At Auckland we jumped into a rented car and drove out to Rotorua. Along the way we marvelled at how green the fields were, quite unlike anything we’d seem in Australia. At Rotorua we went on a tour with a wizened female Maori elder guide around a Maori village, some geysers and some boiling mud pools, all very new to us. We then just made it back to Auckland in time to rejoin the ship.
There is little to recall about Fiji. Nett had, in any case, been there before she met me on a cruise with some friends, one of whom was her close friend Sandra. Pago Pago, part of American Samoa, has left no trace in my memory apart from some primitive native huts that we photographed. In Honolulu we again took a rented car for a drive around the island of Oahu. This was our first experience of driving on the “wrong” side of the road. All I remember, apart from this, was how wonderful the local pineapples tasted (which the locals ate with salt!) compared with the woody Queensland version we’d been used to.
We arrived at Vancouver on a misty morning on 17 November 1967. That date of November 17 was to recur several times in our travels. It had also been the date that I had first arrived in Australia as a 17 year old exactly ten years earlier. Again, as had been the case in Canberra, there were difficulties with getting an entry visa. This time the immigration authorities did not have my skill of “computer programmer” on their list of desirable qualifications. Fortunately the interviewing officer saw that this was a mistake and allowed me in on my degree major as a mathematician (which actually was on their list!) even though I could never have got a job in this field. Nett was readily admitted for her secretarial skills. She did not want to be admitted as a welfare officer as she had no intention of going back to such a stressful occupation.
Vancouver was in brilliant autumn colours, and the river was full of logs which has been floated downstream from the logging areas. So interesting to us! The weather was fine so we had a good look around. Stanley Park was a particularly spectacular feature, as was Queen Elizabeth Park.
Then we booked a two bunk berth on a Pullman carriage on the week-long eastbound Canadian Pacific rail trip to Toronto. This train climbed to over 5000 feet through the Canadian Rockies, taking in such spectacular snow bound sites as Lake Louise, Banff and other wonders. We hoped to see some polar bears, but none appeared!
We stepped out at Winnipeg where Nett went round a corner of a building – and was immediately welcomed by an icy blast coming off the prairies which almost froze her cheeks! Welcome to Canada! However, this trip was to be the first of many long distance rail trips in future years that Nett really loved.
At Toronto we quickly found jobs. I became a programmer with a finance company called Traders Group in Church Street. Nett became a secretary/receptionist with the Orthopaedic and Arthritic Hospital in Wellesley Street, The chief surgeon there was a Dr Bateman who, unbelievably, specialised in shortening the legs of young women who didn’t want to be taller than their male companions! Horrifying to think about such attitudes in this day and age!
With security of employment now assured we took out a two year rental on a new apartment on the east-west metro line along Bloor Street West. Our new address was 2109/255 Glenlake Avenue. This meant that we were in Apartment 9 on the 21st floor of a high rise building on 255 Glenlake Avenue, one of several such buildings in the block.
It was a sad reflection on Toronto attitudes at the time that we never got to know any of our stand-offish neighbours on our floor in the almost two years that we were there. We encountered similar attitudes among our Canadian work colleagues. By contrast we’d previously found the people we’d met in Vancouver and on the train to be much more outgoing. Fortunately there were enough friendlier expatriates (from UK, NZ, Australia) in Toronto to make us not feel completely alone. We also had frequent visits from Fil in Kitchener where he was doing his course. That cheered us up a lot. He regaled us with really funny stories about some of his quite weird fellow students in his PhD class!
Our first challenge once we settled in to our apartment was to get used to the Canadian winter. This could get as cold as 40 below, much colder than anywhere in Australia! Nett had brought a kangaroo-skin coat which proved to be a life saver. All buildings were centrally heated (in fact over-heated) so it was just a matter of getting from our apartment building to the local Loblaws supermarket or to the Keele metro station, neither of which were far away. The main hazard for us was the slippery icy footpaths. We bought overboots to slip over our shoes which helped to keep our footing somewhat.
Our new home was just to the north of Bloor Street which was the main east-west artery in Toronto. To the south of Bloor was a lovely natural park, called High Park which ran right down to Lake Ontario (which was frozen over in winter). We went there often all round the year. There wasn’t much else to see or do in our strictly suburban neighbourhood.
Both of our jobs were conveniently close to the metro line near Yonge station. (Yonge Street was Toronto’s main north-south artery). There were lots of stores in that area so it was easy for us to buy some basic furniture and fittings and have them delivered. We had a pleasant surprise when it came to installing a telephone. In Australia this would have taken several weeks. Here the Bell Telephone company apologised for not being able to come out that afternoon as it was a busy time. Would the next morning be convenient? It certainly would!
So it was a comfortable settling in to our accommodation and jobs. In our new home we watched a lot of ice hockey on our grainy black-and-white TV set. There were many channels available, both local and from Buffalo on the US side of Lake Ontario, but the overall quality on offer wasn’t great. The US channels were particularly parochial.
An immediate lowlight for us soon after settling in was the news of the tragic death by drowning of the Australian Prime Minister, Harold Holt. On a more positive note, we were soon afterwards able to watch the ascent of Pierre Trudeau as the new Prime Minister of Canada. The politicking that surrounded this event was open for all to see on television at the forum at which he was elected. None of the closed-door stuff that we were used to getting in Australia. Trudeaumania then swept the country while we were there! He was certainly charismatic.
However, we weren’t there just to watch TV. As winter passed we started taking bus tours to neighbouring areas. Niagara Falls was an awesome attraction, especially in winter when frozen, and we went there several times. Then there was Owen Sound, to the north, the last “dry” town in Ontario. Liquor stores in Ontario and most of Canada were, and still are government owned and could only be provided if the local community voted by at least two thirds to have one. So here there were two liquor stores just outside the town limits at each end of the main road, but none in the town itself! Liquor regulations were a hangover from Prohibition days and also a good source of revenue for the government. The only Australian wine available was “Emu” brand which was awful! We also visited Stratford which was heavily into Shakespearean themes. In addition, there was a cruise around the Thousand Islands on Lake Ontario. Many of these were individually owned with holiday homes on them.
We also went further afield by train to Ottawa and Montreal. Expo 68 was on at the time in Montreal, which was really fascinating. The following year on another visit to Montreal we went to watch the Montreal Expos baseball team, then competing in the US major league.
Nor were we confined to Canada for our weekend trips. There were bus trips to New York and Washington, visiting the traditional landmarks in both places. We got to the Empire State Building, the UN Headquarters, Metropolitan Museum and Central Park in New York and also saw the Broadway production of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” starring Australia’s Zoe Caldwell. In Washington we visited the Lincoln Memorial and stood outside the White House. Much to Nett’s delight we were also able to get to an Arthur Rubinstein live piano performance, getting two of the last overflow seats at the back of the stage, sitting very close to the 81 year old maestro himself!
All this sightseeing was great, very much what we had come to do in North America. However, Nett’s lack of communication with her family (snail mail being the only real option with international phone calls being both expensive and unreliable) was making her quite homesick. So it was timely that her brother Brian and his wife Fran had arrived in England at this time. They were staying with Fran’s uncle Len Wright and his wife Ivy in Tonbridge, Kent. They urged us to come over to join them and we did so eagerly. When we got there we found that Len and Ivy were two of the nicest people you could wish to meet. Nett warmed to them immediately and, with Brian and Fran being there it was a great cure for her homesickness. Len was a market gardener and Ivy a shoe shop assistant. She took Nett there for a day and was amazed and delighted at how warmly Nett greeted customers and facilitated many sales! As I was to see many times over the years Nett could be a brilliant salesperson when she wanted to be! We also made side trips to visit my two elderly grandmothers.
As a group we toured Windsor Castle, the Tower of London and watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. We had many other enjoyable outings together, including a hilarious Alastair Sim comedy play in London. Len had a phone at his market garden so we made a call to Nett and Brian’s parents in Australia from there. It was wonderful for Nett to hear her parents’ voices but it also seemed quite surreal as we were not used to long distance calls! We then farewelled Len and Ivy and, with Brian and Fran, made our way slowly northwards towards Scotland. Along the way we camped for a couple of nights in Wales and toured the beautiful Lake District. We then arrived in Edinburgh to visit my godmother Audrey Riches. There she made us an amazing offer. Would we like the use of her flat at no charge over the next couple of years? She was going to be teaching Eskimo children in northern Canada, having just returned from teaching in Antigua. She was certainly in the great tradition of English adventuresses! Nett was quite in awe of her sturdy spirit of hardy independence. This was a wonderful offer we just couldn’t refuse! After thinking about it we decided that we’d return to Canada for another year then take up her most generous offer. Brian and Fran then dropped us off at Prestwick airport, near Glasgow, for our return flight. We took a few pictures of each other there to use up a roll of film. Nett was now feeling much better having had so much more contact with her family.
Back in Toronto, over the next 12 months, there was more sightseeing. We also got to see the local hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, in their stadium. After only seeing them in blurry black and white on our TV set it was a real revelation to watch them live. It was an amazing spectacle to see everything in glorious colour in the packed and noisy Maple Leaf Gardens. The game was fast and furious. It was also quite violent at times, but Nett didn’t mind as she enjoyed this particular type of game. She also enjoyed the emotional antics of Toronto’s coach, “Punch” Imlach, as he wildly urged his team on. We got to see them twice in this stadium.
Our TV set also provided another highlight: the first moon landing on the night of 21 July 1969. The picture was even more blurry than usual, but this was history in the making.
During our time in Canada we only had a few visitors passing through, and only for a few hours in each case. My father was one, and a second cousin of mine from Sydney (Al Caldwell-Smith) was another. We also had Audrey Riches, my godmother, call in during a break from her teaching duties in northern Canada. As if her offer of a year’s free use of her Edinburgh flat wasn’t enough, she also brought some amazing gifts for us. One was a set of four brilliantly white Arctic fox furs. We eventually took these back to Sydney but finally relinquished them to the storage company where we kept them in exchange for a waiver of storage costs. Nett wasn’t comfortable with making up a fur stole from the pelt of such rare animals. (This was before the rise of the PETA movement worldwide). Audrey’s other gift was even more wonderful, a collection of seven beautifully carved green soapstone Eskimo figures depicting different aspects of native life. The locals, on the shore of Hudson Bay, produced these for the price of admission to a local movie theatre! After they’d been carved, these figures were given their final polish with tobacco ash! They now take pride of place in my home in Sydney. They have a variety of names and/or numbers scratched into their bases so there may have been some sort of local guild behind their production. Being original artefacts I imagine they would be quite valuable. My son Peter has been asked to keep these in the family when he inherits them.
We now decided on one final adventure before leaving Canada. We hadn’t seen much of the US despite it being so close by. So we planned a camping van trip that would take us all the way across to the US west coast, then right down to Mexico City and finally straight back north to Toronto. We purchased a second hand Bell Telephone van with its interior shelf fittings removed. When we told the car dealer of our plans he laughed sceptically and offered to buy the van back from us if we made it back. He obviously thought that this was a safe offer to make!
Nett made up some curtains to cover the side windows in the back and slapped on some floral decals to decorate the outside panels. With a mattress, a gas cooker and food and clothing supplies we were all ready to go. We went for a trial overnight camping run at the nearby Algonquin Provincial Park. All went well until the following morning when Nett was attacked by swarms of biting black flies attracted by her hair spray. She had to cover herself over while I dashed to the nearest store to get some powerful insect repellent spray. That worked but she then had to wash a lot of blood out of her hair. It was a horrible experience for her and we made sure that this repellent was in our supplies on our forthcoming trip!
We quit our jobs and completed our final packing, then set off and headed for the US border at Detroit. America’s magnificent network of freeways meant that we made good time as we headed westwards. There was also a good network of camping sites that we used called Kampgrounds of America (KOA) which were quite luxurious. Most of the other people there were in Winnebagos or suchlike, so we stood out as being very downmarket! But everyone was very friendly, especially when they found we were Australians. Australia was one of America’s very few allies in Vietnam and they showed their appreciation to us for this by offering us drinks and meals. We had mixed feelings about our country’s involvement in this war but we didn’t want to debate this in the face of their hospitality!
As we drove across America, highlights along the way included Chicago, Salt Lake City with its unique Mormon Tabernacle (which we toured), and then a stopover at San Francisco.
That’s where things got really interesting. We got tickets there to the controversial musical “Hair”. Right at the climactic moment in the show, when the cast lined up on the stage stark naked, an earthquake struck! God’s wrath at such flagrantly sinful behaviour, surely? The audience panicked at first before eventually calming down. Driving through the city the following morning we could see that the damage, though extensive, was relatively minor, but it had been an alarming experience nonetheless. I think there were few if any casualties. See the Wikipedia account of this event.
Moving further on with our travels, highlights included Universal Studios in LA, the Grand Canyon in Colorado, a petrified forest and the giant Meteor Crater in Arizona and then Las Vegas. There we stayed at a ridiculously cheap hotel which also supplied free gambling tickets. We used these but spent none of our own money on this.
We took in a burlesque show before heading south to the Mexican border at El Paso. But not before our van suffered a minor breakdown outside a town with the charming name of Truth or Consequences, named after a TV quiz show many years earlier!
At the border a bribe to the Mexican border officer was necessary to secure our entry to that country. The contrast between Mexico’s poverty and America’s ostentatious affluence was immediately obvious. Nett found the number of beggars we encountered quite distressing. We needed to conserve our finances so we couldn’t give away any money. The roads were rough and, in the mountain regions, often precarious. We were able to find safe campgrounds (where American tourists also congregated) each night. We drove through Guadalajara and eventually reached Mexico City.
I don’t remember much from this city. The traffic was jam-packed and aggressive! We went to watch a jai alai event. (Wikipedia can explain this sport better than I can). We were fascinated by bets being placed inside tennis balls then thrown across the auditorium to bookies! There was an alarming experience afterwards when we took a taxi to where we had parked our van inside a park. The cab driver was afraid to take us into the park because, unknown to us, violent gangs operated there at nights. He shone his headlights from the park entrance to where the van was parked and I had to walk down the road to it, fortunately without being attacked (or even seeing anyone!) Another event we went to was a bullfight. I don’t know why we went to this as we must have known it wouldn’t be pleasant. It wasn’t, and Nett was quite sickened by the spectacle, so we left early.
We visited a pyramid site called the Sun and Moon pyramids where there were also some Aztec ruins. At a stall there Nett purchased a beautiful fawn-coloured leather handbag which became her pride and joy for many years. We also bought a lovely large glazed earthenware plate and a matching jar with lid. These now occupy a prominent place in my home. I have asked my son Peter to keep these in the family when he inherits them.
We collected our forwarded mail in Mexico City. There were two pieces of wonderful news. First, Brian and Fran, having returned home from England, had a baby girl, Lyndal. Second, my beloved Rugby League team, Balmain, had won the Sydney premiership grand final that season!
We drove back into America without incident. Houston was our first stop. I went with a neighbouring NZ camper there to watch an American football college game to the remarkable Astrodome. A most interesting experience for me, but Nett passed up the chance to join us! We also visited the Smithsonian Institute with its most interesting space exploration exhibits.
Then in Louisiana we drove past the extensive damage that the recent hurricane Camille had caused. We called in at New Orleans then headed north. Up to now, the van had behaved reasonably well with only minor repairs needed. That changed when we got to Lewisburg, Kentucky when it broke down with a cracked cylinder head. We were stuck there for three days, with nothing much to see or do in this town, until it was fixed. Then, on the way home, it developed what appeared to be a cracked piston. The engine, right between our two front seats, made a noise like a jet engine! We limped up to the Canadian border, mighty glad to have eventually made it home!
The Canadian border authorities once again made things difficult for us. We were only allowed in to their country on condition that we left within a week!. We didn’t understand why this had to be, perhaps because we no longer had jobs in the country. We agreed to do this, not that we had any choice in the matter!
Fil had taken over the lease on our apartment. He had completed his PhD course and taken up a teaching position at nearby York University (Keele Campus). In the apartment he had taken over the bedroom, as was his right. so we had to sleep on the couch that he had slept on during his previous visits! We took the van back to the dealer who had sold it to us in the first place. He was amazed that we had been able to return it and, as he’d promised, bought it back from us. He didn’t even check its condition while we were there, so we got out of there quickly to bank his cheque before he could do this!
So, finally all was ready for our departure. We could only take a limited amount of winter clothing on our flight and had to leave the rest of it to be sent on after us by ship. We had few regrets about leaving Canada. There had been lots of wonderful travelling and sightseeing but, on the other hand, we had made no friends that we wanted to keep in touch with after we left. We took off for Prestwick airport in Scotland, just as we had on our trip the previous year to visit Brian and Fran. But this time we were planning on staying there for a while at least. The date of our departure? You guessed it – 17 November 1969. We had been in Canada for exactly two years to the day!
Next page: Scotland
Nett 