After all those years living in Campbelltown, Canberra was such a revelation. It was clean, spacious and planned down to the last blade of grass. Lake Burley Griffin had just been filled from the Molongo River. Canberra was very much waiting to live up to its potential as a major city but at this stage there was still some way to go. A cynic at the time called it “seven suburbs in search of a city” and there was some truth to this.
Still, I loved Canberra from the day I arrived, even though I often got lost on the circular roads surrounding Capital Hill. where Parliament House (the old one) was situated. I initially stayed at the Kurrajong Hotel where politicians could choose to stay when Parliament was sitting. Parliament was in recess when I arrived so there was a room for me. I remember that there was some unseasonably early snow while I was there. There were some overseas politicians also staying there at the time. I claimed a record of being the first person ever to throw a snowball at a Nigerian VIP, and he agreed!
When the politicians returned I was transferred to one of the Commonwealth Hostels which had been established for single public servants living in Canberra. These were basic facilities. All meals were included, although these were not very appetising. We had individual rooms which were made up for us each day but had to share bathroom facilities. The hostel I was transferred to was the Hotel Acton, near the lake and the city. I didn’t particularly like hostel life, though Acton was one of the better ones. I met up with a girl there named Sue Lucas who worked in the Foreign Affairs Department and who felt likewise about our accommodation. We decided to move together into a flat in the northern part of Canberra.
At work I was the only female DO in the office. My boss was Alan Scott, a lovely man but a chronic worrier who always fretted over the slightest detail. My favourite colleague was Tom Ryan who was the exact opposite to Alan. He was calm and unflappable with a mischievous sense of humour which often had us all in stitches! He had a lovely Japanese wife, Maria, whom he had met while he was serving in the post-war occupation force in Japan. Another female was then being trained and would join the office as a DO the next year. This was Ellen Reihir who was to become a close friend. She and I would divide the city between us, Ellen covering the south and me the north, but in the meantime I had responsibility for the whole territory. My duties extended over the whole range of what my training had covered: adoptions, foster care, truancy, EMD (Exposed to Moral Danger), welfare aid, abuse cases, the lot. It was hard work for a starting DO like myself.
The most traumatic events for me were the three abandoned babies that I had to deal with. The first one was found in a phone box wrapped in a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald. His parents were never tracked down. I found a lovely family to adopt him. The second one was deposited on a nunnery’s steps, only a few hours old. Fortunately the mother’s family, when they found out, were most supportive and took on the baby’s care. The third one was found abandoned in the bush for three days, covered in ants. Miraculously, he survived and I was eventually able to place him in adoption. These cases illustrate how little support there was in those days for girls who became pregnant. The Supporting Parents’ Benefit, when it came several years later, made such a huge difference for girls in this situation. To me, this has been one of the great social improvements of our times.
Outside of work I soon found that parties were the main after-hours activity in town. Admittedly there was a cinema, a drive-in (often closed by fog!), a stage theatre and numerous cultural activities. There were also many sporting outlets, but these didn’t interest me at all! For me, my main social activity became one party after another. The fact that there was something like a three to one ratio of single men to single women in Canberra at the time definitely worked in my favour! Not only that, many of these single men were educated, interesting to talk to, and often had fascinating jobs. There was the astronomer at nearby Mount Stromlo (who wanted me to join him there at nights!), the journalist, the Irish nobleman, the archaeologist, and many more. What a contrast to the boys at Campbelltown! The archaeologist, Jim, eventually became a regular boyfriend – until he made the mistake of leaving me over the following summer to go on a dig in New Zealand!
So now we come to the night that changed my life forever. My flatmate, Sue, was invited to a Christmas/housewarming party by a colleague, Sonya, from another Commonwealth hostel, Lawley House. Sue brought me along and Sonya brought more friends from Lawley. These included two young men named Chris Danckwerts and Fil Young. When we got there I looked over the assembled talent and decided that I liked this quiet, gentle boy, Chris. “He’ll do while Jim’s away” I said to Sue later.
Chris was gentle, sweet, kind and caring, the exact opposite of my father. He was a computer programmer with the Defence Department, which didn’t interest me at all! We went out a lot over summer. We would often go for a long drive in the country in his brand new red Bellett car, then have a Chinese meal at Happy’s restaurant in Garema Place, and then (if it was Sunday) grab comfortably upholstered seats for the Sunday night movie at Lawley House. Chris quickly won my heart. These were such happy days for me.
When Jim came back from his archaeological dig a few weeks later he raced around with a gift for me, a porcupine-styled wooden hairbrush (which I still have to this day). In my confusion I said “Thank you, Chris.” Talk about a Freudian slip! Jim then knew straightaway that there was someone else in my life. He left quickly, only coming back to return my TV set which he had borrowed. I never saw him again.
Although I still went out with other boys occasionally, Chris was now the one for me. We rented a cottage in Umina for a weekend together and grew even closer. I was now well over thinking that Bart, my former boyfriend in Campbelltown, had been the only man I could ever love. However, Chris didn’t realise this, so I had to give him a bit of encouragement! After some subtle prompting from me, he finally saw the light and asked me to marry him. I immediately said “Yes!”. The date was August 14th 1966, and we had this date inscribed inside the gold bands that we exchanged at our subsequent wedding. We have celebrated this date as our “real” anniversary ever since.
Then it was time to meet each others’ families, choose a ring, announce our engagement and plan our wedding.
I was very nervous about meeting Chris’s family. As it turned out his parents, Dick and Ann, received me well by their standards. Dick, a GP, was quiet and reticent by nature, but always very nice to me. He had a wry sense of humour. Ann, however, was a different proposition. She delighted in trying to be clever by slighting other people with sarcastic put-downs. This made her hard to get along with, though over time I did manage to have some good conversations with her. She had not been the loving, supportive mother that Chris especially needed because of his deafness since birth. In fact, she had been even worse for Chris than my Mum had been for me. Fortunately, I got on well from the start with Chris’s younger sisters, Gill, Griselda and Laura (as well as their then partners Mark, Cam and Peter). They were delighted that Chris had found true love. It has to be said that there was little love at the time in Chris’s family because of Ann’s behaviour. In fact, Dick even admitted that they were “not a close family” at our first meeting, much to Ann’s annoyance.
Chris, by contrast, got on very well with my family. My Mum, in particular, warmed to him and thought he was such a lovely boy (which, of course, he was!). Dad was very pleased to have a son-in-law come into the family to take care of his daughter even though he and Chris had such diametrically opposite personalities. My brothers Brian, Richard and Robert (and their partners Fran, Margie and Liz) took to him well despite him having a rather quiet, nerdy personality. When Chris first joined my family for a meal around the kitchen table he was somewhat overwhelmed by the forceful and opinionated, though good-natured arguments that raged during and after meals. Mum said to him “You’re a bit quiet, aren’t you, Chris.” He replied “I was just waiting for a pause in the conversation to join in.” Everyone roared with laughter. “There’s never a pause in the conversation around here!” one of them said. Chris soon adapted and felt right at home thereafter. He often said somewhat ruefully of those days “I don’t think I ever heard a Carter admit to being wrong!”.
Chris’s parents drove down to Campbelltown to meet mine. It was an awkward affair, though Mum, ecstatic to have a doctor in the family, did her best to lighten the occasion. Her “pasteurised milk” joke (see the chapter on My Mum) fell flat with Chris’s humourless mother and shy, withdrawn father, however Chris loved it and added it to his subsequent jokes repertoire. It wasn’t till Dick and my Dad discovered a common love of fishing that the mood lightened somewhat.
Later on, we went into town in Sydney and chose a diamond engagement ring from some jewellers named Bird & Crisp. Our engagement was announced in October. I wanted a quiet wedding with 40 or so guests and it had to be at the Methodist church that had been such a big part of my early life. Planning for this big event then went full ahead. January 21st 1967 was to be the date. I bought a wedding dress off the rack. Chris’s best man, Fil, took him to a cut price tailor for a new suit. The result was terrible but it was by then too late to do anything about that! Denham Court was chosen as the reception centre. My brother Richard had a limousine hire business at the time so he would do the formal driving. Dad paid for the venue and catering and Dick supplied several cases of champagne. I paid for my wedding dress and the flowers. Chris and I bought wedding presents for each other. He bought me a lovely string of pearls, but neither of us can remember what I got for him! Chris took dancing lessons at Mal Strahan’s dance academy in Canberra as he was going to have to lead me on the dance floor at the reception, a prospect he was dreading.
All preparations were going well right up to the day before the wedding. Too well, in fact, so there had to be a disaster. Sure enough it came when I bit into a bun and a big part of a front tooth broke off! We had a practice wedding rehearsal at the church that day during which my gap-toothed smile was horribly prominent. Fortunately, Mum was on good terms with the family dentist and he was able to fit me in for an emergency repair job which, in fact, lasted me for several years!
The big day arrived. It was blazingly hot. My flowers had wilted at home the previous night so I had to take the bridesmaid’s bouquet. Richard drove Dad, Mum and me to the church in his limo. Dad escorted me to the church entrance and up the aisle. The symbolism of my father, the dominant figure of my early life, handing me over to a new man was not lost on me. Chris was waiting for me at the front.
The marriage ceremony went off without a hitch. I walked down the aisle on Chris’s arm. It was still extremely hot outside so we got into Richard’s limo as soon as we decently could and drove to the reception centre. There, the wedding dinner was smoothly hosted by Norm Batty, my sister-in-law Fran’s father.
Because of the heat it was a shirtsleeves affair. Chris made a nice speech which made me so proud of him as he wasn’t used to public speaking. Then, afterwards, it was time for Chris to demonstrate what he’d learnt from his dancing classes. Sadly, he failed completely and we just shuffled around the floor! Fortunately, my brother Brian saw our predicament and immediately took his wife Fran to the centre of the floor and they put on a dazzling exhibition. Other couples followed while Chris gratefully took me back to our table. I think Chris and I rarely ever danced together since then!
Dick’s champagne flowed like water and formality quickly went by the board. The doors to the grounds were opened and people sat outside on the lawns. Both my Nanna and Chris’s mother got slightly tipsy on the champagne! Many people said afterwards that this was the most enjoyable wedding reception that they’d been to! The evening passed in a blur. The official photographer took many pictures. (One of these, of Chris with my Auntie Gwen, later appeared in a weight loss advertisement!). Then it was time for me to change out of my wedding dress and for us to be loudly and boisterously farewelled by everyone as we departed in Chris’s red Bellett. We were now man and wife.
We had a week’s honeymoon at a lovely beach venue near Bateman’s Bay called Pretty Beach, then it was time to return to Canberra and resume our working lives. Chris’s sister Gill had just moved out of her rented fully furnished one-bedroom flat in the suburb of Downer as her forestry officer husband, Mark, had just been transferred elsewhere, so we took over her lease.
It has to be said that our early months together did not go smoothly. We were both 26 and had very independent outlooks. Much as we loved each other it was still a considerable adjustment to adapt to a shared life, and there were many clashes in our early days. In fact, there were even times when I wondered whether I’d made the right decision in marrying Chris. But eventually, as the years went by, we learned to persevere and accommodate each other and to start to resolve our different outlooks. Having such different personalities made things so hard in those early days. But gradually we came to understand that we needed to cherish our differences, rather than react to them, and to realise what a blessing it is to be able to see things in different ways yet still respect each other’s viewpoint. We now seek each other’s advice instead of arguing!
There was one surprising incident in those early days. There was a knock on the door of our flat one morning. It turned out to be my journalist friend from my single days the previous year. He’d found out my new address but was unaware that I had got married in the meantime. He got such a shock when I introduced Chris, then beat a hasty retreat!
We never intended to stay very long in Canberra. We wanted to see the world. We would have liked to live for a while in America, however that would have led to Chris being conscripted to the US Army while the Vietnam war was going on. No way we wanted that! So we decided to go to Canada instead. Fil was already there, studying for his PhD in psychology, so that was an added factor. (In fact we’d broken off our honeymoon to farewell Fil from Sydney, only to see his ship merely move to another dock because of engine trouble!). An early obstacle to our travel plans arose when the Canadian High Commission refused to issue us with an entry visa. I can’t remember why, now. Fortunately, my boss, Alan Scott, was very well connected in town and knew the Canadian High Commissioner. A quiet word between them and all was resolved!
Finally, all arrangements were made and we were ready to go. There were farewells from our respective workplaces, our cars were sold, our bags were all packed, and we headed to Sydney to say goodbye to our families. In October 1967 we boarded the P&O Orcades and set sail for a new chapter in our lives.
Next page: Annette Danckwerts
Nett 