Back in Australia, just before Christmas 1970, Nett and I plunged into a whirl of family get-togethers and Christmas activities as well as getting used to a hot climate again. It was good to be home. We had no doubts that we were now where we wanted to be. Canada and Scotland, though highly interesting, had never appealed to us as countries where we wanted to live permanently.
Our relationship, after three years together in other countries, had by now settled to a more comfortable level. The early tensions had been replaced by a better understanding and acceptance of each other as individuals, although in terms of being sensitive, caring and understanding Nett would have still seen me as a (slow) work in progress. On her side, perhaps because of her being bullied by her parents during her upbringing, she always had her own feelings of insecurity and low self esteem which she covered over with her wonderful charm. So it became my responsibility to support her strongly and unconditionally. I can truthfully say that, over our 50 plus years together I was always there when she needed me. She also became quite frightened of me if I ever lost my temper so I had to make sure that this never happened, except for just one or two shameful lapses on my part. We made it a rule that we would never criticise each other in public, and we never did.
With the arrival of New Year 1971 we went into our by now familiar routine in new places of finding accommodation and jobs. I quickly got a job as an analyst/programmer with a finance company, Associated Securities Ltd (ASL). We had very little money and needed the income from this start to building up our finances. We then borrowed to scrape together a deposit on a brand new home unit in the inner city suburb of Glebe, which was an easy bus ride to my workplace on the corner of King and Clarence Streets in the city.
Our new home was a top-floor, two-bedroom unit overlooking the industrial waterfronts of Blackwattle Bay.
The address was Flat 23 in 9A Cook Street. From our balcony we had a sweeping and completely unobstructed view of the western side of the city, taking in the Harbour Bridge at the northern end to our left through to Central Station to the south on our right. The city was not so colourfully lit at night as it is now; those living on the east side in those days got a much better light show!
Our new home included a lock-up garage. We certainly extended ourselves financially to get this place but we felt quite justified in doing so. Now, fifty years later, the building still stands there looking just as it did then. The flat we had then would be worth a fortune now!
We had no furniture when we moved in and slept on the floor during our first few nights until we had the money to buy ourselves a bed! Our kitchenware was what we had received as wedding presents four years earlier. It didn’t include a kettle, so our electric frypan was initially used to boil water! Our early lounge furniture came from “Tempe Tip”, a Salvation Army charity store where we got $2 pre-loved armchairs! It was all good fun in those early days, and we didn’t feel at all deprived as we knew that we would soon be much more comfortable. We got on well enough with our neighbours, as in Scotland but unlike in Canada.
Now that we had a roof over our heads Nett went back to her old department, then called Youth & Community Services (YACS), seeking a job. They remembered her well and welcomed her with open arms. However, all that they could offer her initially was a position as a switchboard operator on the old, clunky head office telephone system that existed at the time. This lasted for just a few weeks until a position came up as Senior Allotments Officer, in charge of a team of adoptions allotment officers. This would have been one of the most meteoric promotions in the department’s history!
Nett’s team consisted of eight recent female graduates. They came into their jobs bewildered and depressed by the myriad regulations and restrictive work practices that governed their daily environment, a far cry from the freedom of their university days. Nett showed her brilliant leadership skills by quickly moulding them into an enthusiastic, cohesive group with wonderful morale in a difficult job. The fact that she was not herself a graduate quickly became irrelevant to them as she trained them to be able to navigate the complex adoption procedures and to deal with the difficult emotional stresses that the natural mothers faced in giving up their children for adoption. The workload was massive as there were then over 2000 adoptions to be placed each year across NSW (though not all in Sydney). She also won her team over by lobbying for and winning the right to wear slacks at work, the first women in the NSW public service to be granted this privilege!
This was a lovely group of girls, and there were many social occasions during which I often got to meet them all. Even now I still remember most of their names: Jane Chart, Anne-Marie Gleeson, Helen Gorman, Verena Rawlings, Virginia Rorke, Peggy Stansberry, Julie Taylor. Unfortunately I don’t have a group photo of them. In later life we occasionally came across some of these girls as their careers progressed. They were all effusive in their praise of Nett’s leadership in helping to guide their early careers. Strange to think that by now they are all probably grandmothers over seventy years of age!
Nett’s networking skills extended well beyond the office environment. She worked hard to get all the senior matrons on side at the various maternity hospitals as adoptive mothers could, quite understandably, be difficult for the nurses to handle. She also created successful relations with two of Sydney’s leading surgeons to assist with cases where the adoptive children needed special medical treatment. One was Dr Earl Owen, a microsurgeon who later achieved worldwide fame for his pioneering work in re-attaching severed fingers and hands. The other was Dr Ferry Grunseit, a leading paediatric surgeon. I don’t know how Nett did it, but they always took her calls and put on mock groans whenever she made a special request of them. But they always went out of their way to facilitate whatever special treatment the adoptive babies needed.
Back home our unit was now filling up with more respectable furniture. We did very little travelling at first. We considered a trip to Adelaide for their annual Arts Festival, then realised that we just couldn’t face travelling any more just yet! Three years of continually moving around in Canada and Scotland had left us really travel-weary for a while! However, we did get up to Coffs Harbour in late 1971 for the christening of my sister Gill’s son, John Allen.
My recollections of the events of those days, now almost 50 years ago at the time of writing this, is unsurprisingly quite patchy. Fortunately we kept appointment diaries from that time which now fill in many of the gaps in my memory and help me with my recording of my part of Nett’s Life Story.. I have in my possession all of these diaries from 1972 onwards. One early entry, in March 1972, records that we went to a Germaine Greer rally in Sydney’s Town Hall. All that I can remember of this event was that it was very noisy! This was an early start to Nett’s continuous support of many causes throughout her life. She was to join the Labor Party and, when it was later formed, the Australian Republican Movement. Though never a radical activitist she strongly supported issues of gender equality and the environment. I have now continued to support these causes myself as she would have wished me to.
It soon became important for us to get some wheels so, as soon as we were able to, in early 1972, we put down a deposit on a new car. After much research we decided on a Renault 16TS hatchback. It was tan coloured and we dubbed it “E-High” after its registration number, EHI 186.
We eventually had this car for over twelve years and it served us well. We quickly discovered that whenever we approached another 16TS on the road they would flash their headlights at us! We thought that this was a charming habit and quickly got into the spirit of it! We used this car to drive out to Condobolin to look after John Allen while Gill was giving birth to her daughter Jenny in August 1972. (See the chapter on Lake Cargelligo in this website).
Back home we joined the Glebe North branch of the Labor Party. This was a real eye-opener! We had ringside seats to the sometimes ferocious in-fighting between the three major factions that were dominant in that branch at the time. The president of the branch was Dr Horace Foley, a highly authoritarian leader from the old guard of the party. He was in his seventies, but age had not mellowed him! A park on Glebe Point Road is still named after him. Opposing him was John Brady, a loud and abrasive representative of the union side (from Actors Equity I believe). Then there was Meredith Burgmann (a future State MLC who later founded the annual “Ernies” event), then representing the students at nearby Sydney University. She was to become a lifelong activist in Sydney for many causes. We sat there open-mouthed as the factional battles raged before us every month! Eventually we left the branch when we were ruled ineligible on a technicality to vote for the election of the branch office-holders. However, we always remained loyal to the wider ALP movement. Nett always remained a member of the Labor Party and we both often helped out many times on election days.
We were privileged to be present at Blacktown Town Hall in November 1972 when Gough Whitlam launched Labor’s historic “It’s Time!” campaign which was to sweep him to power at the next federal election. This reminded us strongly of another similar occasion in Canada when we watched on television as Pierre Trudeau became that country’s leader five years earlier.
The following year we gave ourselves a tropical holiday on Dunk Island, on the Barrier Reef in Far North Queensland in September 1973.
It was idyllic except for the flying cockroaches that invaded our cabin every night! We were joined there for a day by my sister Griselda and her husband Cam who were living up that way at the time.
Then, in February 1974, we made a nostalgic return to Canberra to attend the wedding of Ellen Reihir, Nett’s former YACS work colleague from the time we lived there six years earlier.
Our diary entries from this time record that we attended a lot of ballet performances. Nett would have really enjoyed them though I don’t remember much about them. These would have been under the auspices of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust.
At Nett’s work the rate of children being surrendered for adoption was slowing dramatically due to the wider availability of birth control measures and also the greater support for single mothers that was now becoming an option for such girls. Consequently, Nett’s Adoptions Branch was scaled down and she was offered another promotion, this time to the position of Publicity Officer for the department. If ever there was a job that Nett was made for, this was it! She put her amazing networking skills to maximum use and gave many interviews to newspapers, magazines and on TV (where she appeared live on all four Sydney channels!). She used her position to advocate strongly for more adoptive parents to come forward (they were always needed) and also to promote foster care to suitable parents/families.
It was about this time that we became interested in the card game of bridge. It may seem strange that Nett would be interested in such a game, based as it is on numbers and logic, yet she took to it immediately. So we went to beginners’ lessons at the Sydney Bridge Club in Castlereagh Street in the city. Our instructor was Ron Klinger who, though young then, was already a leading figure in the world of bridge. We progressed through beginners’ classes to playing occasionally with another couple in each others’ homes. We did not continue for very long at this stage, however this was just a start in what was to become a regular leisure activity in our later lives.
Now we come to the major event of our lives. We had been thinking about starting our own family for some time. Nett loved children and had got quite clucky many times with all the adoption babies that she had encountered. Most of our siblings had already started their families, so we were already uncle and aunt to many nephews and nieces, and Nett got clucky with them too!.
We decided after much discussion between us that it was time we did likewise. We did not take this decision lightly, as it was a lifetime commitment, but we were now approaching our mid thirties, so it was now or never. Nett was very fearful about her ability to carry a child to full term following her miscarriage in Scotland. She had many regular checkups with a leading Sydney obstetrician, Dr Warwick Birrell, to make sure that everything would be OK. In the end she need not have worried. She duly fell pregnant and successfully carried her child throughout with no dramas. So, as 1974 rolled round to 1975, and after eight years of marriage, we awaited with eager anticipation the arrival of the first addition to our family.
Next page: Michael & Peter
Nett 