Nett and I arrived at Crown Street Women’s Hospital in the morning of 3 February 1975 to give birth to her new baby. After she settled into her ward her first visitor was the hospital matron with whom Nett had had a long working relationship over the years dealing with adoption babies. She brought an enormous bunch of flowers and made it clear to the nurses that Nett was a special friend and an honoured guest! They got the message and Nett was very well looked after by them while she was there!
The baby arrived at 6pm that evening. It was a long and difficult labour for Nett and he was a large baby at ten pounds. Nett’s obstetrician, Dr Warwick Birrell (who let it be known, jokingly of course, that he gave up his golf day for her!) took good care of her. She had been seeing him regularly for several months beforehand so she had full confidence in him. I chose not to be present at the birth. This was not a hard decision for me, being as squeamish as I was!. This was just as well as Nett was almost unconscious with exhaustion when I finally got to see her after the birth and I would have been very distressed watching her go through this. But holding her new baby in her arms revived her immediately! We hadn’t known in advance that this would be a boy! I stayed with her, basking in the new-found joy of fatherhood! Nett quickly recovered, and Michael passed all the checks from our paediatrician (Dr Maurice Gett) so all was well.
By prior arrangement a photographer arrived a couple of days later from Nett’s former workplace. They wanted some pictures of a mother giving up her baby for adoption, and Nett was happy to be the subject of this photo shoot! This picture from the shoot, which once gave me such joy every time I looked at it, now fills me with infinite sadness, as both those in it are now dead. But it’s a beautiful picture and deserves its place here in this part of Nett’s Life Story as a record of that time.
Nett proved to be an abundant milker so, as soon as she was strong enough I proudly brought her and Michael home to Glebe. She was used to handling babies so she had no problems coping with one of her own! Of course, it was different having this responsibility 24/7 and getting used to interrupted sleeps, but Nett happily took it all in her stride. No post-natal depression for her! She was so happy as a new mother, and Michael quickly proved to be a healthy baby and a comparatively good sleeper, so the early months passed with little difficulty as we adapted to the major changes in our routines.
Soon Nett was feeling confident enough in herself to start a part-time Arts degree course at the University of New England with her friend Sandra. This was by distance education but it still meant that she had to go to weekend schools at Sydney University and to residential classes at Armidale in May and August of 1975. So we drove up there and stayed at a motel both times, with me looking after Michael while Nett went to her classes. She returned during breaks in her lectures to breast feed the baby! Nett continued the course the following year, but by then she was no longer breast feeding so I cared for Michael at home while she went up by train with Sandra. Nett’s courses at this stage centred around her interest in European and American history. She got mostly credits in her exam results.
Fil came to visit in late 1975. This was to be the first of many of his such visits to us to escape Canada’s severe winters. On this visit he took pride in walking Michael in his stroller many times down Glebe Point Road! He was still single at that time.
Nett still kept in touch with events at her old department. Our diary records that she attended an adoptions conference in February 1976.
We now made the momentous decision that it was time for Michael to have a sibling. It wasn’t so much the decision itself but the timing of it that we had to resolve. Once we decided to go ahead it was only a short time before Nett fell pregnant again.
It was also becoming obvious at this time that our tiny two bedroom flat would be hopelessly inadequate for our expanding family. We decided that we wanted somewhere much more spacious in greener surroundings. The Pymble-Turramurra area on Sydney’s North Shore was our chosen location. After looking at a lot of potential homes we eventually we settled on an old Federation-style four bedroom house with a large garden and a double garage at 81 Bobbin Head Road, Turramurra. We moved in at the beginning of May 1976, by which time Nett was four months pregnant. I still have a clear memory of Michael looking bemused in his child seat in the back of “E-high” as we packed the last of our possessions around him before leaving Glebe for the last time!
Our new home was somewhat rundown, though structurally sound. But we loved its spacious rooms and high ceilings which were to make summer heat so much more bearable over the years. We settled in with the limited furniture that we brought over from Glebe and made the place as comfortable as we could. We then awaited the arrival of our second child.
On the morning of 2 October 1976 Nett woke early to preliminary labour pains. Now much more confident of her birthing abilities she called her Mum and Dad to come over as we’d previously arranged. She then calmly tidied the house in preparation for their arrival before waking me with the news! She was much calmer than I was! We hurriedly bundled Michael into “E-high” and headed for Crown Street Women’s Hospital for the second time. This hospital had been only a few minutes’ drive from Glebe for Michael’s birth but was over an hour from Turramurra. There were three hospitals on the route which I had carefully surveyed beforehand, but in the event we didn’t need to call in at any of them! I only had time to get Nett settled into her ward then had to return home with Michael for the arrival of Pop and Nanna. The plan was that they would then look after Michael while I went back to the hospital for the birth. However, I had barely got home when Nett’s obstetrician, Dr Birrell (the same specialist that she had had for Michael), rang with the news that the baby had arrived almost as soon as she had got there! “Another monster!” he told me, and at 10.5 pounds he was even bigger than Michael had been. And it was another boy! I was so relieved that Nett had waited till we got to the hospital and that I hadn’t had to cope with a delivery while driving her there!
Leaving Michael at our home with his joyful grandparents, I got back to the hospital again to find Nett sitting up with Peter in her arms and looking far better than she had after Michael’s birth. Again she had plenty of milk for the baby, all the paediatric checks (by Dr Gett again) were positive, and she was able to come home within a couple of days.
Now, with two infants under two years of age, Nett had her hands full while I continued as the family breadwinner. Nett ensured that our boys had regular medical checkups with our new local GP, Dr Helen Kirby. After a few months, as the boys grew stronger, she started taking them to the Playgroup at Turramurra’s Hillview Community Centre. There she joined up with several other mothers and they decided to form what would prove to be a wonderful mutual support group. These mothers started to meet at each others’ homes as well as at Hillview and eventually they also formed a babysitting club. This was a brilliantly successful group which really eased the burdens on the mothers in being able to leave their children with other mothers that they could trust. Nett was one of the leading lights of this group, and she kept the books to ensure that everyone got credit for their fair share of babysitting hours to enable others to have well deserved breaks.
This was a large group with many families participating. I can now only remember the following names of those who were in it: Steve & Jan Craven, Norm & Margaret Drylie, Bob & Helen Felton, Jan & Clair Garoncy, Bob & Vicky Hale, Tony & Barbara Hutchinson, Jim & Stephanie Schofield, Geoff & Maureen Scott, but there were many others. In particular there are a lot of diary entries which feature another mother called Marie-Noel who I can’t remember. Nett and Maureen Scott became good friends and I played squash every Sunday morning with Jan Garoncy and Steve Craven. As well as evening babysittings there were also, as the children got older, many sleepovers in various homes with up to a dozen kids at a time under the one roof! We also had picnics, tennis days, even on one occasion a group weekend away to Bundanoon in the Southern Highlands. And, of course, our calendars were filled with lots of birthday parties each year! It was great for the kids as well as the parents to be able to relax and socialise together as the children grew older.
We ourselves also took full advantage of the babysitting group, going out for meals with friends and to various forms of entertainment. Our diaries at the time record that Nett continued to see a lot of her best friend Sandra as well as some of her former Allotment Officers from YACS who continued to keep in touch. We also took our boys many times to visit their grandparents, mine at Tanilba Bay on Port Stephens and Nett’s at Culburra Beach. We also often visited Nett’s brothers with their own young families. Their children were, of course, first cousins to our boys. We didn’t see so much of my sisters as Gill and Griselda lived far away and Laura was not yet a mother, though she visited us occasionally.
Fil came out in late 1979 with his new Canadian partner, Harriet. We left our boys with Norm and Margaret Drylie to give ourselves a weekend away with Fil and Harriet to the Hunter Valley wine region, north of Sydney. This was the first of three such trips to this area that the four of us were to take there over the years.
Nett also joined the Hillview Management Committee, the main focus of this being the establishment of Rotary Cottage as a playgroup/childcare centre. It was during this time that she was asked to consider standing for election to Ku-Ring-Gai Council. She quickly decided that she wasn’t cut out to be a politician! What a difference it would have made to our lives if she had decided to go ahead with this and become a Councillor!
So the early years passed by very pleasantly. It was busy for Nett, and sometimes quite exhausting, but this was no different than for most other mothers. She was very happy in this role. The children were growing up and making friends with each other. The group’s activities continued over the years with the older kids now approaching preschool age. In 1979 Michael became one of the early ones and went to Handley Avenue Pre-School, just a couple of blocks from our home. The next year he enrolled in Kindergarten at Crown Road Public School, just around the corner from where we lived.
Our diary entries for these years (1975 to 1981) are filled with a huge array of activities that flowed from having young kids growing up. There are entries for almost every day, sometimes two or three on the one day. Nett’s feet must have hardly touched the ground during this time! There were school activities such as canteen duty, pool duty, cake stalls and the like. There were any number of medical, dental, chiropractic, etc appointments with vaccinations for the boys being a priority. There were sports activities as the boys grew older: swimming, Little Athletics, age group soccer with the local Bannockburn Rovers, etc. There were lots of outings such as pantomimes, plays, educational excursions of all kinds. Mothers were always dropping in on each other for cups of tea, etc. These diaries are also filled with an enormous number of names which I mostly can’t now place with any people that I remember from those days. In fact, I wouldn’t have even been aware of many of these goings on at the time since I was away working full time.
Nett also did her best to keep fit, with weekly gym attendances which were later supplanted by tennis every Monday morning. We occasionally attended Labor Party gatherings. Somehow we also fitted in evenings out for ourselves to theatre, ballet, operas, movies, etc.
Then, at the start of 1980 Nett made a decision to take up part-time work. This was not only to bring in a bit of extra money but also to make her feel more connected with the outside world. So she started a part-time clerical job at an environmental consultancy at Crows Nest called Dames & Moore. This was quite a long drive from home for her but she had complete flexibility over the hours that she worked, which was most important for her. This was generally Tuesday and Friday mornings. The work was easy for someone of her ability, and this job was to eventually last her for four years.
Meanwhile, back home in April 1980, an unexpected event occurred. Nett got an urgent call one weekend from Vicky Hale to come over immediately. There was apparently some kind of emergency. Fearing the worst, she rushed over. As soon as she entered the front door all the families of the babysitting group rushed out of hiding singing “Surprise, surprise! Happy birthday!” Nett nearly fainted on the spot! It was her 40th birthday and this was a lovely surprise party for her. She was really loved by everyone in that group.
Sadly, all good things come to an end. All the families lived quite a long way apart from each other so the group gradually faded away as its members focused more on local pre-schools and schools. Over time Nett eventually lost touch with the other mothers as their lives went in different directions. It was sad, but this group had been a great source of friendship and support while it lasted.
The following year, in 1981, Peter started at Handley Avenue. Our baby-rearing days were over and the school years for our boys were now just beginning. Six years had elapsed since Michael was born and he was now in Year 1 at school. There had been enormous changes in Nett’s life in that time, from being a full time professional worker to full time motherhood, and then on to part time work. She was such a committed mother and this role took over her life to the exclusion of almost everything else. There was only limited opportunity for travel and entertainment and her uni course had had to be put to one side. But she had no regrets about any of this as, for her, this came with the territory of motherhood, and she happily embraced it. She loved her boys, and watching them grow and develop their separate personalities gave her enormous pleasure and satisfaction.
Next page: Nett in her 40s
Nett 