The 1980s coincided with the years spanning Nett’s 40s. She was now officially middle-aged (as I was too)! After the busy years of early child-raising family life now settled to a routine of school, sport, holidays, entertainment and all the usual after-hours activities of the boys’ school years. Starting at the beginning of these years we had Peter at Pre-School, Michael at Year 1 of primary school, myself continuing to work in the IT field and Nett continuing her part-time office job at environmental consultants Dames & Moore in Crows Nest.
Nett’s involvement with the other members of the babysitting club was slowly coming to an end as the different families went their own ways. At our home in 81 Bobbin Head Road it was disappointing that our next door neighbours never wanted to be close. Rosemary Baldwin, a widow, lived at No 83. David and Nancy Smith and their family lived at No 79. They were all very reserved and kept to themselves, though they were never hostile. They rarely visited us despite many invitations from us. Incredibly, we never got past the front door of either of their homes in all the thirty-plus years we were there! Fortunately we found other neighbours to be more welcoming. There were Rick and Fran Turland at No 77 (the other side of the Smiths from us), Tony and Sue Knox at No 61 and Peter Keating and his wife (whose name I forget) across the road at No 66. They all had children the same age as ours so we got on together well. I often walked with one or other of the fathers on the way to Turramurra Station as we went to work in the mornings. Later on we also became good friends with the families of Michael’s best friend, Geoffrey Southam, and Peter’s best friend, Philip Lynch. Other families that we later met at the boys’ sporting activities also became involved with us at different times. With all the after-school and weekend activities Nett’s life remained as busy as it had been during the heyday of the babysitting club, so once again her brilliant networking skills ensured that she was never alone for long! These interactions with these families and many others thus became a pleasant and continuing backdrop to our daily lives.
The highlights for Nett over the next few years were mainly the holiday trips that we took. One in particular was a huge event which I’ll come to later. Her weekly routines, as for most families, centred around work, school and after-school activities. Our diary entries show that there were also many opera evenings during this period. I have no recollection of these so perhaps Nett went with someone else, Sandra possibly.
In early 1981 she was despatched to Perth to reorganise Dames & Moore’s WA operations. This was a nice break for her in a city that we both loved and she came back quite refreshed. Later that year we rented a flat for a week in Port Macquarie and had a really nice holiday there. I remember the boys spending hours on the water slides at Peppermint Park! After we came back the boys decided that they wanted to have some pets. So we went to the RSPCA and acquired two female kittens for the boys, Lucy for Michael and Merry for Peter. Both desexed of course!
1982 saw Peter start his kindergarten year at Crown Road Public School where Michael was now in Year 2. A highlight of that year that I remember well was our walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to commemorate 50 years since it was opened in 1932.
There doesn’t seem to be any record of us going away for a family holiday that year. But the next year we went to stay at the Thistle Hill winery in Mudgee for several days. This was then owned by a work colleague of mine, Dave Robertson. Several other of my work colleagues also joined in. At that time this winery was just being set up as an ongoing operation but it soon became quite profitable and well known in the area. Tragically Dave died suddenly a few years later at an early age but his wife and two daughters have been able to continue the winery’s operations to this day. After leaving Mudgee we went on to Dubbo. The Western Plains Zoo was the main attraction for us there, and the boys had a great time roaming around its open spaced enclosures.
Things changed for Nett in the following year, 1984. She left her job at Dames & Moore (though returning occasionally to help out). She took the opportunity to reconnect with DOCS and joined a pilot program run by them at Eastwood called the Family Cottage Project. This was a resource centre for helping disadvantaged and mistreated kids. There, one of her colleagues was Saguna Bingham who was to become a lifelong friend. Nett provided me with the following words to include here about Saguna:
I met Saguna on a pilot program with DOCS (Community Welfare) in 1984. We found instant friendship. Michael and Peter were at school by then. Saguna taught me a lot about abused children. We stayed in touch when this project finished and had many meals and visits together over the years. Saguna had a strong spiritual side to her and spent much time at ashrams for intensive meditation. We occasionally meditated together ourselves. She also travelled extensively, both in Australia and overseas. She was a wonderfully loyal and supportive friend for me.
Nett’s friendship with Saguna was marked by non-stop chatter as they were both great talkers! I once joked to them that the word count between them over the years must have run into the millions! The only periods of silence came when they both meditated together! Another feature of their friendship was the full day’s movie watching that they spent together once every year at the Sydney Film Festival.
Later that year, in winter, we rented a cabin at Sawpit Creek in the lower reaches of the Snowy Mountains. I have strong memories of the boys feeding the kangaroos and possums which were quite tame in that region. Also during one chilly evening in our cabin Nett and I showed the boys the slides of our years in Canada and Scotland. We thought that they might quickly get bored with this but instead they were both absolutely fascinated by these scenes from different countries, as well as what we looked like fifteen years earlier! We went higher up the mountains on another day to get skiing lessons for the boys, but they showed little aptitude for this.
This year we finally traded in our beloved “E-High” for a Ford Laser after twelve years. It turned out that this wasn’t such a good choice as it was too small for our family needs but we stuck with it for a few more years.
Later that year Nett made the decision to return full time to DOCS as a District Officer. The boys, now aged nine and eight, were more able to stand on their own feet so we felt that , with appropriate after-school care this could be handled. She had to attend a refresher course to catch up with all the changes that had occurred since she was last in that role nearly twenty years earlier. Then she made a disastrous mistake in filling in her application form for a DO position: she filled in the wrong form! As a result she was posted to Blacktown office instead of the local one at Chatswood. The department could not or would not transfer her. So, after starting work, she suffered the additional unwanted stress of a long drive to and from Blacktown until someone could be found who was willing to swap regions. It was to be eighteen months before this happened.
Despite this there was a huge highlight for the whole family the following year (1985). At my workplace I was assigned to carry out audits of Westpac’s computer installations in London and Chicago. We decided that this was a great opportunity to put together a round-the-world trip for all of us. We would stop at Los Angeles to see Disneyland and Universal Studios (which Nett and I had been to earlier, in 1969), then visit Fil and Harriet in Ottawa, and finally stay with my father and stepmother in London. I would then report for my work assignment there while Nett would return home withe boys, with a stopover in Rome. So, in May of this year, we scraped together our finances, organised our passports and air fares, and set off for the first leg of this trip, to Los Angeles. Nett and I knew the US well, of course, but for the boys this amazing city was a real blast! Disneyland and Universal Studios were fantastic experiences for them as they would have been for any kids of that age.
The next leg of this trip took us to Ottawa where we stayed with Fil and Harriet. We saw all the sights there, including a great interactive technology museum which fascinated the boys. Then on to New York . All I can remember of this was visiting Central Park where there was a great Alice in Wonderland set-up, but we must have seen other things as well.
Then it was on to London where we were able to stay in my stepmother Jill’s flat in St Johns Wood, a lovely area. It was close to Lords cricket ground so we got to see the Aussie cricketers play a warm-up match as part of their Ashes tour of that year. Unfortunately I then had to report for work, so Nett took the boys to see more of the various sights of London. One that they remembered most was seeing the Guinness World Records exhibition, which including standing next to a mock-up of the world’s tallest man! I can’t remember what else they saw. Unfortunately Michael then came down with a bad case of chicken pox which severely restricted our activities over the last few days.
Finally it was time for me to see Nett and the boys off at the airport for their flight to Rome while I remained in London to complete my work assignment there before going on to Chicago. In Rome Nett showed the boys what she could of the sights there before boarding for the final leg of the trip to Sydney. It was during this flight that Peter also came down badly with chicken pox which made it a nightmare flight for everyone. Fortunately Michael had recovered by then but it was still a horrible experience for Nett and, of course, for Peter. Things got even worse when she finally made it home. Nett found that the interior walls of the house were all covered in mould as the place had been closed up while the temperature dropped during our absence. So it was a shambolic ending to an otherwise wonderful trip! Pop and Nanna came up to take Peter home with them to Culburra to recover from his illness while Nett did her best to restore order at home.
We had a video camera on this trip. It was very cumbersome, as they were in those days, and recorded directly to VHS tapes. I now have four of these tapes on which we recorded this trip. I have not looked at these for a long time. Now I can’t bring myself to look at them at all.
So, it was back to the family routine again as 1985 rolled round to 1986. Our holiday this next year was a camping trip to the Warrumbungle National Park in May. This also took in a visit to the Siding Spring observatory. It was an unusual hive of activity at that time as a supernova had just appeared in the night sky, so we were restricted in what we could see there. After we got back Nett finally found someone willing to swap regions with her at work so that she could now be based much closer to home in Chatswood, an enormous relief to her.
1987 saw a summer camping holiday for us to the Snowy Mountains in January, of which I recall very little. Michael moved up to Ku-Ring-Gai High School and Peter qualified to attend Opportunity Class at Artarmon Primary School (with his friend Phillip Lynch). We upgraded our car to a Mitsubishi Magna station wagon. The extra space in this was very welcome. At the end of the year I started taking the boys on annual pre-Christmas camping trips. These gave Nett a welcome break at home and the opportunity to get things organised for Christmas. This first year it was to Dalmeny, on the south coast where the boys and I met up with my sister Griselda and her husband Cam, coming up from Victoria, and their sons Richard and Douglas (Michael and Peter’s first cousins).
The following year we drove up to Brisbane in June for Expo 88. Lots of interesting things to see and do there. Nett and I were reminded very strongly of when we visited Expo 68 in Montreal! On the way back to Sydney we stayed firstly with Nett’s Auntie Nancy (Pop’s sister) in Casino and then with my sister Gill (then still with Mark) in Armidale.
Later on back home we made a momentous decision that we would splash out on installing a pool and landscaping the back garden around it. It costs us a lot of money but we thought that it would make things more enjoyable at home. It certainly did but in hindsight this may not have been such a good investment as we perhaps didn’t get as much use out of the pool as we could have. However, Nett really loved sitting in the shade on a small corner ledge that we had built at the deep end and reading books or newspapers while up to her waist in water!
The following year saw Peter join Michael at Ku-Ring-Gai High School. In August Nett had her great personal communication skills recognised at work when she was sent on a one-week Spokeswomen’s course at Dubbo. However, I don’t remember if she ever became a spokesperson for DOCS after this! Our family holiday this year was at my sister Laura’s holiday cottage at Lemon Tree Passage on Port Stephens. My annual pre-Christmas camping trip with the boys while Nett stayed at home was at Bouddi National Park, north of Sydney.
We now come to the end of Nett’s time in her 40s. On April 7th 1990 the now teenaged boys and I took her to dinner for her 50th birthday to Berowra Waters Inn, a high class eatery which could only be accessed by boat! This was a wonderful occasion.
The ten years leading up to this well earned celebration had been a very busy and sometimes stressful decade for Nett. She seen the boys well into their high school years and into their teens, and she had re-entered the full time workforce. Practically all her time during this decade had been taken up with work and with ferrying the boys around to their myriad activities. Holidays and nights at the opera had given her spells of enjoyment. She would not have wanted this any other way as her main priority was to grow and develop her boys and give them all the opportunities for personal growth that she could. She would have been more than satisfied with the results of this as they were growing up to be fine, outgoing, confident and above all kind and generous young men.
With early retirement in the offing she could now look forward to an easier life in the years ahead.
Next page: Towards Retirement
Nett 