“I’ve had a fantastic life. I started off in Singleton, NSW. I was 17 and the mines came to Liddell near Singleton. I was in a swimming club at that time as my twin brother was an Australian champion and he had to swim 3 times a day. Being a twin and being the boy, he was spoilt. My Mum had 9 children including 2 lots of twins. The poor woman, no washing machine, just a copper. They were real pioneers those women, and she was poor. My mother would buy a season ticket at the pool for both of us and that kept us out of the house and exercising. We couldn’t afford tennis.
We used to have buses that took us to swimming in Musselbrook, Cessnock and Newcastle and buses that took us to dances in all the halls. The mines came to town and my mother said :-You keep away from those Miners and those Foreigners because they will be at those dances. Of course that was exciting wasn’t it at 17. All I had in that town was sheep farmers or dairy farmers or clod hoppers. I’ve been a rebel all my life. My brother was so good so I had to be naughty.
I was at a barn dance and this very tall Englishman was there. He was 6 1/2 years older than me. He asked me for another dance and my girlfriend said…That girl over there has her eye on him, so it was a challenge (laughs). I hid him from my family for 18 months because you had to be a good girl. Eventually being in a small town my mother found out and he was included. His name was John. I wasn’t allowed to get married till I was 20 so I turned 20 on the Friday, married on the Saturday and left for England to meet his family on the Monday.
Because we travelled a lot our marriage was alive all the time. He also had a great sense of humour so if you got angry, you’d end up laughing at yourself. He was a very special man. All my children will tell you that. When he died my Granddaughter wrote a story saying…’You always treated your wife like a Queen’ and he did. I was very fortunate. I drew the long straw.
Off we went to England and I didn’t even know how to iron a shirt or cook a meal. It was wartime and you weren’t allowed in the kitchen. Everything was precious. I was on the ship with a lot of snotty nose Englishman who were only too happy to pick out the Australian girl. I quickly became someone foreign and I started to stutter a little. In Newcastle we had that real ocker slang back then. When we arrived in England his family were lovely, just like him. They couldn’t do enough for this 17 year old kid.
We travelled the country for 7 months with John’s work. He earned good money and we just blew it. We had a great honeymoon though and arrived back in Sydney when the Queen arrived in 1954. We were walking down the street and there she was with the Duke. She was so tiny. I always thought she was a busty woman but she was so petite.
They kept John’s job in Singleton. He was the Engineer. I met lots of interesting people in the Barracks there but I didn’t want to stay in that town. Anyway there was a job going in Bukit Besi the north of Malaya, almost into what was Siam then. It was an American Iron Ore mine with no road in, just a railway. John had to go 3 months before me so I spent my first wedding anniversary and my 21st alone. I then joined him and we had to be pulled across many rivers on punts to get there as there were no bridges.
I fell pregnant and all these American women told me I had to go to Kuala Lumpur to have my baby. We had no money and couldn’t go. There was an Indian woman in the mine. She was the only Surgeon for all the accidents on the mine and a Malay midwife for the local people. My daughter Mary was born in the mine in 3 hours with no complications luckily. John could see it was no place to raise our baby so he went to Singapore and KL to see if there were any jobs and there were loads. We spent time moving back and forward between both places with his work.
John became a Spare Parts Manager during that time and one of his colleagues wanted him to leave and move to an American Company he worked at. By this stage Janet our second daughter had come along. She was born in KL in the year Malay got their independence. John did go to the American company and they made him the Manager of the whole of East Asia because he was so knowledgable, likeable and personable. He was very successful in his work. John was in Belgium learning the trade and as soon as we got back together again we got pregnant with Richard who was born in 1963.
Singapore had riots at the time and while I was in England they moved all our belongings to Hong Kong without me being able to go back there. My dog was given to someone too. Hong Kong was beautiful back then before tourism. There were no tall building and the people were lovely. Our daughter Mary was diagnosed with a brain tumour which they found out was benign after operating. They had no scans back then and it was an awful procedure but so grateful it was benign. That event really unsettled me.
We got a transfer to Belgium where there was really no English spoken at the time. We got by learning a bit of French. We were there from 1969 to 1973 and then John was transferred to Northern Europe. I’d never been educated but John was away so much, Mary was Nursing, Janet was working and I only had Richard at home so thought I’d better get a job. Janet talked me into working as a car hire Receptionist. I had a clever boss who taught me so much about commerce and customer service. John was a teacher also because I watched how he operated. I was very successful and ended up managing a branch. There were 8 branches around London. We were Ford distributors. I was earning good money and I loved my job but John wanted to buy a business.”
John bought a village shop in the back of Suffolk, where he was born and I’ve never worked so hard in all my life. It was a filthy place when we moved in. There were dog bones, maggots and it stank. You couldn’t see out the windows. We worked 7 days a week, petrol, spare parts, grog, toys, food and he added a Post Office. We had a loan to buy the business so we sold the spare parts and petrol and got rid of the loan. Behind us was an Englishman who loved Soccer. He was a very wealthy man who imported John Deere products and had farms. This man used to get blue seats at the Soccer and once he flew us both to Amsterdam to watch a game. He also had an indoor swimming pool. I had taught swimming in Singapore and Hong Kong so I said if you let me teach my grandchildren in your pool I will teach your grandchildren too. Mary had 2 children at this stage and had bought a burnt out house in the same village. She was nursing at night and living in a caravan while Stephen did the house up.
One day John said…Get your glad rags on. We had both seen a newspaper clipping of a Post Office for sale in Orford. It was an idyllic fishing village with the oldest pub, the oldest church, a castle, people went there just to eat the seafood. Off we went and the building was a beautiful old building with thick walls and a walled in garden of Roses. Down the alleyway next to us was a large hall and a big beautiful community garden for all the terraced houses around. We went back and bought the Post Office and sold our shop to the first person who came. We doubled what we paid for it just by cleaning it and adding the Post office. It was wonderful. I only had to go in one day a week. I had been upholstering too at this stage. I’ve been learning all my life after the lack of learning. I’m a perpetual student and I started upholstering for the local people. I upholstered a chair for a High Court Judge who wanted me to go to London to upholster his sofa.”