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Mum (Jean Myra Tindall) and Dad (Walter George Hale) were married in 1938 and had two children (John and Patricia) before Dad served with the AIF in World War 2. He was a signals sergeant with the 2/14th Field Regiment and saw service in Darwin and New Guinea, including on the Kokoda Track and at Lae.
In the group photo, Dad is #5 on the right - meeting with fellow officers on a beach in New Guinea.
Here we all are as adults in March 2010. That's Patricia on the left with Lone next to John, then me and Cindy.
Dad died in 1990, aged 73 and Mum died in 2009, aged nearly 91. Here they are at Dad's 70th birthday party with one of his sisters, Lillian. They had some tough times, bringing up 5 children and dealing with various domestic dramas, like Dad's gambling, his heavy alcohol drinking, Mum's frequent cardiac illnesses and the usual tribulations in the lives of toddlers, then the turbulence of adolescents, including an illegitimate pregnancy and an expulsion from a tertiary institution. Somehow they stuck together through it all and in the end were totally devoted to each other, especially after we were all out of their hair!.
Of course the dramas didn't end just because we had all left home - there were divorces (all 5 of us children managed this!), remarriages, marital infidelity, theft, gambling, estrangements between siblings and reconciliations, and crises in the lives of the grandchildren (someone from that generation may tell those stories one day.)
Dad was born in 1917, the fifth of 7 children. His mother (Daisy Maud Jubilee Victoria) was a Barclay (Scottish descent) but grew up within the sound of the Bow Bells in London, so technically she was a cockney. She was barely educated and mispronounced words - "revolting clothesline" (revolving) and "arrogant lamp" (hurricane) became part of our family lexicon. However, she was proud of her Scots connection. The Barclays were of Norman origin with Roger de Berkeley coming to England with William the Conqueror, settling first in England before a branch settled in Scotland in the 12th century. In the 14th century a descendant of the Berkeleys of Mathers first spelt the name as Barclay.
Dad's father (George Edward) was from an impoverished English family who traced their lineage back to Sir Matthew Hale (1609 - 1676) who was Chief Justice during the reigns of both Charles I and Charles II - the line of descent is believed to be from Sir Matthew's son Edward (1645 - 1682). Some generations later a William Hale of St Albans, a shepherd (allegedly simple minded) signed his inheritance away to his nephews (named Pugh) so none of Sir Matthew's legacy flowed into our family. Nana and Grandpa Hale arrived in Adelaide aboard the SS Moravia in 1910 with Daisy (4 years old) and Lilian (just 7 months old). They divorced after the birth of their youngest son, Robert, and Grandpa went to live in a hut at Bridgewater (which was very rural and wild in those days) with the second youngest son, Charles who had been born with cerebral palsy. I had always thought that they divorced because Nana could not bear to bring up disabled Charles, but I eventually learned that she really wanted to be with another man ("Pop Spargo") whom she met when he was working as a house painter at her daughter Daisy's house. In order to obtain a divorce in the early 1930's they had to prove an attempt at reconciliation so Nan got pregnant with Robert and after his birth agreed to adultery and achieved her divorce!
Despite his disabilities and total lack of education, Charles could recognise a phonogram record by the colours and shapes of the letters on the label and knew exactly what song and artist was to be played. When Grandpa died it fell on Dad to arrange custodial care for Charles in the Enfield Receiving House, an adjunct of the Hillcrest Mental Hospital ( all that was available in those days) and Dad said it broke his heart to have to do this. Later Charles was moved to Strathmont Centre for the Intellectually Disabled and lived his remaining days there. Not surprisingly, given the circumstances of his birth (basically as a convenience for Nan to obtain the divorce she wanted), Bob was a complete "black sheep" - deported from New Zealand for fraud, he escaped arrest by Australian authorities at Sydney airport and fled to the UK where he became a baggage handler at Heathrow Airport. Fancy this crook in charge of your valued possessions! After a lengthy period of "exile" he was able to visit Australia and we met him on several occasions. Dad's oldest brother, Len went to Western Australia looking for work during the Depression and became a committed communist, attaining quite senior positions in the postal union. The Western Hales have stayed in touch with us over many years, Len's sons corresponding in age to four of us. All of Dad's sisters stayed in Adelaide, married and raised families but Daisy died at quite a young age from breast cancer. Lil and Vi, their husbands (Len and Bill respectively) and their children were frequent figures in our childhoods.
Nana worked as a housemaid for wealthy Adelaide families. I remember her as a quiet dour woman sitting in our kitchen by the wood stove knitting socks, while Grandpa seemed to me to be a slightly scary "hermit". I think he stayed with us for a few weeks once when he had broken his leg. I also remember visiting Nana in a nursing home after she developed Parkinson's Disease.
Dad seems to have wandered between his older sisters' homes or those of friends and his schooling was limited to primary school (at St Andrews in Walkerville, but only because Nana was the cleaner there). He did win a scholarship to Pulteney Grammar but couldn't take it up because he had no decent boots to enable him to walk from Walkerville to the city. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith and then began work building chasses for trams. After the war he set himself up as a one man business, repairing crashed cars, firstly working out of a local service station run by a mate (Uncle Ralph - everyone we knew was an uncle or an auntie in those days!!) but later building his own workshop in the back yard of our family home on Magill Rd at Stepney. To supplement his income he created "collapsible" merry-go-rounds which he towed to various sites for work picnics and special parties, or to locations where holiday crowds were likely to congregate. He also fashioned "toy town trains' out of old cars and would similarly rent these out or sell rides in them. Dad was a real innovator - imagine what he could have achieved if he had had the advantages of a high school or even university, education. He bought an old van from the Childrens' Hospital (a "Kangaroo" van that was used to pick up sick children and/or to take them on outings) and converted it into a mobile home, not quite in the Winnebago class but good enough to live and sleep in on holidays. Later on, he even produced pogo sticks! And between working at the crash repairs, building and maintaining merry-go- rounds and trains, he built two shacks at North Neeta on the River Murray. He was a very friendly man who accepted most of our friends warm heartedly, and he enjoyed relaxing over a beer, yarning about anything, philosophising in his own way or reciting various pieces of poetry. He had a wonderful sense of humour once you appreciated that facetiousness was a specialty of his. His widespread popularity across all stratas of society was demonstrated it his funeral which was attended by over a hundred people, from bikies to businessmen, as well as family and members of the 2/14th.
He was very proud of his children but sometimes had difficulty expressing this or his love for us openly - we were more likely to receive a "back-handed" compliment or an exhortation to do better ("What happened to the other 2%?" might be said if one of us achieved 98% in a test). There were some tensions between Dad and brother John, mainly because Dad had been absent from John's life for most of the war years and John felt as though a boarder (Pop Gill) who lived with Mum and the children during this time was more of a father figure. As both aged, it was fascinating to see how like Dad John was becoming!! And they made their peace eventually. As for the girls in the family, we all adored Dad - he was a "softer touch" than Mum.
Dad died while sitting in the grandstand at Prospect Oval watching his beloved North Adelaide Roosters football team play West Torrens Eagles (North was soundly beaten!). He had previously had a femoral bypass and his cardiovascular system was pretty damaged from smoking, diabetes and the ravages of the war, I guess. He probably died from a ruptured aortic aneurysm, and we believe he knew his condition and the short prognosis it entailed. He never told any of us, just quietly put his affairs in order and went on enjoying life. Three days before he died, while at the Anzac Day lunch with the Adelaide contingent of the 2/14th , he was offered the presidency for the coming year but he declined - now we knew why.
(Jennifer Tindall, wife of my cousin Colin, has collated the Tindall family history) Mum was born in 1918, the fourth of five children. Her father (James Henry) was allegedly a strict disciplinarian who disapproved of Dad. He always said Grandpa Tindall was "bog Irish" but some notes I found among Mum's things show that her great grandfather (Frederick William) was born in Lincolnshire, England of the Tindale line, and her dad was actually born in Brunswick, Victoria, in 1888. But Grandpa Tindall's mother (Anne Walsh) was born in Ireland, so maybe my dad thought Grandpa inherited some Irish pig headedness from her. I never knew Grandpa Tindall nor Nana Tindall (Ruby Adelaide Naomi Lynch) but all the family folk lore says she was an absolute saint. Mum's only brother, James died in his early 50's from a heart attack - he was an industrious man, who worked as a bookie's penciller to supplement his salary from accounting. He was a gentle, kindly man whom we all loved. Mum's youngest sister Anne, was a real tearway with a reputation for revealing clothes and a wild life style. She spent much of her life interstate and died, also quite young, from malignant melanoma - she loved sunbathing in a bikini. Sylvia mostly lived in NSW and Mum would visit her in Coffs Harbour - they were great friends as well as sisters. Ruby (Billie) was a troubled soul, often running away from her marriage to Ted to live with other men but eventually settling into a more quiet life in Adelaide with Ted - she probably had chronic anorexia nervosa. She brought up a daughter, Cheryl, who is the same age as me but was most likely an illegitimate child of Anne's.
Mum grew up in the city and went to Adelaide High School for three years, achieving her Intermediate Certificate which was fairly advanced education for a girl in the 1930's. Her most sophisticated employment was as a telephonist at the city's main exchange. She was a determined woman who took her family responsibilities seriously, although I do remember her being so upset with Dad's drinking and gambling that she threatened to leave him. She required hospitalisation on several occasions through the 1950's and 60's with cardiac disease and Dad would take over the house - actually he was a pretty good cook and house manager. Mum would do anything to help us with our problems, whether they be about homework or something more serious, and sometimes I felt as though she was intruding. As I got older I realised what an amazing rock she had been in our family and how loving her "control" of the family had really been. She was totally devastated when Dad died, but over time brought the Tindall determinedness to getting on with her own life. She stayed on in their home (by now in Deepdene Ave at Klemzig) by herself for about 15 years but needed more assistance as her senile dementia progressed. Eventually we were able to place her in a lovely nursing home where she was very happy, still making friends and charming people up to the few days before her death. Despite her cardiac history, it was old age and an aggressive cancer of the head of the pancreas that caused her death. I had to tell her about the cancer and she was remarkably philosophical, saying it was her time to go. We tried to make her comfortable and she had a surgical procedure to alleviate the jaundice, but it was only a week later that she succumbed. All her daughters and one of of her grand-daughters were with her at the end, and over the preceding weekend, many family and friends came to say "goodbye". My son and his wife flew down from Sydney to see her. At her funeral, other relatives came from interstate - she was very much loved by a lot of people. Her grandchildren idolised her and their tribute at her funeral was gently humorous and deeply moving. Mum was the last of both her own and Dad's family. We gave her a jolly good send off, with the funeral at her Church - with an extravagant morning tea cum lunch catered by the Womens Guild - and then holding a wake at one of the pubs on Magill Rd where she and Dad had both spent time (mainly Dad, if I'm honest!) when we lived at Stepney.
We grew up on Magill Rd. Although this is commercial and light industrial now, it was a real village in the 1950's. There were lots of family homes and cottages, with a corner general store in one direction and a draper's in the other. There were three pubs within walking distance ( The Oriental, The Alma and The Maid and Magpie - all still there but much renovated over the years) and we even had our own undertakers nearby. Not far away on Payneham Rd were a butcher's, a dental surgery (a ghastly man with primitive equipment!), a continental deli, a hairdresser and a fish and chip shop. And down George St on the corner with Payneham Rd was the Capitol picture theatre. What more could any family want within a few minutes of home?
Our house was a rather strange one by modern standards - a wide central passage way with one main room each side (Mum and Dad's bedroom on one side and a lounge room on the other) at the Magill Rd frontage, then a smaller room each side ( a bedroom on the right and an oddly shaped space on the left which contained the steps down into a large cellar) towards the back end of the passage which spilled out into a large kitchen cum dining room with another bedroom to the left. Then Dad had added a concrete shell of a room across the entire width of the house, and beyond that was a verandah leading out to a large back yard. The cellar was actually a four room house downstairs, complete with kitchen and was lived in at various times by Auntie Billie (possibly others, I'm not sure). Later what had been the kitchen became a bedroom for Lone and me and the cellar was always a refuge for all of us from the heat in summer (no airconditioning in the 1950's and 60's). There had been an external stairway in the room that ran across the back of the main house, but I don't remember this being used during my time at Magill Rd. We had a toilet on one end of the verandah (plus chamber pots under the beds when we were too little to venture outside at night) and our bathroom was a small shed with a wood chip heater (later replaced by a gas one). Mum had a copper on the verandah and would boil the washing in it before pushing it through a hand wringer, over two cement troughs. Later she acquired a washing machine although the water still had to be heated by an immersion heater.
Before Dad purchased a fridge, we kept things cool in a coolgardie safe or an ice chest and Mum would buy fresh produce daily. A green grocer (Bert Twell) would home deliver.The ice man came by with his horse drawn cart, and the "rabbitoh" sold pairs of kittens for 1 shilling and sixpence. Milk was delivered every morning, poured into a billy can left on the front step. I remember getting our very first block of icecream (in a plain grey cardboard box) to store in the freezer section of the new fridge.
Although Dad was terrific at inventing and building things like merry-go-rounds, he didn't follow through with some of the home handy man stuff - the room he built across the back of the house was never finished. He put up cupboards in the kitchen but didn't get around to shaping the doors so they were forever covered by curtains hanging on dowel rods.
Out back, there was a chook house and a wood shed, a large walnut tree and eventually, Dad built his workshop across the very far boundary. Over the years, we had ducks, hens, a lamb (which Dad apparently won in a raffle at a pub) and even a kangaroo, called Lady - a present from Uncle Derek, a long distance truckie who had probably hit and killed its mother. She was a joey when we got her and I suppose it's amazing that she survived - there was a side "garden" to the house which Dad fenced off for her, but as she grew she also acquired the ability to leap over the front fence and bound off down Magill Rd. After a few such escapades and because she was really growing quite large, Dad disposed of her ( but he did tell us he'd taken her to a wild life park). The lamb met a similar fate, after it head butted Mum and she ended up in a muddy mess.
We had more "normal" pets as well - John's dog, Toby, was a fox terrier who seemed to live forever, cats, silkworms, mice, coloured chickens from the Royal Adelaide Show and a number of budgies, who usually were happy to be let out of their cage and sit on someone's shoulder. Dad obtained a rosella parrot and a one-legged magpie who shared an aviary - he even tried to fashion a wooden leg for the magpie (Mogul)! (I always thought that the story of Dad and his one legged magpie would make a great book for children.) They seemed to detest each other and refused to share the same perch, but after one died the other soon followed - maybe a broken heart! However, the most famous pet of all was the cross golden cocker spaniel, Choffles, which we originally bought as a Mother's Day present, but which rapidly became Dad's inseparable companion. Choff fell out of a moving car one day and permanently damaged a front leg, forever after held that paw aloft and was there-after the "three legged mutt". He went everywhere with Dad, to the shack, out on merry go round jobs, riding in the toy town trains, always totally devoted to his master.
Trams ran down the middle of the road and we could catch one up to St Bernard's Rd and then walk a bit to visit to visit Dad's sister, Lil. (The trams and Lady bounding down the road ahead of them made for fascinating drama!) Dad had a model T Ford buckboard and we drove to visit another sister, Violet, who lived in Royston Park. At various times, Mum's sister, Ruby, whom we called Billie, lived around the corner from us, while her brother, Jim, lived over in Dulwich. Extended family played a huge part in our childhood and we knew all our cousins. And of course there were a host of friends who were all called "auntie" and "uncle" as well. Christmas Eve was a long adventure of multiple calls into the homes of various other families. Dad's mates from the war included Uncle Johnnie and Auntie Joyce (Sloan), Uncle Clarrie and Auntie Grace (Thomas), Uncle Lloyd and Auntie Dorothy (Brown).
Dad became involved with the RSL after the war and we spent quite a few evenings at electric light cricket matches or dances. He rarely spoke of his experiences in the war except to make light of them (eg, telling us that every time there was an air raid on Darwin and the troops were moved out of town, the Army's idea of entertainment was to show the movie "40,000 Horsemen"starring Chips Rafferty so he saw it 23 times) or to let us know (but only in very general terms) it was a bloody mess run by incompetent fools. He hated rice, and curries, both of which he associated with the food privation he endured while away, and for some years he lamented that the Japanese had invaded Australia anyway by virtue of their investments and export markets.
He loved sports, and there were night football matches at Norwood Oval, baseball games there too, cycling at the Norwood velodrome, Friday nights at Rowley Park Speedway or the "trots" at Wayville, Saturdays at Prospect Oval for football or at Victoria Park for the horses. He lived in hope of making a fortune from racing and owned some horses in the early 1950's. His gambling created problems and eventually Mum had to take control of the budget. But when he won we all celebrated, going up to the continental deli to buy comics, chocolates and exotica like roll mops. Sometimes, crayfish would appear as a really special treat.
Dad's drinking was also an irritant to Mum. These were the days of 6 o'clock closing but there was often a card game going on well past closing time. Mum would always have the evening meal on the table at 5.30pm and when Dad hadn't come home, one of the children would be sent to the pub to collect him. Needless to say the publicans were known to us as Uncle Keith or Auntie Mary! When Dad was out at a friends, drinking, he would get quite loquacious and recite poetry, some of which was decidedly "blue" - Mum particularly hated this. There was one special poem which starts "My wife, she's a high born lady, a little bit plump and a little bit shady" which really drove her mad, but in later years was a source of amusement for her and us kids. Dad also had some lovely poems he'd recite for children - one about " rabbit who developed the habit of twitching the end of his nose" and "Lucy grasshopper dressed in green" which was somehow dedicated to Patricia. One of his favourites talked of holding back the dawn now that a certain birthday has come - we finally tracked it down with the correct words and the author many years later - it was written by an Australian woman and published in 1939 and is quite a sad reflection on her life as she approaches her 19th birthday.
In the early years, holidays were spent at Hallett Cove which was the end of the earth then - all sand dunes, rough shacks and rugged coastline. There were dandelions and pig face growing in the sand and I remember making chains from the flowers with Lone. We also took the mosquito nets outside to play "brides" one day and got them totally coated with sandy mud somehow. Dad usually drove back to Adelaide every day to work and the model T laboured hard to get up and over the Brighton Rd hill. I almost always managed to catch croup or whooping cough when we were away and there would be mad drives to the Victoria Hotel to phone our GP for advice. After Dad teamed up with the Dickers we spent holidays on the Murray at North Neeta and slowly Dad acquired and rebuilt the shack there. (See "On the River Murray"). Other holidays were spent at Port Broughton where Dad would set up a merry go round and make a financial venture out of the trip. One Christmas, the weather was so hot that Mum just couldn't stand it, and brother John drove from Adelaide to collect her and the kids and bring us home on Christmas Eve.
Dad became good mates with several of the local families (he made friends wherever he went) and interestingly, one of these was the Evans clan, a farming family with a property some miles out of the town - their daughter, Anne and I later met at Adelaide Girls High School and the family contacts were cemented further. Then, Anne, Denise (see "Special Friends") and I would stay in the Evans shack in Pt Broughton while Dad and sometimes, Mum stayed in the van near the hotel and the vacant block where he would set up the merry go round.
When I was growing up, our church was All Souls Anglican Church in St Peters. I played netball and tennis for the church teams and even taught Sunday School for a few years. My first marriage to Brenton (Joshua's father) was celebrated there.
Dad had no time for organised religion but to see him at the river, watching the birds, fishing or talking to the moon and stars, was to see a man who recognised nature as a god.
Mum on the other hand, had been imbued with religion in her childhood when she and her mother would attend St Mary's, a small Anglican church in a side street near her family home in Carrington St. She never forced her beliefs on anyone, but after moving to Klemzig when the Magill Rd house had been sold she became a regular attender at St Aidan's on Payneham Rd - she took great comfort from her beliefs after Dad died and during her last illness was much eased by visits from the parish rector ( a wonderful woman called Janet Phillips).
Weekends were invariably busy - when at Magill Rd, John and his mates would roll in on a Saturday and Patricia and Mum would make piles of sandwiches for them. Before we spent Saturdays playing sport, we girls would go around to the Capitol cinema and see whatever was showing, including the cliff hanger serials which carried on week after week with the hero or heroine always in diabolical strife. Dad always gave us enough money for a drink ( Coke in a glass bottle) and a sweet ( White Knights or Choochoo bars were my favourites) as well as the ticket. I think he and Mum were glad to have a few hours peace from us!! Sundays usually involved a drive in the buck board- to Bridgewater to see Grandpa and Charles, sometimes into the Adelaide hills or down to the beach, and sometimes to other relatives or friends' homes. Of course, after I started at High School my weekends involved doing homework. By then I was playing hockey for the school on Saturday afternoons, and debating on Friday nights, so Sundays were essential to get the home work done for Monday morning.
Dad loved "Western" movies and took Mum to the Capitol every Wednesday night for Ranch Night - he used to say it took her years to work out why they always seemed to see cowboy and indian films on a Wednesday night. Picture theatres disappeared with the coming of TV, and the "Cap" became a Tom's supermarket which was quite an innovation in suburban Adelaide at the time - when you think about the supermarkets in every suburb now and the range of goods for sale, it is amazing to think this development has only taken 45 years or so. Similarly, it has only been in my lifetime that refrigerators, modern washing machines and TV's have become commonplace. My AWA transistor radio - small enough to carry, with an ear plug for "silent" listening was a marvel in 1963 when Dad gave it to me as a present for doing well in first year at high school. (In the past 10 - 20 years, the advances in technology have been astronomical by comparison - I had a mobile phone in 1995 which was the size of a brick and now my mobile is small and comes with a camera and other functions I can't begin to use properly!)
Before 1960, our evening entertainment at home was the radio - a valve set which occupied a large portion of the mantel piece. There were serials on most nights, like Kid Grayson, or children's shows like Kangaroos on Parade, and music shows broadcast live from radio studios - I remember going into 5KA to be in the audience. We could also play records on the phonogramme. Dad had a collection of 78 rpm discs - they eventually provided the music for his merry-go-rounds - and we girls accumulated 33's. My first LP record was "Summer Holiday" by Cliff Richard and The Shadows, bought for one pound, seventeen shillings and sixpence after I had won 2 guineas in an essay writing competition run by the St Peters Council. In the 1960's we were totally smitten with bands out of the UK - The Beatles were our number 1 favourites, but we enjoyed Hermans Hermits, The Animals, Freddie and The Dreamers, Dusty Springfield, Lulu etc. I was never a great Rolling Stones fan but their music has certainly stood the test of time. If Lone and I had kept our collection of Beatles memorabilia it would be worth a fortune today!
Mum was the secretary/treasurer for the St Peters Marching Girls and Cindy, Lone and I were all in the teams in the late 1950's. We would practise in the East End Market warehouses but I also remember we would go to the St Peters town hall on Friday nights - ? was this for marching girls or for some other reason? We usually stopped at a deli on Payneham Rd on the way home for a milkshake and to watch "Sea Hunt" with Lloyd Bridges on the TV there. One night we arrived home to find Dad had bought our first TV - black and white of course. Eventually we had two - a furniture piece on legs which stood in the lounge and a portable which travelled between the kitchen and Mum and Dad's bedroom. He loved shows like Pot Black ( even in black and white), the football from Melbourne and the cricket. Before TV he would listen to the footy and cricket on the radio. The Magarey Medal count was a special night especially if a North Adelaide player was in the running - we kids would keep a tally of the votes for certain individual players. Dad admired Ken McKay, the Lindner brothers, Bob Hammond and Barry Barbary but his favourite player was Barry Robran. When Dad turned 70, I managed ( with the help of a friend who knew Barry's wife) to invite Barry to the party - he was pleased to attend as his father had been in the 2/14th and Dad and his mates were thrilled to meet him.
"The Cisco Kid" and "The Texas Rangers" were amongst our favourite shows to watch when we first got home from school, and then "Doctor Who" was an absolute must at 6.00pm. Lone and I would sometimes turn on a tantrum if there was a Sunday night movie we wanted to watch - this finished well after we were supposed to be in bed.
Before starting primary school, Lone and I went to Agnes Goode kindergarten - Dad would pick us up from morning kindy, or take us if we were in the afternoon group and we usually stopped at the Oriental or Alma hotels for a raspberry and lemonade while he had a beer. All we children attended East Adelaide Primary School - in the early years we caught the tram down Payneham Rd to Westminster St, and later the bus. On the whole I loved school but my Grade 3 teacher ( Miss Girdham) was a tyrant who would belt us with a blackboard ruler if she thought we were not trying or were disrupting class. Dad had bought me a satchel of which I was very proud, but which unfortunately would occasionally fall over at the side of my desk with a small thump. Miss Girdham threw it out a window one day, upsetting me awfully. Mrs Davies was my teacher in Grades 4 and 5 - she was warm and friendly and a wonderful teacher. In Grade 6, I had Miss Criddle who had "a thing" for homework being done in small boxes across and down a page with the boxes filled in with the tiniest writing and drawings we could manage. My Grade 7 teacher, Mrs Cochrane was a sensible woman who valued our efforts and made most of us feel that we could go on and achieve whatever we desired.
My self belief was fostered particularly by Mum - Dad tended to take vicarious pride in my achievements but rarely said out loud that he believed I could expect more than an average job before marriage and family life. Because Mum was an old scholar of Adelaide High School, I was able to go there even though we didn't live in its catchment area. I attended the girls school in Grote St - by now, the boys school had been split off and housed on West Tce. Here I was blessed with some of the most amazing teachers a girl could hope for - Miss Stodart (Maths), Miss Whyte (English) and Mrs Kearney (Latin). Of course, there were other teachers who didn't inspire me greatly, but overall, I think my years at AGHS were some of the happiest in my life. I worked damn hard, there was tons of homework and I played hockey, debated, produced the School Magazine in my final year, was a Prefect in the last two years, made lasting friendships ( with some of the boys from down the road, as well as girls at Grote St) and excelled academically. My abilities to organise my time, prioritise tasks, work on several at one time but see them all to completion in a set time frame, had their foundation in the busy and fulfilling life I fashioned for myself at AGHS. My love of the English language and its correct use, grammar and punctuation while appreciating how melodic it can be, and how it can convey abstract concepts was forged in Miss Whyte's and Mrs Kearney's classes. The discipline of maths and Latin taught me to value rules and proper functions but Miss Stodart and Mrs Kearney also imparted flexibility and an understanding that rules sometimes need to be bent if not broken. There was plenty of humour, some silly school girl stuff, some more sophisticated with irony and nuance involved, in our classroom exchanges, especially in Leaving and Leaving Honours (Matric) when my teachers related to us as emerging adults. "Girls can do anything they set their minds to" could well have been the school motto. (Remember this was the 1960's and such ideas were not widely embraced).
I applied for university - the first person in my family to do so - and gained entry to Medicine and won a Menzies Scholarship. I so wanted to continue Latin and English at Adelaide University that I bought all the texts and enrolled in these subjects as my "elective" subjects in First Year Medicine - I was really upset to discover that I was in the group of first years to be sent to the new Flinders University at Bedford Park, where there were no electives - we had to do maths, physics, chemistry and biology. In contrast to AGHS this was a most miserable year for me! I hated Flinders - sterile, wind blown, barren hills between a few modern buildings, lecturers I thought were incompetent, failing exams but then being passed anyway because they had to get us back to Adelaide Uni to pick up Medicine proper the next year. The only fun things were driving the old Vauxhall Dad had done up for me, picking up mates to take to Uni and meeting some of the other guys and girls who would be going back to Medicine at Adelaide with me. Even after starting studies at the Medical School on Frome Rd, I found university life hard to adjust to - I missed the structure of high school and the certainty I could master any subject with the guidance of the teachers I had so valued there, but over time a routine developed and I managed to do reasonably well. But as Dad had so often said, I was now "a small fish in a big pond" and periodically I doubted whether I was ever going to complete the course or be a decent doctor, if I did. At times I felt like I came from "the wrong side of the tracks" and didn't belong in a class which included many sons and daughters of old Adelaide medical families. Probably the best lessons I learned were that I didn't have to be top in every exam, that I didn't have to excel in all aspects, and that medicine was as much an art, to be garnered and absorbed over time, as a science which could be learned from some infallible set of rules. Mind you, it wasn't all angst and late adolescent turmoil - we had great fun at "formal" events, like the annual medical students ball or Prosh Day, and at informal gatherings in the Botanic Hotel or the Uni refectory, playing bridge (although I didn't like the "playing for sheep stations" mentality of some of the games) in the Common Room, visiting each others homes, mucking around in lab sessions or anatomy class.
I made many wonderful friends - a lot of them loved coming to see Mum and Dad : there was always a beer to be had or Dad would cook steak and mushrooms on the wood stove. He would repair their cars or advise them where to go for cheap parts or a paint job. Mum would listen to their troubles and offer motherly support. My best friend was Sandy (see "Special Friends"). Her father was a widower, an obstetrician and gynaecologist who never made me feel an outsider. He taught me a lot about jazz and cooking - he even took my on hill climbs in his Morgan car. The days I spent with Sandy and her dad were true bright spots.
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Here are the members of my Medical School class who attended a reunion at Mildura in 2008. That's Sandy in the blue shirt.
During the first three years at Medical School I experienced what I now know to be the signs of a depressive illness, fortunately mild, with eventual recovery without medication or professional help, but usually after I had missed days of lectures. I would get up and go to Uni but then spend the days in aimless wandering about the campus, along the Torrens or window shopping in the city. Then there would be a mad scramble to borrow lecture notes from Sandy and try to catch up.
In retrospect I think my decision to leave home at nearly 21 and live with Brenton ( whom I married a few months later) was a decision ill made because of this tendency to self destruct, albeit moderately rather than totally. I mean no disrespect to Brenton - he was genuine in his affection for me, but he was a "drop out" from Uni, from a working class family and I think I was subconsciously saying that this was all that someone of my background deserved. I guess my feelings of inadequacy or "undeservedness" in the world of tertiary achievement were stronger than the lessons of high school that I could be, and deserved to be, anything I wanted. It was only when I was within a whisker of losing everything I had worked for - married, with a new baby, living on a few scholarship $ per week, with a husband unable to get a meaningful job, and in serious danger of failing a year of Medicine, that I finally realised that I did truly want a career and a life with more self fulfillment and independence than the stereotype of a 1950/60's woman. It still took me several years to get the courage to move out of my marriage and I will always regret hurting Brenton and Joshua - both the unhappiness of living with me while I was sorting all this out in my head and the actual trauma of the separation. I know now that this was the only correct decision for me, but I am truly grateful that my marriage produced Joshua. (He and I have had some pretty rough periods in our relationship, mostly of my making, but the inescapable truth for me is that he is the most precious person in my life - I think my second husband, Eion, will understand this sentiment and not be offended by it.)
Depression has been a recurring theme in our family - with the hindsight of my psychiatric knowledge, I can theorise that Dad's gambling and alcohol dependence were manifestations of a depressive tendency and Mum spent some time in a hotel/rest home after the birth of at least one of the children, possibly for a depressive reaction. I certainly now see some times in my life when depressive thinking was holding sway and I did experience a depressive reaction after Joshua's birth. In recent years I have required antidepressant medication and support from a psychiatrist and my own gambling addiction was most probably a depressive equivalent. There were several years when a panic disorder ruled my life, preventing me from public speaking or undergoing job interviews unless I took anxiolytics. Joshua suffered from panic disorder as an adolescent and has endured major depressive episodes as an adult. A niece has a bipolar illness and cousins in WA have also been afflicted with depression.
There are however, many more cheerful things to talk about in this memoir!
Sometime during the 1970's, Mum and Dad sold the house on Magill Rd and moved to a little red brick place in Deepdene Ave at Klemzig. Of course Dad had to build another shed, and he and Mum both enjoyed the garden they established, front and back. Typical of Dad he bought Mum a Mother's Day present one year that only he could use - a rotary hoe, so that he could turn over the back yard and plant vegetables. (Other notable gifts for her over the years, were a compressor and a chain saw!!) As at Magill Rd, they made friends all over the neighbourhood and the house was often filled with family or neighbours, sharing a meal or chatting over cups of tea. After he retired from the crash repair business, Dad would often go the shack for days at a time, always accompanied by Choff. If Mum stayed at home, she was content to do so. They seemed more relaxed in or out of each other's company. Outings with what remained of the 2/14th veterans and their wives were enjoyed and looked forward to. Grand children were warmly welcomed and spoilt, and Christmas was still a monster affair with everyone gathered in the shed, mountains of food and drink, and a few dollars in an envelope as a gift for all who came.
I was quite worried for Dad when I learned he was going to retire - I had always assumed that he enjoyed work and the satisfaction of providing for his family - after all, he rarely took a sick day, he would spend hours in the shed in the sweltering heat banging out dents, oxy welding, manipulating putty etc. He was genuinely annoyed with us if he thought we were feigning illness to avoid school and he imparted a very strong work ethic. So imagine my surprise when he told me how much he had hated being tied to his work routine and how very very much he was anticipating retirement. He enjoyed his "freedom" so much it was a real pleasure to be with him and Mum - in these later years it was though demons and devils had disappeared from their lives and they could finally appreciate each other and the life they made together.
After Dad's death, we would visit Mum for meals but it soon became easier for us to take her out every 6 weeks or so for lunch at a hotel, where no-one need cook or clean up and we could all catch up on news from the various families. Patricia bore the brunt of Mum's worsening dementia as she was the one daughter who was retired from work and could make time for visits to Deepdene Ave or pick Mum up to go to appointments. The rest of us did as much as we could, but really Patricia was an absolute angel for many years.
One particular event which caused distress among us siblings was Leonie's decision to sell the shack - she had claimed it as her inheritance after Dad's death saying he had promised it to her because she was his
"baby" and the one who had helped him most with the merry-go-round work. I personally did not have an issue with this although I think the others did. As long as the shack was in the family and we were able to use it, things stayed pretty calm, but the state government brought in some requirements for shack upkeep (electricity, proper sewerage systems etc) which would have cost many thousands of dollars to implement. Lone did not have the money, and at that time neither did Eion and I (although I was the highest earning member of the family). She announced at a family lunch with mum that she had no option but to sell and the next door neighbour at North Neeta had a mate who wanted to buy. So the shack disappeared from our lives - sadly, my brother and another sister feel quite embittered that it happened and there continue to be strained relationships because of this.
Dad's father (George Edward) was from an impoverished English family who traced their lineage back to Sir Matthew Hale (1609 - 1676) who was Chief Justice during the reigns of both Charles I and Charles II - the line of descent is believed to be from Sir Matthew's son Edward (1645 - 1682). Some generations later a William Hale of St Albans, a shepherd (allegedly simple minded) signed his inheritance away to his nephews (named Pugh) so none of Sir Matthew's legacy flowed into our family. Nana and Grandpa Hale arrived in Adelaide aboard the SS Moravia in 1910 with Daisy (4 years old) and Lilian (just 7 months old). They divorced after the birth of their youngest son, Robert, and Grandpa went to live in a hut at Bridgewater (which was very rural and wild in those days) with the second youngest son, Charles who had been born with cerebral palsy. I had always thought that they divorced because Nana could not bear to bring up disabled Charles, but I eventually learned that she really wanted to be with another man ("Pop Spargo") whom she met when he was working as a house painter at her daughter Daisy's house. In order to obtain a divorce in the early 1930's they had to prove an attempt at reconciliation so Nan got pregnant with Robert and after his birth agreed to adultery and achieved her divorce!
Despite his disabilities and total lack of education, Charles could recognise a phonogram record by the colours and shapes of the letters on the label and knew exactly what song and artist was to be played. When Grandpa died it fell on Dad to arrange custodial care for Charles in the Enfield Receiving House, an adjunct of the Hillcrest Mental Hospital ( all that was available in those days) and Dad said it broke his heart to have to do this. Later Charles was moved to Strathmont Centre for the Intellectually Disabled and lived his remaining days there. Not surprisingly, given the circumstances of his birth (basically as a convenience for Nan to obtain the divorce she wanted), Bob was a complete "black sheep" - deported from New Zealand for fraud, he escaped arrest by Australian authorities at Sydney airport and fled to the UK where he became a baggage handler at Heathrow Airport. Fancy this crook in charge of your valued possessions! After a lengthy period of "exile" he was able to visit Australia and we met him on several occasions. Dad's oldest brother, Len went to Western Australia looking for work during the Depression and became a committed communist, attaining quite senior positions in the postal union. The Western Hales have stayed in touch with us over many years, Len's sons corresponding in age to four of us. All of Dad's sisters stayed in Adelaide, married and raised families but Daisy died at quite a young age from breast cancer. Lil and Vi, their husbands (Len and Bill respectively) and their children were frequent figures in our childhoods.
Nana worked as a housemaid for wealthy Adelaide families. I remember her as a quiet dour woman sitting in our kitchen by the wood stove knitting socks, while Grandpa seemed to me to be a slightly scary "hermit". I think he stayed with us for a few weeks once when he had broken his leg. I also remember visiting Nana in a nursing home after she developed Parkinson's Disease.
Dad seems to have wandered between his older sisters' homes or those of friends and his schooling was limited to primary school (at St Andrews in Walkerville, but only because Nana was the cleaner there). He did win a scholarship to Pulteney Grammar but couldn't take it up because he had no decent boots to enable him to walk from Walkerville to the city. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith and then began work building chasses for trams. After the war he set himself up as a one man business, repairing crashed cars, firstly working out of a local service station run by a mate (Uncle Ralph - everyone we knew was an uncle or an auntie in those days!!) but later building his own workshop in the back yard of our family home on Magill Rd at Stepney. To supplement his income he created "collapsible" merry-go-rounds which he towed to various sites for work picnics and special parties, or to locations where holiday crowds were likely to congregate. He also fashioned "toy town trains' out of old cars and would similarly rent these out or sell rides in them. Dad was a real innovator - imagine what he could have achieved if he had had the advantages of a high school or even university, education. He bought an old van from the Childrens' Hospital (a "Kangaroo" van that was used to pick up sick children and/or to take them on outings) and converted it into a mobile home, not quite in the Winnebago class but good enough to live and sleep in on holidays. Later on, he even produced pogo sticks! And between working at the crash repairs, building and maintaining merry-go- rounds and trains, he built two shacks at North Neeta on the River Murray. He was a very friendly man who accepted most of our friends warm heartedly, and he enjoyed relaxing over a beer, yarning about anything, philosophising in his own way or reciting various pieces of poetry. He had a wonderful sense of humour once you appreciated that facetiousness was a specialty of his. His widespread popularity across all stratas of society was demonstrated it his funeral which was attended by over a hundred people, from bikies to businessmen, as well as family and members of the 2/14th.
He was very proud of his children but sometimes had difficulty expressing this or his love for us openly - we were more likely to receive a "back-handed" compliment or an exhortation to do better ("What happened to the other 2%?" might be said if one of us achieved 98% in a test). There were some tensions between Dad and brother John, mainly because Dad had been absent from John's life for most of the war years and John felt as though a boarder (Pop Gill) who lived with Mum and the children during this time was more of a father figure. As both aged, it was fascinating to see how like Dad John was becoming!! And they made their peace eventually. As for the girls in the family, we all adored Dad - he was a "softer touch" than Mum.
Dad died while sitting in the grandstand at Prospect Oval watching his beloved North Adelaide Roosters football team play West Torrens Eagles (North was soundly beaten!). He had previously had a femoral bypass and his cardiovascular system was pretty damaged from smoking, diabetes and the ravages of the war, I guess. He probably died from a ruptured aortic aneurysm, and we believe he knew his condition and the short prognosis it entailed. He never told any of us, just quietly put his affairs in order and went on enjoying life. Three days before he died, while at the Anzac Day lunch with the Adelaide contingent of the 2/14th , he was offered the presidency for the coming year but he declined - now we knew why.
(Jennifer Tindall, wife of my cousin Colin, has collated the Tindall family history) Mum was born in 1918, the fourth of five children. Her father (James Henry) was allegedly a strict disciplinarian who disapproved of Dad. He always said Grandpa Tindall was "bog Irish" but some notes I found among Mum's things show that her great grandfather (Frederick William) was born in Lincolnshire, England of the Tindale line, and her dad was actually born in Brunswick, Victoria, in 1888. But Grandpa Tindall's mother (Anne Walsh) was born in Ireland, so maybe my dad thought Grandpa inherited some Irish pig headedness from her. I never knew Grandpa Tindall nor Nana Tindall (Ruby Adelaide Naomi Lynch) but all the family folk lore says she was an absolute saint. Mum's only brother, James died in his early 50's from a heart attack - he was an industrious man, who worked as a bookie's penciller to supplement his salary from accounting. He was a gentle, kindly man whom we all loved. Mum's youngest sister Anne, was a real tearway with a reputation for revealing clothes and a wild life style. She spent much of her life interstate and died, also quite young, from malignant melanoma - she loved sunbathing in a bikini. Sylvia mostly lived in NSW and Mum would visit her in Coffs Harbour - they were great friends as well as sisters. Ruby (Billie) was a troubled soul, often running away from her marriage to Ted to live with other men but eventually settling into a more quiet life in Adelaide with Ted - she probably had chronic anorexia nervosa. She brought up a daughter, Cheryl, who is the same age as me but was most likely an illegitimate child of Anne's.
Mum grew up in the city and went to Adelaide High School for three years, achieving her Intermediate Certificate which was fairly advanced education for a girl in the 1930's. Her most sophisticated employment was as a telephonist at the city's main exchange. She was a determined woman who took her family responsibilities seriously, although I do remember her being so upset with Dad's drinking and gambling that she threatened to leave him. She required hospitalisation on several occasions through the 1950's and 60's with cardiac disease and Dad would take over the house - actually he was a pretty good cook and house manager. Mum would do anything to help us with our problems, whether they be about homework or something more serious, and sometimes I felt as though she was intruding. As I got older I realised what an amazing rock she had been in our family and how loving her "control" of the family had really been. She was totally devastated when Dad died, but over time brought the Tindall determinedness to getting on with her own life. She stayed on in their home (by now in Deepdene Ave at Klemzig) by herself for about 15 years but needed more assistance as her senile dementia progressed. Eventually we were able to place her in a lovely nursing home where she was very happy, still making friends and charming people up to the few days before her death. Despite her cardiac history, it was old age and an aggressive cancer of the head of the pancreas that caused her death. I had to tell her about the cancer and she was remarkably philosophical, saying it was her time to go. We tried to make her comfortable and she had a surgical procedure to alleviate the jaundice, but it was only a week later that she succumbed. All her daughters and one of of her grand-daughters were with her at the end, and over the preceding weekend, many family and friends came to say "goodbye". My son and his wife flew down from Sydney to see her. At her funeral, other relatives came from interstate - she was very much loved by a lot of people. Her grandchildren idolised her and their tribute at her funeral was gently humorous and deeply moving. Mum was the last of both her own and Dad's family. We gave her a jolly good send off, with the funeral at her Church - with an extravagant morning tea cum lunch catered by the Womens Guild - and then holding a wake at one of the pubs on Magill Rd where she and Dad had both spent time (mainly Dad, if I'm honest!) when we lived at Stepney.
We grew up on Magill Rd. Although this is commercial and light industrial now, it was a real village in the 1950's. There were lots of family homes and cottages, with a corner general store in one direction and a draper's in the other. There were three pubs within walking distance ( The Oriental, The Alma and The Maid and Magpie - all still there but much renovated over the years) and we even had our own undertakers nearby. Not far away on Payneham Rd were a butcher's, a dental surgery (a ghastly man with primitive equipment!), a continental deli, a hairdresser and a fish and chip shop. And down George St on the corner with Payneham Rd was the Capitol picture theatre. What more could any family want within a few minutes of home?
Our house was a rather strange one by modern standards - a wide central passage way with one main room each side (Mum and Dad's bedroom on one side and a lounge room on the other) at the Magill Rd frontage, then a smaller room each side ( a bedroom on the right and an oddly shaped space on the left which contained the steps down into a large cellar) towards the back end of the passage which spilled out into a large kitchen cum dining room with another bedroom to the left. Then Dad had added a concrete shell of a room across the entire width of the house, and beyond that was a verandah leading out to a large back yard. The cellar was actually a four room house downstairs, complete with kitchen and was lived in at various times by Auntie Billie (possibly others, I'm not sure). Later what had been the kitchen became a bedroom for Lone and me and the cellar was always a refuge for all of us from the heat in summer (no airconditioning in the 1950's and 60's). There had been an external stairway in the room that ran across the back of the main house, but I don't remember this being used during my time at Magill Rd. We had a toilet on one end of the verandah (plus chamber pots under the beds when we were too little to venture outside at night) and our bathroom was a small shed with a wood chip heater (later replaced by a gas one). Mum had a copper on the verandah and would boil the washing in it before pushing it through a hand wringer, over two cement troughs. Later she acquired a washing machine although the water still had to be heated by an immersion heater.
Before Dad purchased a fridge, we kept things cool in a coolgardie safe or an ice chest and Mum would buy fresh produce daily. A green grocer (Bert Twell) would home deliver.The ice man came by with his horse drawn cart, and the "rabbitoh" sold pairs of kittens for 1 shilling and sixpence. Milk was delivered every morning, poured into a billy can left on the front step. I remember getting our very first block of icecream (in a plain grey cardboard box) to store in the freezer section of the new fridge.
Although Dad was terrific at inventing and building things like merry-go-rounds, he didn't follow through with some of the home handy man stuff - the room he built across the back of the house was never finished. He put up cupboards in the kitchen but didn't get around to shaping the doors so they were forever covered by curtains hanging on dowel rods.
Out back, there was a chook house and a wood shed, a large walnut tree and eventually, Dad built his workshop across the very far boundary. Over the years, we had ducks, hens, a lamb (which Dad apparently won in a raffle at a pub) and even a kangaroo, called Lady - a present from Uncle Derek, a long distance truckie who had probably hit and killed its mother. She was a joey when we got her and I suppose it's amazing that she survived - there was a side "garden" to the house which Dad fenced off for her, but as she grew she also acquired the ability to leap over the front fence and bound off down Magill Rd. After a few such escapades and because she was really growing quite large, Dad disposed of her ( but he did tell us he'd taken her to a wild life park). The lamb met a similar fate, after it head butted Mum and she ended up in a muddy mess.
We had more "normal" pets as well - John's dog, Toby, was a fox terrier who seemed to live forever, cats, silkworms, mice, coloured chickens from the Royal Adelaide Show and a number of budgies, who usually were happy to be let out of their cage and sit on someone's shoulder. Dad obtained a rosella parrot and a one-legged magpie who shared an aviary - he even tried to fashion a wooden leg for the magpie (Mogul)! (I always thought that the story of Dad and his one legged magpie would make a great book for children.) They seemed to detest each other and refused to share the same perch, but after one died the other soon followed - maybe a broken heart! However, the most famous pet of all was the cross golden cocker spaniel, Choffles, which we originally bought as a Mother's Day present, but which rapidly became Dad's inseparable companion. Choff fell out of a moving car one day and permanently damaged a front leg, forever after held that paw aloft and was there-after the "three legged mutt". He went everywhere with Dad, to the shack, out on merry go round jobs, riding in the toy town trains, always totally devoted to his master.
Dad was equally devoted to the dog and stopped drinking at The Alma after a new manager banned Choff from the front bar. Man and dog then became regulars in the front bar of The Maid and Magpie Hotel!
Dad was utterly miserable when Choff finally died but he was about 15 years old and they'd had a great time together.Trams ran down the middle of the road and we could catch one up to St Bernard's Rd and then walk a bit to visit to visit Dad's sister, Lil. (The trams and Lady bounding down the road ahead of them made for fascinating drama!) Dad had a model T Ford buckboard and we drove to visit another sister, Violet, who lived in Royston Park. At various times, Mum's sister, Ruby, whom we called Billie, lived around the corner from us, while her brother, Jim, lived over in Dulwich. Extended family played a huge part in our childhood and we knew all our cousins. And of course there were a host of friends who were all called "auntie" and "uncle" as well. Christmas Eve was a long adventure of multiple calls into the homes of various other families. Dad's mates from the war included Uncle Johnnie and Auntie Joyce (Sloan), Uncle Clarrie and Auntie Grace (Thomas), Uncle Lloyd and Auntie Dorothy (Brown).
This photo shows Dad and Mum (holding Cindy) next to Joyce Powell (a friend Dad met on R&R in Brisbane and who became a lifetime mate of his and Mum) with the Sloans. John is standing next to Dad and Patricia is squatting next to Auntie Joyce (holding her daughter Chris) while Uncle Johnnie is nursing their other daughter, Kay.
Dad became involved with the RSL after the war and we spent quite a few evenings at electric light cricket matches or dances. He rarely spoke of his experiences in the war except to make light of them (eg, telling us that every time there was an air raid on Darwin and the troops were moved out of town, the Army's idea of entertainment was to show the movie "40,000 Horsemen"starring Chips Rafferty so he saw it 23 times) or to let us know (but only in very general terms) it was a bloody mess run by incompetent fools. He hated rice, and curries, both of which he associated with the food privation he endured while away, and for some years he lamented that the Japanese had invaded Australia anyway by virtue of their investments and export markets.
He loved sports, and there were night football matches at Norwood Oval, baseball games there too, cycling at the Norwood velodrome, Friday nights at Rowley Park Speedway or the "trots" at Wayville, Saturdays at Prospect Oval for football or at Victoria Park for the horses. He lived in hope of making a fortune from racing and owned some horses in the early 1950's. His gambling created problems and eventually Mum had to take control of the budget. But when he won we all celebrated, going up to the continental deli to buy comics, chocolates and exotica like roll mops. Sometimes, crayfish would appear as a really special treat.
Dad's drinking was also an irritant to Mum. These were the days of 6 o'clock closing but there was often a card game going on well past closing time. Mum would always have the evening meal on the table at 5.30pm and when Dad hadn't come home, one of the children would be sent to the pub to collect him. Needless to say the publicans were known to us as Uncle Keith or Auntie Mary! When Dad was out at a friends, drinking, he would get quite loquacious and recite poetry, some of which was decidedly "blue" - Mum particularly hated this. There was one special poem which starts "My wife, she's a high born lady, a little bit plump and a little bit shady" which really drove her mad, but in later years was a source of amusement for her and us kids. Dad also had some lovely poems he'd recite for children - one about " rabbit who developed the habit of twitching the end of his nose" and "Lucy grasshopper dressed in green" which was somehow dedicated to Patricia. One of his favourites talked of holding back the dawn now that a certain birthday has come - we finally tracked it down with the correct words and the author many years later - it was written by an Australian woman and published in 1939 and is quite a sad reflection on her life as she approaches her 19th birthday.
In the early years, holidays were spent at Hallett Cove which was the end of the earth then - all sand dunes, rough shacks and rugged coastline. There were dandelions and pig face growing in the sand and I remember making chains from the flowers with Lone. We also took the mosquito nets outside to play "brides" one day and got them totally coated with sandy mud somehow. Dad usually drove back to Adelaide every day to work and the model T laboured hard to get up and over the Brighton Rd hill. I almost always managed to catch croup or whooping cough when we were away and there would be mad drives to the Victoria Hotel to phone our GP for advice. After Dad teamed up with the Dickers we spent holidays on the Murray at North Neeta and slowly Dad acquired and rebuilt the shack there. (See "On the River Murray"). Other holidays were spent at Port Broughton where Dad would set up a merry go round and make a financial venture out of the trip. One Christmas, the weather was so hot that Mum just couldn't stand it, and brother John drove from Adelaide to collect her and the kids and bring us home on Christmas Eve.
Dad became good mates with several of the local families (he made friends wherever he went) and interestingly, one of these was the Evans clan, a farming family with a property some miles out of the town - their daughter, Anne and I later met at Adelaide Girls High School and the family contacts were cemented further. Then, Anne, Denise (see "Special Friends") and I would stay in the Evans shack in Pt Broughton while Dad and sometimes, Mum stayed in the van near the hotel and the vacant block where he would set up the merry go round.
When I was growing up, our church was All Souls Anglican Church in St Peters. I played netball and tennis for the church teams and even taught Sunday School for a few years. My first marriage to Brenton (Joshua's father) was celebrated there.
Dad had no time for organised religion but to see him at the river, watching the birds, fishing or talking to the moon and stars, was to see a man who recognised nature as a god.
Mum on the other hand, had been imbued with religion in her childhood when she and her mother would attend St Mary's, a small Anglican church in a side street near her family home in Carrington St. She never forced her beliefs on anyone, but after moving to Klemzig when the Magill Rd house had been sold she became a regular attender at St Aidan's on Payneham Rd - she took great comfort from her beliefs after Dad died and during her last illness was much eased by visits from the parish rector ( a wonderful woman called Janet Phillips).
Weekends were invariably busy - when at Magill Rd, John and his mates would roll in on a Saturday and Patricia and Mum would make piles of sandwiches for them. Before we spent Saturdays playing sport, we girls would go around to the Capitol cinema and see whatever was showing, including the cliff hanger serials which carried on week after week with the hero or heroine always in diabolical strife. Dad always gave us enough money for a drink ( Coke in a glass bottle) and a sweet ( White Knights or Choochoo bars were my favourites) as well as the ticket. I think he and Mum were glad to have a few hours peace from us!! Sundays usually involved a drive in the buck board- to Bridgewater to see Grandpa and Charles, sometimes into the Adelaide hills or down to the beach, and sometimes to other relatives or friends' homes. Of course, after I started at High School my weekends involved doing homework. By then I was playing hockey for the school on Saturday afternoons, and debating on Friday nights, so Sundays were essential to get the home work done for Monday morning.
Dad loved "Western" movies and took Mum to the Capitol every Wednesday night for Ranch Night - he used to say it took her years to work out why they always seemed to see cowboy and indian films on a Wednesday night. Picture theatres disappeared with the coming of TV, and the "Cap" became a Tom's supermarket which was quite an innovation in suburban Adelaide at the time - when you think about the supermarkets in every suburb now and the range of goods for sale, it is amazing to think this development has only taken 45 years or so. Similarly, it has only been in my lifetime that refrigerators, modern washing machines and TV's have become commonplace. My AWA transistor radio - small enough to carry, with an ear plug for "silent" listening was a marvel in 1963 when Dad gave it to me as a present for doing well in first year at high school. (In the past 10 - 20 years, the advances in technology have been astronomical by comparison - I had a mobile phone in 1995 which was the size of a brick and now my mobile is small and comes with a camera and other functions I can't begin to use properly!)
Before 1960, our evening entertainment at home was the radio - a valve set which occupied a large portion of the mantel piece. There were serials on most nights, like Kid Grayson, or children's shows like Kangaroos on Parade, and music shows broadcast live from radio studios - I remember going into 5KA to be in the audience. We could also play records on the phonogramme. Dad had a collection of 78 rpm discs - they eventually provided the music for his merry-go-rounds - and we girls accumulated 33's. My first LP record was "Summer Holiday" by Cliff Richard and The Shadows, bought for one pound, seventeen shillings and sixpence after I had won 2 guineas in an essay writing competition run by the St Peters Council. In the 1960's we were totally smitten with bands out of the UK - The Beatles were our number 1 favourites, but we enjoyed Hermans Hermits, The Animals, Freddie and The Dreamers, Dusty Springfield, Lulu etc. I was never a great Rolling Stones fan but their music has certainly stood the test of time. If Lone and I had kept our collection of Beatles memorabilia it would be worth a fortune today!
Mum was the secretary/treasurer for the St Peters Marching Girls and Cindy, Lone and I were all in the teams in the late 1950's. We would practise in the East End Market warehouses but I also remember we would go to the St Peters town hall on Friday nights - ? was this for marching girls or for some other reason? We usually stopped at a deli on Payneham Rd on the way home for a milkshake and to watch "Sea Hunt" with Lloyd Bridges on the TV there. One night we arrived home to find Dad had bought our first TV - black and white of course. Eventually we had two - a furniture piece on legs which stood in the lounge and a portable which travelled between the kitchen and Mum and Dad's bedroom. He loved shows like Pot Black ( even in black and white), the football from Melbourne and the cricket. Before TV he would listen to the footy and cricket on the radio. The Magarey Medal count was a special night especially if a North Adelaide player was in the running - we kids would keep a tally of the votes for certain individual players. Dad admired Ken McKay, the Lindner brothers, Bob Hammond and Barry Barbary but his favourite player was Barry Robran. When Dad turned 70, I managed ( with the help of a friend who knew Barry's wife) to invite Barry to the party - he was pleased to attend as his father had been in the 2/14th and Dad and his mates were thrilled to meet him.
"The Cisco Kid" and "The Texas Rangers" were amongst our favourite shows to watch when we first got home from school, and then "Doctor Who" was an absolute must at 6.00pm. Lone and I would sometimes turn on a tantrum if there was a Sunday night movie we wanted to watch - this finished well after we were supposed to be in bed.
Before starting primary school, Lone and I went to Agnes Goode kindergarten - Dad would pick us up from morning kindy, or take us if we were in the afternoon group and we usually stopped at the Oriental or Alma hotels for a raspberry and lemonade while he had a beer. All we children attended East Adelaide Primary School - in the early years we caught the tram down Payneham Rd to Westminster St, and later the bus. On the whole I loved school but my Grade 3 teacher ( Miss Girdham) was a tyrant who would belt us with a blackboard ruler if she thought we were not trying or were disrupting class. Dad had bought me a satchel of which I was very proud, but which unfortunately would occasionally fall over at the side of my desk with a small thump. Miss Girdham threw it out a window one day, upsetting me awfully. Mrs Davies was my teacher in Grades 4 and 5 - she was warm and friendly and a wonderful teacher. In Grade 6, I had Miss Criddle who had "a thing" for homework being done in small boxes across and down a page with the boxes filled in with the tiniest writing and drawings we could manage. My Grade 7 teacher, Mrs Cochrane was a sensible woman who valued our efforts and made most of us feel that we could go on and achieve whatever we desired.
My self belief was fostered particularly by Mum - Dad tended to take vicarious pride in my achievements but rarely said out loud that he believed I could expect more than an average job before marriage and family life. Because Mum was an old scholar of Adelaide High School, I was able to go there even though we didn't live in its catchment area. I attended the girls school in Grote St - by now, the boys school had been split off and housed on West Tce. Here I was blessed with some of the most amazing teachers a girl could hope for - Miss Stodart (Maths), Miss Whyte (English) and Mrs Kearney (Latin). Of course, there were other teachers who didn't inspire me greatly, but overall, I think my years at AGHS were some of the happiest in my life. I worked damn hard, there was tons of homework and I played hockey, debated, produced the School Magazine in my final year, was a Prefect in the last two years, made lasting friendships ( with some of the boys from down the road, as well as girls at Grote St) and excelled academically. My abilities to organise my time, prioritise tasks, work on several at one time but see them all to completion in a set time frame, had their foundation in the busy and fulfilling life I fashioned for myself at AGHS. My love of the English language and its correct use, grammar and punctuation while appreciating how melodic it can be, and how it can convey abstract concepts was forged in Miss Whyte's and Mrs Kearney's classes. The discipline of maths and Latin taught me to value rules and proper functions but Miss Stodart and Mrs Kearney also imparted flexibility and an understanding that rules sometimes need to be bent if not broken. There was plenty of humour, some silly school girl stuff, some more sophisticated with irony and nuance involved, in our classroom exchanges, especially in Leaving and Leaving Honours (Matric) when my teachers related to us as emerging adults. "Girls can do anything they set their minds to" could well have been the school motto. (Remember this was the 1960's and such ideas were not widely embraced).
I applied for university - the first person in my family to do so - and gained entry to Medicine and won a Menzies Scholarship. I so wanted to continue Latin and English at Adelaide University that I bought all the texts and enrolled in these subjects as my "elective" subjects in First Year Medicine - I was really upset to discover that I was in the group of first years to be sent to the new Flinders University at Bedford Park, where there were no electives - we had to do maths, physics, chemistry and biology. In contrast to AGHS this was a most miserable year for me! I hated Flinders - sterile, wind blown, barren hills between a few modern buildings, lecturers I thought were incompetent, failing exams but then being passed anyway because they had to get us back to Adelaide Uni to pick up Medicine proper the next year. The only fun things were driving the old Vauxhall Dad had done up for me, picking up mates to take to Uni and meeting some of the other guys and girls who would be going back to Medicine at Adelaide with me. Even after starting studies at the Medical School on Frome Rd, I found university life hard to adjust to - I missed the structure of high school and the certainty I could master any subject with the guidance of the teachers I had so valued there, but over time a routine developed and I managed to do reasonably well. But as Dad had so often said, I was now "a small fish in a big pond" and periodically I doubted whether I was ever going to complete the course or be a decent doctor, if I did. At times I felt like I came from "the wrong side of the tracks" and didn't belong in a class which included many sons and daughters of old Adelaide medical families. Probably the best lessons I learned were that I didn't have to be top in every exam, that I didn't have to excel in all aspects, and that medicine was as much an art, to be garnered and absorbed over time, as a science which could be learned from some infallible set of rules. Mind you, it wasn't all angst and late adolescent turmoil - we had great fun at "formal" events, like the annual medical students ball or Prosh Day, and at informal gatherings in the Botanic Hotel or the Uni refectory, playing bridge (although I didn't like the "playing for sheep stations" mentality of some of the games) in the Common Room, visiting each others homes, mucking around in lab sessions or anatomy class.
I made many wonderful friends - a lot of them loved coming to see Mum and Dad : there was always a beer to be had or Dad would cook steak and mushrooms on the wood stove. He would repair their cars or advise them where to go for cheap parts or a paint job. Mum would listen to their troubles and offer motherly support. My best friend was Sandy (see "Special Friends"). Her father was a widower, an obstetrician and gynaecologist who never made me feel an outsider. He taught me a lot about jazz and cooking - he even took my on hill climbs in his Morgan car. The days I spent with Sandy and her dad were true bright spots.
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During the first three years at Medical School I experienced what I now know to be the signs of a depressive illness, fortunately mild, with eventual recovery without medication or professional help, but usually after I had missed days of lectures. I would get up and go to Uni but then spend the days in aimless wandering about the campus, along the Torrens or window shopping in the city. Then there would be a mad scramble to borrow lecture notes from Sandy and try to catch up.
In retrospect I think my decision to leave home at nearly 21 and live with Brenton ( whom I married a few months later) was a decision ill made because of this tendency to self destruct, albeit moderately rather than totally. I mean no disrespect to Brenton - he was genuine in his affection for me, but he was a "drop out" from Uni, from a working class family and I think I was subconsciously saying that this was all that someone of my background deserved. I guess my feelings of inadequacy or "undeservedness" in the world of tertiary achievement were stronger than the lessons of high school that I could be, and deserved to be, anything I wanted. It was only when I was within a whisker of losing everything I had worked for - married, with a new baby, living on a few scholarship $ per week, with a husband unable to get a meaningful job, and in serious danger of failing a year of Medicine, that I finally realised that I did truly want a career and a life with more self fulfillment and independence than the stereotype of a 1950/60's woman. It still took me several years to get the courage to move out of my marriage and I will always regret hurting Brenton and Joshua - both the unhappiness of living with me while I was sorting all this out in my head and the actual trauma of the separation. I know now that this was the only correct decision for me, but I am truly grateful that my marriage produced Joshua. (He and I have had some pretty rough periods in our relationship, mostly of my making, but the inescapable truth for me is that he is the most precious person in my life - I think my second husband, Eion, will understand this sentiment and not be offended by it.)
Depression has been a recurring theme in our family - with the hindsight of my psychiatric knowledge, I can theorise that Dad's gambling and alcohol dependence were manifestations of a depressive tendency and Mum spent some time in a hotel/rest home after the birth of at least one of the children, possibly for a depressive reaction. I certainly now see some times in my life when depressive thinking was holding sway and I did experience a depressive reaction after Joshua's birth. In recent years I have required antidepressant medication and support from a psychiatrist and my own gambling addiction was most probably a depressive equivalent. There were several years when a panic disorder ruled my life, preventing me from public speaking or undergoing job interviews unless I took anxiolytics. Joshua suffered from panic disorder as an adolescent and has endured major depressive episodes as an adult. A niece has a bipolar illness and cousins in WA have also been afflicted with depression.
There are however, many more cheerful things to talk about in this memoir!
Sometime during the 1970's, Mum and Dad sold the house on Magill Rd and moved to a little red brick place in Deepdene Ave at Klemzig. Of course Dad had to build another shed, and he and Mum both enjoyed the garden they established, front and back. Typical of Dad he bought Mum a Mother's Day present one year that only he could use - a rotary hoe, so that he could turn over the back yard and plant vegetables. (Other notable gifts for her over the years, were a compressor and a chain saw!!) As at Magill Rd, they made friends all over the neighbourhood and the house was often filled with family or neighbours, sharing a meal or chatting over cups of tea. After he retired from the crash repair business, Dad would often go the shack for days at a time, always accompanied by Choff. If Mum stayed at home, she was content to do so. They seemed more relaxed in or out of each other's company. Outings with what remained of the 2/14th veterans and their wives were enjoyed and looked forward to. Grand children were warmly welcomed and spoilt, and Christmas was still a monster affair with everyone gathered in the shed, mountains of food and drink, and a few dollars in an envelope as a gift for all who came.
I was quite worried for Dad when I learned he was going to retire - I had always assumed that he enjoyed work and the satisfaction of providing for his family - after all, he rarely took a sick day, he would spend hours in the shed in the sweltering heat banging out dents, oxy welding, manipulating putty etc. He was genuinely annoyed with us if he thought we were feigning illness to avoid school and he imparted a very strong work ethic. So imagine my surprise when he told me how much he had hated being tied to his work routine and how very very much he was anticipating retirement. He enjoyed his "freedom" so much it was a real pleasure to be with him and Mum - in these later years it was though demons and devils had disappeared from their lives and they could finally appreciate each other and the life they made together.
After Dad's death, we would visit Mum for meals but it soon became easier for us to take her out every 6 weeks or so for lunch at a hotel, where no-one need cook or clean up and we could all catch up on news from the various families. Patricia bore the brunt of Mum's worsening dementia as she was the one daughter who was retired from work and could make time for visits to Deepdene Ave or pick Mum up to go to appointments. The rest of us did as much as we could, but really Patricia was an absolute angel for many years.
One particular event which caused distress among us siblings was Leonie's decision to sell the shack - she had claimed it as her inheritance after Dad's death saying he had promised it to her because she was his
"baby" and the one who had helped him most with the merry-go-round work. I personally did not have an issue with this although I think the others did. As long as the shack was in the family and we were able to use it, things stayed pretty calm, but the state government brought in some requirements for shack upkeep (electricity, proper sewerage systems etc) which would have cost many thousands of dollars to implement. Lone did not have the money, and at that time neither did Eion and I (although I was the highest earning member of the family). She announced at a family lunch with mum that she had no option but to sell and the next door neighbour at North Neeta had a mate who wanted to buy. So the shack disappeared from our lives - sadly, my brother and another sister feel quite embittered that it happened and there continue to be strained relationships because of this.
At the time of writing (February 2011), we meet for lunch as often as we can but Lone does not join us - she spends her weekends with her partner, Michael at his farm at Eden Valley and does not wish to come back to the city for our get-togethers. We do go into the hills from time to time where she is more inclined to meet us at a pub but it is really John, Patricia, Cindy and I who now share most of the Hale catchups. So be it - we all have different lives and place different priorities on the things we can/can't do. But it does give me enormous pleasure when Joshua or any of my nieces or nephews can join us at these affairs. It's been a bit of a Hale tradition to talk or argue over a meal - whether it was at Magill Rd, Deepdene Ave, the North Adelaide Football Club Dining Room or any pub which was putting on good tucker.
In many respects Mum's death in 2009 went a good way to healing some of the rifts between us children - in particular, Cindy has once again become a precious part of the family. Sadly, another death, that of Cindy's daughter, Jenne, in July 2011 worked even more magic in consolidating family ties. The time that her aunts and cousins spent with her before she died (Cindy and I were overseas on holiday and the extent of Jenne's illness was kept from us so that we would continue our tours {thank you so much to Jenne and others for protecting us this way}) was very special and they were all touched by Jenne's spiritual approach to life and death. Family get-togethers these days are happy, often boisterous affairs, with very little tension - it's as though Jenne has taught us all to value and cherish each other, regardless of our history of differences.
Now it is September 2012 and life continues for us sometimes with dramatic occurrences, and sometimes with the routine we have created for ourselves. Cindy and Patricia are both living on their own - each has found a small flat which is affordable within their financial means. John and his wife Jenny still travel with their caravan to Queensland every winter. Lone's partner Michael, who was our first friend when Eion and I moved into Unley 22 years ago is undergoing treatment for oro-pharyngeal cancer and my daughter in law is 11 weeks pregant after 3 years of IVF and egg donations. Fingers and toes crossed that Michael, and Jen and Josh come through these testing times with health restored (in the former case) and happiness in the guise of a bonny baby (in the latter). Time will tell!
In many respects Mum's death in 2009 went a good way to healing some of the rifts between us children - in particular, Cindy has once again become a precious part of the family. Sadly, another death, that of Cindy's daughter, Jenne, in July 2011 worked even more magic in consolidating family ties. The time that her aunts and cousins spent with her before she died (Cindy and I were overseas on holiday and the extent of Jenne's illness was kept from us so that we would continue our tours {thank you so much to Jenne and others for protecting us this way}) was very special and they were all touched by Jenne's spiritual approach to life and death. Family get-togethers these days are happy, often boisterous affairs, with very little tension - it's as though Jenne has taught us all to value and cherish each other, regardless of our history of differences.
Now it is September 2012 and life continues for us sometimes with dramatic occurrences, and sometimes with the routine we have created for ourselves. Cindy and Patricia are both living on their own - each has found a small flat which is affordable within their financial means. John and his wife Jenny still travel with their caravan to Queensland every winter. Lone's partner Michael, who was our first friend when Eion and I moved into Unley 22 years ago is undergoing treatment for oro-pharyngeal cancer and my daughter in law is 11 weeks pregant after 3 years of IVF and egg donations. Fingers and toes crossed that Michael, and Jen and Josh come through these testing times with health restored (in the former case) and happiness in the guise of a bonny baby (in the latter). Time will tell!
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