November 1961
The job I saw was at the soon-to-be-opened British Site 3 BMEWS station. [Readers of Pt. 1 will remember that I visited Site 1 BMEWS near Thule Greenland whilst working for Canadian Marconi.] I had an interview in London and was offered the job of Equipment Specialist Leader of the future test equipment and standards lab. The pay was about 1300 pounds per annum, nearly twice what I was presently earning. I did agonise about the decision as I had quite an interesting job, but finally accepted. I don’t know if Liz was enthusiastic or not but faithful wife that she was, she went along with it.
I joined RCA Great Britain, who had the contract for the operation of the Fylingdales BMEWS station near Whitby Yorkshire, in Nov 1961.
This station, when completed many months later, had three 5 Megawatt pulsed radars operating through 3 eighty-four foot hydraulically driven antennae and had a range of 3000 miles so when scanning at low elevation they could detect targets shortly after launch from the USSR’s ICBM and IRBM sites. The radars were also used for Satellite tracking and to detect (soon after the launch) Soviet launches from the Kapustin Yar, Tyuratam and Pletsesk regions of Russia. Klystrons were the power source and the low mass antennae were capable of both sweeping the horizon and pinpoint tracking of a signal source. A few ‘hits’ and the range and range rate could be extracted. The whole operation was controlled by an IBM (7090) computer. There were already (Apr. 1962) substantial space debris and operational earth satellites so the computer had a library of known object’s trajectories against which any object acquired by the Fylingdale radars could be checked to see if it was ‘new’ and therefore a possible missile launch. The computer could calculate the probable launch and impact site and automatically notify the American military at Cheyenne Mountain and the British Air Ministry-Dept. of Defence, (the missiles in those days were ballistic, so once launched the parabola was fixed) There were 3 stations (sites 1, 2 and 3):
Thule Greenland, Clear Alaska and Fylingdales England; these gave complete radar coverage of Russian missile launch sites
1962 The construction of the station, being in the hands of the Ministry of Works, was way behind schedule and I spent quite a time at the head office of RCA GB in Sunbury (near London) doing very little. I made my one visit to the Houses of Parliament in London where they were debating the demise of the Midlands carpet industry! Initially, the Company put me up at the Crown Hotel in Chertsey, but I soon had to get room and board in a family house in Sunbury. It was quite cold in London and there was often ice on the car and once it snowed. I met Jim Hallett, who was to become a long-term and influential friend, at RCA Sunbury. He had worked for Ferranti, as had I, but I did not know him there. He was modest and unassuming, had a good sense of humour and when our wives later met, they got on well together.
All employees were given a free trip to look at housing in and around Whitby. I was eligible for RAF housing but Liz did not want it, nor did I. I don’t know why we came to look for housing in Robin Hood’s Bay (about 6 miles S. of Whitby) but we found there an attractive old cottage (Grove Cottage) which we both liked and, after a very short inspection, decided to buy Its deeds were dated about 1660 and it shared a wall with the Parsonage next door. It was in Fylingthorpe, a tiny village about a mile from Robin Hood’s Bay and had half an acre of land sloping down to a stream with an orchard and attractive gardens. Although most rooms were small and the ceiling beamed and low, it had 3 floors with a full size attic and a large trapdoor in the floor of the bathroom which did not seem to have any purpose. A local told me it was for ‘smuggling’?
We sold the house in Cheadle Hulme, which we had improved with D.I.Y. central heating, a garage and built-in wardrobes in two bedrooms, for about 2300 pounds. The movers collected the furniture and were to meet us at the cottage in RHB in the afternoon. We all drove in the VW. When we arrived, the Colonel’s widow, from whom we had bought the cottage, had removed every piece of coal and even swept the coalhouse, so it being February (I think) it was very cold without any form of fire. The removal van did not arrive until 8pm and the main upstairs furniture, including the beds, would either not fit through the door, or could not be manoeuvred up the narrow winding stairs. We had to take the bedroom windows out of their sashes and pass the furniture through the window area. Anyway, we somehow survived the cold night; I think that we all slept together but soon made arrangements for fuel and supplies the next day. I seem to remember going to a railway siding in RHB and loading coal into sacks myself. It seemed that we were hardly moved in than I was off to America for training. We flew by MATS, the USAF Military airline, from Mildenhall, Surrey to Riverton NJ the nearest town to the RCA Service Co. base.
Initially, at Riverton New Jersey, there seemed to be very little training for me. I was given some test equipment manuals to read – most of them I had seen before although the psychrometers and radio-active measuring instruments were new to me. These latter were needed because the klystrons which powered the radars emitted hard x-rays; dangerous to humans.
At work I was thoroughly bored, but after work, the Americans proved very hospitable, and there were frequent invitations to parties and groups going to singles dancing bars. Mary Ellen was a secretary there and a very nice person who was friendly to the visitors and who got us invites to LGTAGS (let’s get together and get smashed) and TGIF (thank God it’s Friday) parties. After one party at a lakeshore house, I ended up in a singles bar in downtown Philadelphia with Welsh engineer Graham Davies. We did not get back to the Plaza Hotel until the midday following. I got rather drunk and I think it was then that I had picked up the Mexican American woman who worked for Addressograph-Multigraph (I think) in Philadelphia. I cannot remember her name, she was very amorous or perhaps she was just desperately looking for a new father for her two sons. I remember going skating with them all to an outdoor rink somewhere in Philly. I was not in my hotel room for a few nights. I felt sorry for her and her situation as she was a battler. We later went to the Peppermint Lounge in Philadelphia where the Twist was born but did not see Chubby Checker but I can say that I helped introduce the Twist to Robin Hood’s Bay on my return! This lady came to the airport to see me off to Alaska. I don’t think I had invited her but I guess I must have or how would she have known where and when to go? And it greatly shocked Ron Dryland.
Eventually they sent several of us to Clear, Alaska (Site 2) and I had the misfortune to travel with Ron Dryland, a miserable person, destined to be the QC officer and a co-worker at the TELab in England, but fortunately he was transferred elsewhere after a month. Clear was very interesting, as although I had seen the massive static antennas at Thule when they were being built (see Biog Part 1), I had never seen the 85ft movable antennas and an operational station. I spent most of the time with the test equipment staff, looking at how they processed and operated. They told me that the main problems were theft and other losses of equipment and how this got you offside with the Inspector General’s Dept. who periodically inspected stations on behalf of the US Govt., who after all were paying for all this. I made a mental note of this and followed it in my property control regime when I started work eventually at Fylingdales.
The staff was very social and I saw the native village and the big frozen river nearby on weekend trips which I crossed a couple of times on the bus – I felt a bit uneasy, but the ice was feet thick. I also dined with several staff and their families. Leaving Clear to return to Australia, I stopped off at Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in the entire US and went up a few hundred feet. (Mt.Witney, California is the highest in Conus, and I eventually climbed it on May 15/16 2000). I played darts with con-men at Tommy’s Elbow (Room?)Bar in Fairbanks, eventually being suckered into playing for money, but not being much of a gambler did not lose a pile. From there, it was a long trip home, mostly via MATS DC6’s to Mildenhall, England, and then to my new home in Robin Hood’s Bay, and to work at RAF Fylingdales.
Fylingdales was all cranes and builders and obviously nowhere near ready for installation when I arrived (probably) lateFebruary or March 1962, but people still wanted equipment which was going to be administered by the test equipment section of which I was in charge (the TELab), so we had to start somewhere. The planned TELab was months from completion so what was provided was a temporary wood hut, similar to those I had occupied whilst in the RAF and as power was not available, we had a diesel generator outside. There were two or three British technicians, an American tech., Ray Callicott who had once worked at Clear TELab, and because there was a mass of paper to process, a typist/secretary. Valerie Duck did not stay with us very long. It seems possible that she got pregnant by Ray as they had become quite close. Anyway she disappeared for most of the year, returning later. She was replaced by Marion — who features later. Meanwhile the Site buildings and installation advanced, TELab staff increased but the Ministry of Works could not complete the TELab in time, so we moved to the Transport and Fire Station garages which were turned into a temporary lab. Finally, we moved across the road to our permanent home. It was a well designed structure having a Faraday room.
More staff arrived taking us up to complement and local drivers and small vans were obtained to deliver the test equipment around the Site. We had good control systems in place so had few equipment losses. It seemed to me that the operation ran smoothly.
The children seemed to settle down quickly to their new home and Grove Cottage was a beautiful old place, with lovely gardens. I did not know much about gardening, but learned a bit and kept most of the established part going. There were apples and pears and red and black currants in a little orchard and a small rose garden near the back door. We shopped for groceries in Whitby or sometimes in Middlesborough or Scarborough. We had both sets of parents visit. Steve and Dave were not of school age and seemed to be happy enough. They learned to swear in the little park nearby from the older boys, and came home happy to demonstrate their new knowledge to the distress of their mother. I had installed central heating (half inch copper hot water) in Cheadle Hulme so did the same at Grove Cottage. I think I now did a better job, but it was quite difficult as the walls were 14” sandstone and I did not own an electric impact or hammer drill and did all the holes laboriously with a star drill which is basically a round stone chisel. The kitchen had only two old cupboards and a separate pot sink when we bought it, so that was ripped out and a new kitchen installed by Liz and me.
Finally, Liz said it was dark in the kitchen with one small window (I didn’t spend much time in kitchens in those days, although I practically run the kitchen now in 2007) so I decided to put in a large extra window which I managed to buy second-hand. Installation was difficult again because I had only a hand tool, a cold chisel, to smash my way through the sandstone. Two months and five knuckles later it looked nice when finished and made the kitchen light and airy. We recarpeted throughout with Cyril Lord carpet and did the fitting ourselves and it seemed to me were happy with our lives, although I knew that Liz felt a bit isolated as she could not drive. Anyway, there was only one car in the family which I drove to Fylingdales every day.
I seemed to be often sick with tonsillitis or laryngitis and the local doctor recommended tonsillectomy, so I went in to Whitby Cottage Hospital aged 29 and had it done.
I responded badly to the op. being unable to eat for a while and went down to 8 stone (112 pounds).
Whilst I was in hospital, Peter Beadle loaned me “Sailing alone around the World” by Joshua Slocum, which I read avidly. I then strongly felt that I wanted to be a sailor; my imagination was fired. But first, after I recovered, I bought a wet suit from a Scarborough pawnbroker and edge glued it to fit. I only used it to snorkel dive for sea-urchins in 8 feet of water off the RHB scars (sunken rock reefs) with local fisherman and shop owner Alf Wedgewood. He paid me sixpence an urchin and processed them into tourist souvenirs at 5/- a pop. It turned out later to be a good thing that I knew him.
Socially, Liz and I went to and gave house parties with BMEWS friends, and I got in the habit of going to the Saltersgate pub, about 2 miles from the BMEWS Site for lunch during some workdays. These lunches often stretched into the afternoon, and employees in the TELab would sometimes ring to say I had better get back in a hurry as someone important was looking for me.
One weekend near Runswick Bay on a picnic with the family I saw onshore an aluminium dinghy with a broken mast and wished to buy it. I asked my friend Jim Hallet if he was interested in shared ownership and he was. We bought it for about 20 pounds, made a trailer and took it to Jim and Shirley’s magnificent house, ‘Fylingarth’ where we refurbished mast and boat in the old stables. As sailing became a major activity of mine later, I am going to recount this first experience in some detail.
Neither Jim nor I had ever sailed before so we bought ‘The Penguin Book of Sailing’ which told us the basics and a friend, David Court Hampton, a champion 505 dinghy sailor, explained the rudiments of tacking.
I bought some blow-up buoyancy and stowed it in the stern and bow (with landsman’s knots) and we were off for our first sail! We had on buoyancy vests and quite a bit of clothing (it was after all, an English summer) and set off on the Sunday of August Bank Holiday Weekend (probably Aug 5th 1962). The launch went fine and we were soon heading out into Robin Hoods Bay. It was not a real windy day but there was probably about 15 knots; too much for having full sail on our dinghy which had a very tall mast and carried suitable sail for a quiet day on a reservoir but was definitely over-canvassed for two amateurs in the sea. We would probably have been OK if the sail had had reefing points and if we had known about reefing but we did not. So out we went into the calm in the lee of the 100 foot cliffs with full main and jib set and did our first few tacks successfully.
Feeling very pleased with ourselves we did not notice that we were getting out of the shelter of the cliffs and the wind seemed suddenly to increase. The next tack we were over! Both of us were in the sea; me with my glasses still on. We knew from reading that to right a capsized dinghy you stood on the centreboard, gripped the gunwhale and heaved. We did it and sure enough, up she popped. We climbed back in again, started to bail and to sail, but in no time we capsized again. This time the badly secured stern buoyancy came adrift (my poor knots) and the stern sank until the dinghy was at an angle of 45 degrees with the stern underwater supported by the buoyancy now floating like a balloon on a string. We both clung to the bow where the buoyancy bag could not come out. We must have looked pretty pitiful, but I can only remember feeling very ashamed at my incompetence and that we had come to grief.
However, our predicament had not gone un-noticed. Holidaymakers on shore called the coastguard at Whitby, and Alf Wedgewood (he of the sea-urchins) was fishing from his diesel motor boat on a scar (rock ledge) not far away. He saw us clinging and motored over. After some Yorkshire humour at our expense “cool day for a swim isn’t it”, he got us into the boat and towed the half sunk dinghy in. Someone phoned the coast guard to say we were rescued and it returned to Whitby, so at least we were saved that ignominy. But it did not stop the local press publishing an article. I would have been upset about the publicity, but instead felt pleased to be referred to as a ‘yachtsman’, and perhaps at that time resolved to become someday more worthy of the name
We frequently sailed that dinghy in Robin Hoods Bay thereafter and never capsized it again, learning all the time.
I then enrolled in a course for a Coastal Yachtmaster’s Certificate at ScarboroughTech. The instructor was a crusty old Scot ex sea captain who whilst certainly knowing his business, treated the students as if they were naval cadets and he Captain Bligh. He would tear up our calculated position, showering us with confetti saying “Ye damned fool, this puts ye in the middle of Siberia” or take up our poor ropework splices, pull them to pieces saying “Ye blithering idiots will be a danger to any man foolish enough to sail with ye”. I made up my mind that if I ever taught navigation (which I did 10 years and another life later) I would be a little gentler on my students who after all were paying for the privilege. Anyway, by the time I had finished I was certainly more knowledgeable about the theory of navigation and had made the acquaintance of John — at Tech. He had a fibreglass 17 foot ‘Silhouette’ bilge keel yacht, and I crewed for him. Although he knew little more about sailing than I did, he too played the Bligh role having me scrub the deck before every sail, but I did gain some sea experience sailing from Scarborough to Whitby and back a couple of times.
Due to this other sailing, the dinghy which I had co-owned with Jim was sold as we did not use it much and I sailed as crew with John for a while. Meanwhile, Liz felt isolated at Grove Cottage and a week after we had finished painting the inside of the cottage she asked if we could move to Whitby and could she learn to drive like her friend Shirley. So I got RAF rental housing at 11 Field Close Whitby, where our next door neighbour was Gordon Carlisle. Steven and David started to go to school at Airey Hill and seemed to make the transition without hiccups.
At this time the TELab got a small radioactive caesium source to calibrate ionising radiation measuring instruments and I had to go to the Nat.Physical Lab near London to do a short 3 day course in radiation safety. Shortly after, and before I left, I met Marion—- (who had been a onetime TELab secretary), at the tea trolley and said to her “I have to go to London for a few days, why don’t you come too for a dirty weekend?”- She said something like “you’ll be lucky” and moved off. I don’t know why I had asked her as I was not unhappy with Liz, maybe it was for re-assurance that I was still attractive, or perhaps just ‘the old Adam’, or perhaps I just wanted to make a ‘smart’ comment. Anyway I was quite surprised when, just before I left on the trip, Marion said that she would come to London with me. I didn’t know what to do, but finally told her I had changed my mind. I would like to think it was moral fibre, but most probably it was simply cowardice. She did not ever speak to me after that.
In the hard winter of 1962/3 the site was snowed in and the relief shift could not get in. I was wearing a thick black sweater which Liz had knitted for me and, being a gentleman, I loaned it to a girl who always wore heavy makeup, had thick black hair and always wore super minis even in winter. I can’t remember her name but think she eventually married Bill Limehouse, twice her age. Anyway, she must have splashed perfume on it because, when eventually it was clear enough to walk out from the site and down to the railway line in the valley and when I finally got home, I was in the doghouse. Liz immediately smelled the scent and thought the worst, which in this instance was not true. It snowed so bad that year that Jim’s Morris 1000 was stuck in a snowdrift for some days until eventually we reached it in my VDub. He managed to start it and drive it home.
1963
The installation and test phase was over at Fylingdales and the Americans handed over to the British. My boss, the Tech Services Manager, Peter Beadle (still a correspondent in 2009), said that I had done a good job with the TELab and the good report by the Inspector General’s Dept was part of the reason that he got the Site Manager’s job. He hinted (or I probably took his compliment as meaning more than it did) that I may replace him as Tech. Services Manager, also Marty Rosen, a highly placed American, told me that I would get that promotion. But I didn’t and felt highly miffed, especially as Ron Cameron (known as the poison dwarf) hated by all who knew him, got the job. I quit the TELab moved to the new training department with Bob Lambert and Gordon Carlisle but didn’t like that either. Finally I moved to Deputy Equipment Controller, a fancy title for a do-little job, shift work, high pay with not much happening except putting systems on and off line during maintenance and running simulated missile strikes. President Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963 and there was lot of activity at the Site and all shifts were kept in place until it was clear that it was not the start of WW3.
1964
I did a stupid thing not long after. Gordon Carlisle and I took Doreen Raw and Valerie Duck to the isolated Hayburn Wyke Hotel on the coast towards Redcar. I was supposed to be at navigation class in Scarborough. We were going for a drink and to play darts, it was just ‘daring’, not looking for sex as certainly Valerie would not have been in it with me. To get to the pub you had to open gates to cross the rarely used train lines and close them behind you. We did this when arriving, but when the pub shut, I was first away and Gordon was supposed to shut the gates, but he did not: just our bad luck. It seems that the railway had been having trouble with people not closing the gates and that particular night had set two railway police to watch. Two days later the railway police called at my neighbour’s house (they had noted his car rego, not mine) and told Gordon’s wife about the gate being left open. She said they were mistaken and Gordon was with me in Scarborough. Then they all went next door to my house and the game was up. I was in the doghouse for ages for that. Be sure your sins will find you out! (It does say something about the absence of privacy laws in those days as it is doubtful if authorities would nowadays spill the beans to spouses when the cars were registered to the husbands).
In spite of the foregoing, we seemed happy enough in our little house and when Liz announced she was pregnant (although we had not been trying for another) I was quite happy about it as our financial position was pretty good. She decided to have the baby at home and Robert was born in the spare bedroom at 10 Field Close Whitby on May 16th 1964. The bossy midwife agreed that I might ‘assist’ at the birth but warned she would just step over me if I fainted. I didn’t. Liz was very brave and said it was an easy birth though it didn’t look easy to me as I had never seen a birth of other than calves, foals and kittens and humans have a much harder time, due no doubt to the large head.
On the sailing front; in 1964 it was time to buy my first real yacht, albeit a basic one. I bought a wooden 17ft Silhouette class sailboat from neighbour Bob Swaby and joined the Whitby Yacht Club. This little bilge keeler was a slow but sea-kindly yacht and I had many happy hours sailing it, mostly by myself, off Whitby. I also used it for fishing and caught pollock off Sandsend, but they were not nice to eat. Whitby has a good tidal range and a couple of times I could not make headway against the ebb tide in the river Esk to my mud berth near Whitby Swing Bridge. Samtoo (the yacht) was powered by a 3hp Seagull outboard.
So I bought and fitted an old fire engine pump 2 stroke motor bought from Gordon Cousins and the 6ft by 1” stainless propshaft was made in Tech.Services at BMEWS for a packet of fags. Bob Swaby told me that ‘Samtoo’ had been sailed to Calais by him and a friend and I was inspired to make this my first foreign trip. I had by this time completed my Coastal Yachtmasters certificate at Scarborough tech. I got Jim and his brother Ernie to come too. Our wives were persuaded to go to the Filey Butlin’s Holiday Camp with the children – they did not enjoy it. Meanwhile we trailed the yacht to Dover behind my VDub and, without any incident that I remember, sailed to Calais safely. We were 3 days in Calais, the 29th to 31st August 1964 the first night on a mud berth. Then we were moved into a locked basin, and finally to a boarding house where we had coffee in bowls and croissants for breakfast.
The return across the Channel was not as incident-free, as my navigation was at fault (insufficient allowance for strong tides) and we ended up nearer North Foreland than we should. Anyway, we motored into Dover in the dark on a falling tide and tied a line just below the Customs House as we grounded in the mud. I climbed the ladder and went to Customs in the dark, but the officer did not want to climb down the slippery ladder and just had a glance at the yacht on the mud far below before stamping us in. This was fortunate as I had some perfume and a ring for Liz taped to my midriff. The return trip Dover to Whitby was marred when we ran a trailer bearing about halfway, but Jim managed to fix it and off we went.
One of the TELab drivers, a local man, took me poaching salmon in the River Esk. We unsportingly dragged multiple hooks through the shallows and foul-hooked quite a few salmon. We did this for a few nights whilst the salmon were running and one night narrowly avoided the police. This was under and near Ruswarp Bridge and foolish in the extreme as the penalties could have been severe. I ate quite a bit of salmon and sold the rest to RAF officers in the control room next door.
I played badminton in the RAF gym during my lunch breaks, sometimes in the middle of the night; it sounds OK but I was pretty bored. I started to think about leaving Fylingdales; I was thirty and needed to get somewhere before I got too old. So in August 1964 I looked in the Electronics Weekly hoping to see a job in Canada, a country I had always liked, but saw instead a job for a shift supervisor at the soon to be built STADAN Satellite Tracking And Data Acquisition Network in Canberra. I applied and passed the interview with the contractor EMI, but was told I also had to pass an Australian Dept of Defence interview when I got to Australia and that the job would start in March of 1965. Having bitten the bullet by looking for a new job I was in a hurry to leave Fylingdales as I was still annoyed at having been passed over for the Tech. Services manager’s job and did not want to wait until the next March, so applied for a job as a television technician with HG Palmer in Sydney which was also advertised in Electronics Weekly. I boned up on TV theory and passed the interview and was offered and accepted the job. I got help with immigration, air fares paid and accommodation in Sydney guaranteed for six weeks. We sold up our possessions quickly, sent a few things by sea to Australia, bid a tearful farewell to our friends and parents, and were both very sorry to leave Jim and Shirley. Robert was only 6 months old, Steve 6 and Dave 5. Now we were off for a new life in Australia!
To Australia: November 1964
So we flew out of London with Qantas in late November 1964. The weather was nice as we boarded our jet, one of the first big jet planes, (707 I think) which flew via Hamburg, Cairo, Karachi, Singapore and Darwin to Sydney. Robert was six months old, Dave 5 and Steven 6. Because of the frequent stops, necessary in those days, it was a long hard flight but Qantas was good with the kids and we arrived as well as could be expected.
It was 102 degrees in Sydney when we were met by the service manager of H.G.Palmer, the TV firm I was to work for. He transferred us to a rented seafront flat in Cronulla, a beachside suburb of Sydney. After recovering a bit we often swam in what seemed a lovely warm sea (nowadays, after living in the tropics for 30 years I feel the sea at Sydney is very cold) and I foolishly allowed Steve and Dave to get large blisters from the unaccustomed sun. The flat was small but OK, Liz seemed not to be homesick and we settled in to a routine. The kids enjoyed it also and discovered that the many Cottees soft drink bottles left on Cronulla beach would return 3d or 6d, so soon were generating lots of spending money. I had morning swims before work after I discovered that the large fins in the water nearby belong to dolphins and not sharks. Liz made a phone call to Jim and Ruth in England at Christmas which had to be booked and cost 10 pounds and was poor technical quality.
I went to work for the first few weeks with the firm’s accountant who lived nearby and drove us to Palmer’s factory at Bankstown where I had two weeks training on Oz TVs before being assigned a fully equipped VW Kombi and sent on the road. It seemed a swelteringly hot place on the road in a non air-conditioned van. I had a 2-way radio and a Sydney street directory and was expected to bring in 50 pounds a day minimum by hook or by crook. Any sets too difficult to fix in the field were brought in. I found it hard at first both driving around Sydney and parking (which is now a thousand times worse) and extracting money after a repair – it was always, ‘we’ll pay you later’ or ‘send us an account’ but I soon developed stratagems to deal with that. Soon I was doing OK and using the van for family transport at weekends, but this was not the best so I bought an FB 1960 Holden and we travelled around a bit. We had to move out of the seafront flat after a month or so and went around the corner to some modern apartments which being unfurnished required us to buy our first Australian furniture.
1965
We visited Jim and Shirley’s relatives in Wollongong and whilst there Steven and David swam across a creek, the first time they had been out of their depth and totally self-supporting in the water. By February 1965 I was getting disenchanted with my job and accommodation and think Liz was also. We did look at houses in Sylvania, Sydney then costing about 6000 pounds but I couldn’t see a suitable job in Sydney. So I decided to chase up EMI Electronics Canberra who had the STADAN contract and who had interviewed me in England to see if the Shift Supervisor’s job was still open. It was and they had my details from England, but I had to pass the Dept of Defence interview for which I went to Salisbury, South Australia (near Adelaide). I met Dave Kemp and Jim Thompson (engineers) also being interviewed
The D.o.D. interviewer was Tom Reid who became Station Director at Orroral Valley and he seemed very sarcastic and hostile towards me (but I learned later he had a very sick wife who shortly died and left him with young children so perhaps that was the reason) – I left thinking ‘I can’t have got the job’. One of his remarks late in the interview was ‘suppose you tell me something that you really know something about’! Anyway, I was surprised to be offered the job of Shift Supervisor by EMI. I joined them in March of 1965 and was allowed expenses to visit Canberra and select a house. We drove down and stayed overnight and left thinking that we had bought a large house but it fell through and we eventually bought a smaller house at 12 Collier St. Curtin for about 7000 pounds, it was small having only 3 bedrooms and a carport. Steven and David settled in to Curtin School and Liz became a housewife again whilst I went to Woomera SA for ‘training’. The real reason was that the govt. Dept of Works was miles behind in building the Station and staff hired from all around the world were an embarrassment. At Woomera there was little to do. I went to DSIF42 (the Woomera Deep Space Tracking station) but no-one was expecting us and there was nothing organised. I met another technician, Dave Barter who later came to Orroral, but mostly just mooched around. The only interesting thing was meeting some Manchester Poms sent to Woomera to test the Bloodhound guided missile on which I had worked in Manchester at Ferranti; I knew a couple of them. Then it was back to Curtin for a while before being sent to Rosman in North Carolina USA for training. This was a similar station to Orroral and I learned quite a bit and took part in the active social life at the station I went home via England and had a look at my parents, sister and friends.
Back in Canberra, I thought Liz might be missing her parents and suggested that we help bring them out if she and they wished. She was and they did, so we contacted immigration and they arrived a few months later. I always got on well with my in-laws particularly my father in law. Jim had taught me fly fishing and we fished together in the ACT later. Ruth (mother in law) was OK to me and the children but did seem to be too critical of Liz. It was quite crowded in Collins St. with four adults and three children but we got on OK.
1966
Meanwhile the Station was at last completed and the EI & T team from Collins Radio US came in and installed the electronics, delivered minimal training and then were off. Before we went ‘active’ Dave Dempster and I tracked our way totally through every stage of the punched paper driven computer used (occasionally) to steer the 85 foot dish, our main tracking antenna. There was no organisation to train anyone, so we did it rather than sit around. Months later, Dave lost two children in a sand cliff collapse accident, he was always depressed thereafter and his wife never recovered. Later, he developed a back problem so serious that he used to run his tracking operations lying flat on his back! He eventually changed jobs entirely and became a Ranger at Tidbinbilla National Park. Before his loss, I swam the 5 mile length of Lake Burley Griffin, from Yarralumla to Fyshwick with him during the first summer. Liz did not like the idea and worried that we would drown.
1966-1967
Orroral Tracking Station was about 40 km from Canberra. Self-drive Company cars were used to get to the station, which occupied about 50 acres in the Orroral Valley. The Orroral was a small river with quite a few brook trout. There were several antennae for transmission and reception, the largest being an 85ft (26m) XY slow moving steerable dish. The Station employed about 150 persons with operations being conducted 24 hours per day by a 4 shift system. When we went operational the four shift supervisors were A-Bill Brown; B-me: C- Gordon — and D-Brian Banfield. There were about 20 on each shift including a female clerk to do the paper work. I had Glennys Kaczmarowski and Banfield had Margaret McGillivray, the other two were just as bad. None of them could resist being catty about the others, there were constant arguments about who should have done what, and they attempted to play the supervisors against each other. Caustic notes were written in the handover logs, so when I got the chance I got rid of them and replaced them with male clerks – problem solved.
The workload was light when we started. I managed to go trout fishing a few times around dawn and John Wombey, who left to become a Park Warden and was later prominent in the Conservation Movement in Victoria, somehow caught tiger snakes by hand and we autographed their bellies before release. Many operator errors were made on all shifts, usually no more than a switch in the wrong place or a plug not connected, but gradually Orroral collected the tag of ‘worst station on the network’. I don’t know what the Operations Engineer, Sid Hurst could have done about it but he was very quietly spoken and was never known to bawl anyone out. The Station Director, Tom Reid happened to be on Station one night shift when he overheard me bollocking Arthur Mears for an operator error in his room ( he was ops co-ordinator and responsible for checking that room). I don’t know if it was this, but Reid later sent for me congratulated me and said more people should get rockets for making errors. Shortly after, (co-incidence or not), Sid was kicked upstairs with an off-station promotion and I was offered the job of Operations Manager, a day job. Tom Reid was a powerful personality who made the heads of EMI tremble, but I am only surmising that he had a hand in my promotion.
1968
I was by this time better qualified and was a member of the American I.E.E.E. I was happy to accept the new job as it was day work and lots of money, but I also demanded some rewards for shift staff aimed at raising morale and the Station’s standing with the Yanks. These only cost the Company $20 or $30 worth of free beer (it was 30c a glass back then) for any shift with 28 days (one complete shift cycle) error free operation. We had a chalkboard in the ops. room with space for each shift, and 28 spaces which could be ticked off for an error-free shift. Having this before them (I reasoned) would make a person not want to be responsible for losing the shift its Company-supplied monthly piss-up money. Whether this was the reason or not, performance picked up considerably. I also had a station operations plan written (done by my off-sider Peter Archer) before each launch which specified what everyone’s job was, as when mistakes happened it was sometimes hard to see who was at fault. I also had no hesitation about tearing a strip off anyone who let the side down. I was a bit sarcastic and not many enjoyed it. Fortunately, it soon became a rarity. I got a volley ball pitch mowed out of the surrounding grassland and nets erected. The shift was allowed to play volleyball between satellite passes, once everything was set up and checked, as a means of easing tension. Off Station, shifts started to play softball and soccer. We had an Orroral soccer team which beat the other two tracking stations (Honeysuckle Creek and Tidbinbilla) in Canberra. As the teams socialised and drank with each other I think morale improved; anyway our operations improved a lot and we became top station on the network after a while, which, probably unjustly, I got a lot of the credit for.
Back at Collier Street, we were rather crowded and I suggested we build a larger house with a parent’s flat. In-laws Jim and Ruth agreed and would put money in. I thought Liz would be pleased and she did not object at the time. I thought that we could be “separate but together” for everyone’s benefit. So we had a very large house with flat built at 57 Birdwood St, Hughes. We did not really have enough money at the time to furnish the large house properly, but we were making good financial progress. Liz later told me that it was a mistake to share a house with her parents but I cannot remember her objecting when the decision was being taken and I thought I was pleasing her. I don’t believe I did it to please me. I went for training to the US twice and managed a side trip to England to see my parents, but did not learn much in the US, other than to know the faces of those people I often spoke to by phone.
Steve and Dave seemed to be doing OK at school and Robert started at Hughes Primary. We often swam at the Cotter River and sometimes camped and once Steve, Dave and I floated a few miles down the Murrimbidgee River on Lilos. We were a bit late arriving at the pickup point, and Liz already feared the worst, although it is a shallow slow-flowing river. I later bought a Heron dinghy in partnership with
Jim Thomson and we sailed it on Lakes George and Burley Griffin. I also chartered a yacht three times on long weekends in Sydney and sailed it on Sydney Harbour with the kids. Liz did not want to come.
Steve made a friend of a boy in Curtin who was a couple of years older than he and who smoked. I was keen to show what poor wind the boy had due to his smoking and challenged him to a 1 length race at the 50M Olympic pool in Canberra when we all went swimming. The kid was really fast and I only just managed to stay ahead and was puffed as we finished. But then he suggested we dive off the 10M high dive platform. I dare not chicken out but being a poor diver, did not enjoy the headlong plunge! Moral, don’t underestimate people’s abilities!
Steven swore at Pat Barter a local girl of 10 when she did something to his bike, this upset Liz who was nearby and who seemed not to realise how kids swore by the late sixties. Otherwise life seemed to go on normally and I have no recollection of being unhappy nor was I aware that Liz was- although I probably never asked her.
Peter Archer, who took over my job of shift supervisor when I was promoted and was a close friend, came to dinner and kid’s birthday parties sometimes and I played soccer with him. He was also responsible for producing the highly successful operations plans before each satellite launch, which vastly improved the Station’s success rate. When I replaced all the female operations clerks with males, I inherited Margaret Macgillivray as the Ops. Eng. Secretary. I did not like her but had no choice, as a job had to be found for her. I knew that she quite admired Brian Banfield. She tried to wield whatever power I (as the Ops.Eng) had herself and tried to use me to settle scores with whomever she was warring; she had many enemies. So I was quite glad when, over the University break 1968-69, she took 6 weeks holiday. I was given a Uni student as temporary secretary; she had been selected by my old enemy in Administration, Tom Amos, not by me. He was an ex-Commander in the Royal Navy and an awful snob. Her name was Marjorie Dalgarno, daughter of prominent local politician Anne Dalgarno. She arrived in a very short mini which exposed her pants whenever she leaned over. She was 6 foot tall. She volunteered that she was a virgin, under treatment from a psychiatrist for depression, could not meet boys, and had just left home. I thought she was a strange person, but much better than Margaret at the job as she was a neat typist, listened to instructions and did not play politics. I know that there were rumours that she was my girl friend at the time, but that was not so, but she did follow me around the station like a puppy; more about her later. Around the same period, I seemed to branch out into various activities.
1969: A Crucial Year
Dave Taggart, a technician, got me interested in Jishukan Honbu, a school of dirty fighting (self defence) which I really liked and to which I went every Thursday evening and most Saturday mornings. I also knew some people in the Australian Labour Party (ALP) and became secretary of the Aust.Nat.University branch; this took up quite a bit of time in the days before computers were common. I took and published minutes and ran the fund- raising; an endless task.
I also went on the stage. Lionel Lamb was an Ops Co-ordinator and friend and he invited Liz and me to watch a Joe Orton play, “Loot”, starring his wife and his brother Perry, which Canberra Rep. were putting on. At that time, Canberra had no professional theatre but the Rep. got a massive subsidy and a new theatre which allowed very good productions and had a professional director called Ron Hayes. After the performance Liz and I went to the back stage party in the new Canberra Theatre and there met Lionel’s wife and younger brother, Perry who had the lead. He asked me to be in the next production (East Lynne) and I agreed. Liz was not impressed with the acting scene, describing it as ‘arty farty’. But I got into the next three productions, although I have no acting talent, but it took up a lot of time at rehearsals. Then Steve and Dave joined me in “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” which left Liz home alone a lot.
I took the kids to Hughes library each week to change their books and we bought sweets after so that it became a looked-forward-to event; we all went caving and swimming in the local area. All in all, in January 1969 I would have said that we were an ordinary family, happier than most I knew.
It is true that I was (maybe still am) an MCP, and was rarely at home in the evenings, what with self-defence and acting and playing soccer or other sports and working for the ALP but I can’t remember this leading to domestic strife, although perhaps I was too insensitive to notice. Anyway, about this time Liz said that she was bored at home, all the kids were at school and she wanted to earn and control her own money. I was a tightwad it’s true but I did not spend much on myself either and wanted to use all our income to pay off the mortgage. She wanted to look for a part time job. I did not want her to work, thinking, with a 1940’s attitude that it makes me look small but I reluctantly agreed. She found a job at the Aust.Nat. Uni as an animal carer (we even got a pet rat from there).
She also met in the same section Alf Rumph, recently widowed. I think she did mention what a nice man he was. I thought no more about it.
Marjorie Dalgarno left for Uni when it restarted about Feb 20 and I was glad to see her go to some extent as she was a strange girl with many problems. Of course, I then got the dreaded Margaret back as she returned from leave. Liz seemed pleased to control her own money, and our life, as far as I was aware, was proceeding normally. But thinking back, I was maybe given a hint by my mother in law, Ruth, who said something like ‘you ought to pay more attention to the home front’ which I took to mean criticism of my never being at home in the evenings. I ignored the remark.
What happened next I still find to some extent unbelievable.
In early May 1969, at about 3pm, I received a phone call at work from an anonymous woman, who presumably worked at ANU.
(How could she have known my name and where I worked? Liz and I were listed in the Canberra phone directory under our home number. Anyway, whoever it was, it must have been a friend of Liz who she had told about me working at Orroral Valley. Liz later agreed this was likely).
The conversation was short and went more or less: “your wife Liz is having an affair with Alf. We all know about it. They slip out at lunch time every day and are never apart at work”. I was gobsmacked, but with Margaret, my unwanted secretary, sitting, ears pricked as always, opposite me I managed to say something like “don’t be so stupid, woman, I know all about it. Get off the line”.
But I did not know and I was seething when I got home. I waited until the kids were in bed and we had a big row. Relations got worse and worse over the weeks. I asked and then insisted, but Liz would not quit the job and reminded me often what a nice man Alf was. Finally, I demanded that she either never see him again and quit the job or move out. She was away several hours and came back to say that she would move out when it could be arranged. She assured me that it was not about sex and that she had not had an affair which I believed; but that was almost worse as she obviously no longer loved me and saw her future with Alf, and as Alf was also many years my senior I was even more upset that she had fallen for this ‘old bloke’. The last few weeks were a great strain for us both, trying to keep calm when the kids were about and at night occupying the same bed. It is strange that we continued to do that right up until the day she left.
This was so difficult that when I explained the problem to my GP Dr.Appleby, he gave me female hormone which both killed my sex drive and made me quite placid – it was a strange experience. We did talk once about seeing a marriage counsellor but agreed that we were past the stage when that might have done any good. I can remember being angry all the time. Liz wanted to take all the kids and said Alf could support them and her and they wanted nothing from me. I knew that I could probably have stopped her going simply by saying I would fight for custody and in those days, in those circumstances, I would probably have won custody. But I did not want her on those terms. It was a fateful decision and its repercussions are still ringing in my life as Steven, now in his fifties, goes through his time of troubles.
Looking back on my life, apart from one bad week in Canada ten years earlier, the months May to August 1969 stand out as the worst period in the whole seven decades. I told her that if the kids ever wanted to be with me I would happily have them, but they never did! Was I really such a bad father??
So one August morning I kissed the kids goodbye without telling them what was happening, and, as arranged, went to work. When I got home everyone was gone and the house was nearly bare, the agreed furniture having gone too. I was mortified at having to tell all my friends that we had split. I found it really hard that my wife had “run off with another man” but having bitten the bullet and told everyone, I wanted a divorce as fast as it could be arranged. Peter Archer (with whom Liz and I were good friends) had split from his wife years before in similar circumstances and I knew that around the station, he was somewhat of a figure of pity and now I was in the same boat. I knew that this was probably also my situation and it added to my suppressed fury. At the time, I blamed Liz, Alf and the World for my problems.
Liz, Alf and the kids were living in a flat in Belmore NSW. Under the Matrimonial Offences act I had to get evidence of adultery, which Liz provided by agreement, to my detective. With this, I filed for divorce in October 1969 with a hearing on Feb 13th 1970 at which a decree nisi was granted.
Around Christmas, I ran into Marjorie Dalgarno downtown. She had heard (how?) about my separation and we slept together on and off until I left Australia in April the next year. I had to admit this in my court discretion statements. In January, the house in Birdwood Street was sold, Jim and Ruth got their share and I moved into a flat in Queanbeyan. So, in such circumstances an event, which reverberates to this day (2009) and is at least a partial cause of my eldest son Steve’s dysfunction, was acted out.
1970
I carried on with my job at Orroral but felt increasingly lost and pointless. I cast around for some sort of change. In October 1969 as soon as I filed for divorce, I had written to Capn. Mike’s Caribbean Sailboat Cruises about ads. in the English ‘Yachting Monthly’ magazine for Captains and Mates as I had always been interested in sailing. I received a reply to the effect that “if I was as good as I said I was and fronted up in Fort Lauderdale Florida, then I would probably get a job, but they did not recruit direct from Australia”. This offer was always at the back of my mind thereafter. Over the following months I had palled around with Perry almost exclusively after Liz left, even sailing from Sydney to Ulladulla and return in a chartered Bluebird yacht with him and John another friend from the Rep. We had the scary experience of getting caught in a southerly buster off Jervis Bay which scared the hell out of Perry and John and taught me a thing or two about being better prepared ahead of a storm which benefited me greatly in later sailing. I finally got my black belt at Jishukan Honbu on the second attempt which cost me a black eye and a bloody nose. In January 1970 Perry’s girlfriend Marilyn said she had a girlfriend who was then un-attached, but Marjorie was more than enough girlfriend at the time, so I passed her name (Elaine) and phone number to Peter Archer; they clicked immediately, subsequently married, raised a family and live happily in retirement on the NSW coast (2005). p.s. Elaine died in 2007.
Liz phoned me once around the time of the divorce and hinted at a reconciliation but I told her that things had gone too far for it to have any chance of success (should I have done that? It is one of life’s difficult questions). I had a good job at Orroral and presumably good prospects for the future but was unhappy living alone and commuting out to Orroral daily.
With much trepidation, I took the decision to quit my job and try my luck in the Caribbean at Easter. Before handing in my notice, I got Dr.Appleby to give me three weeks sick (depression) leave and Perry and I got work labouring for a builder we knew. It was hard but healthy work and paid well, especially as I was also on full pay at Orroral throughout this time and we did a lot of building overtime. I must have been fit as I enjoyed smashing house garage floors in demolitions with my sledgehammer. This also gave Perry quite a bit of money and as he was getting claustrophobic, with his girlfriend looking for marriage, he asked if he could come along on the Caribbean jaunt. I booked us on the “Canberra” from Sydney to Port Everglades, Florida at cost of about $700 each.
As soon as the booking was confirmed I gave notice at Orroral. I had many qualms in the dead of night about leaving the kids and Liz, giving up my secure high paid job and superannuation and heading into the unknown, but what the Hell, I was only 36 and maybe had a lot of life still to come. Be that as it may, it was perhaps not inappropriate that the ship sailed on April Fools Day 1970. I made arrangements to give the old FB Holden to Liz and off Perry and I drove to Sydney and adventure!
On the “Canberra”, ex Sydney 1-Apr-1970
Perry and I stayed overnight in Sydney at the Cronulla Hotel (the only part of Sydney that I knew quite well) and in the morning drove to the pre-arranged point from where Liz would later collect the old family FB Holden, which was probably worth only $300 although it still ran well enough. From there we boarded the P & O ship “Canberra”.
Being low-fare customers we were well down in the ship in a cabin for four without a porthole. The trip started ominously. We had berths E202 and E204, one above the other. I had opted for the upper berth, but when we got into the cabin there was someone’s luggage already on it. I checked my ticket- it was E204 so I flung the offending luggage onto the floor of the cabin and placed mine on the berth. Then we went to the dockside-facing upper deck with hundreds of others to wave goodbye.
I very much hoped that Liz and the children would come down to see me off (but why should they?) and although I had a good position and scanned the shore crowds ceaselessly, I did not see them. I felt very sad and guilty about what I was doing. At last the ship’s siren sounded, the Army band played ‘Now is the Hour…’, all the paper tapes we had thrown ashore stretched, stretched and finally broke and as the last one snapped, the tugs started turning us and we were finally on the way. We were booked to the port of Miami, Florida (Port Everglades) hoping to get a job on Cap’n Mike’s Caribbean Windjammer tourist yachts.
As I trooped dejectedly below it finally hit me what I had done, no Liz, no kids. I swallowed back my tears and went to the cabin in a dark mood. In the cabin were two sturdy Australians, both rugby playing farmer’s sons from WA. The largest of them was the owner of the luggage I had thrown on the floor. He was aggressive, I was in an ugly mood and confident in my newly acquired ability (1969) in self-defence. I had a black belt from Jishukan-Honbu, a Canberra ‘dirty-fighting’ academy. Just before the blood flowed (whose?), Perry the peacemaker asked us to delay the mayhem for a minute and he would find out what had gone wrong. He was back in minutes with an apologetic P & O official anxious to stop a fight, who explained that a fifth passenger who was originally getting off at Sydney had rebooked to go on to the next stop (Aukland) but the booking system had not picked that up. We tossed up to see which one of us four would vacate the cabin until Aukland; I lost and had to go. P & O, trying to make it up to me, gave me a nice cabin to myself with a porthole, but I was still depressed and spent that day and evening alone in the cabin sleeping and reading. Meanwhile, Perry circulated trying to bag a chick.
After I spent two days in the deepest of glooms, Perry said that he had entered us in the deck tennis doubles and we had better go practise which we did, and the next day we won the doubles knockout comp. This physical activity cheered me up a bit and when in the bar later two 23 year old girls came over and asked us if we would partner them in the deck tennis mixed doubles, we agreed. We practised together and got on well with them. They had just graduated, mine in pharmacy from Brisbane Uni, and they were going together to Vancouver at the start of a years travelling to the US and Europe. Perry, who was 10 years younger and much better looking than me, clicked immediately with his girl. Mine took a while to develop, but I got a little happier as time went on. We got to Aukland the 4th or 5th day and the four of us took a tour to some islands in the Aukland harbour. I moved back into the original cabin, made my peace with the WA farmers. (We became quite friendly during the trip and they were on the same ship, Oriana that I came back to Australia on in November 70).
I was getting into the swim of things and feeling a bit like a single man again. The girls changed dining room tables to join us and we were together at meals, sports, movies and dances i.e. just about all the time. Perry could play the guitar in a classical way and sing a romantic love song so we always had a group around us in the bar and at the pool.
An appeal was made for someone to run an over 40’s morning keep fit group, and as a fairly fit 36 year old I volunteered. The first morning I could see a deal of scepticism on many faces but I was used to the strenuous 20 minute workout given by the Sensei in Canberra and gave it to the class, gently at first but finishing energetically. At the end they were all gasping and we went for a swim and a beer all in good humour. The class was quite popular and I kept it going throughout the trip until we reached Florida even though I was often hung-over and though sometimes not in the mood for exercise at first, I soon felt better from doing it.
The next stop was Nuku’alofa (Tonga) and we four hired a Moke and toured the island, seeing blowholes and diving on the coral for the first time (I really loved the warm seas and would later settle in the tropics for over 30 years). I broke off some bits of stag’s horn coral and put it under my bunk; about a week later it stank and was tossed overboard. We nearly missed the boat from losing our way back, although it was a small island.
By now we were a constant foursome and needed a place to make love. The cabin was the obvious place. The other guys in our cabin also got lucky sometimes so we needed a signal that the cabin was in use before people banged on the door or barged in. We had a drawing pin which the first one back put discreetly in the outside doorframe warning off any late comer who had to make other arrangements like bagging a bathroom- room (big enough but a hard floor), a shower (but ‘standing up’?) or some dark corner; the laundry and ironing room was OK but again, a hard floor. Every night, everywhere possible was occupied; you had to be early or be unlucky. The Masters at Arms patrolled the lifeboat deck to see that lifeboats were not used.
So the voyage continued and we toured Hawaii in a rented car, swam at Waikiki and saw the wrecks at Pearl Harbour. After Hawaii, the next stop was Vancouver where our two girl friends got off. They were staying at the YWCA in downtown Vancouver and Perry with guitar and I went with them in a taxi. Perry played and we all sang sentimental songs taking swigs of duty free Jim Beam all the way into the building where we said a tearful farewell. I was in contact with my girl for about two years on and off, she wrote via my parent’s address in England. When she last wrote, she was working as a pharmacist in England and had a steady boyfriend.
We were rather subdued as the “Canberra” left Vancouver, but going to the disco that night Perry latched onto a Mexican Canadian migrant who was going to England with her Canadian girlfriend and who had just boarded, so in two days we were in another foursome which lasted for the rest of our trip to Port Everglades, Florida. There were many more single girls on the Canberra than men and we were presentable, athletic, good dancers and socialisers so we had no problem in keeping the girls with us for the duration of the trip.
The next stops were San Francisco where we visited the hippy area at Haight-Ashbury (then at its height), Los Angeles, Acapulco (where Perry’s Mexican friend took us to the non-tourist parts and we bought a lot of silver rings and beads) the Panama Canal ports of Panama and Colon, and Kingston Jamaica. We had a great time, taking the tours at every port, but eventually got to Florida and disembarked at Port Everglades, the port for Miami. (Remember that we had booked to Miami so that I could have an interview with “Cap’n Mike” of Windjammer Cruises with a view to sailing as paid crew on his large sailboats around the Windward and Leeward Islands in the Caribbean.) We were very sorry to leave our girlfriends on the “Canberra”, they were continuing on their tour to England and Europe.
We went to a cheap motel in Fort Lauderdale, which was the city of Cap’n. Mike headquarters (Windjammer Cruises) and rang every day to try to get an interview with Cap’n Mike, who we were told was the only person who could hire us. But we were stalled each day and asked to try later. We consequently had a lot of time on our hands, and lounging at the motel pool or on the ‘beach’ didn’t suit us. In the Fort Lauderdale newspaper were some advertisements by women seeking male escorts, so we thought that we would give it a go. The very first one we rang agreed to an interview but only at our motel at a poolside table. She was an attractive middle aged lady of about 45. We must have looked and sounded OK because that evening she rustled up a friend and we all dined and danced, at a club they chose, at their expense. Although sex did not occur, it was (or I thought, probably soon would be; I believe I can read the signs!) on offer. They were pleased that we were civilised, could talk, dance and read a menu – not big skills, but obviously not all that common in the people who usually answered their ads.
Back at our motel Perry was in favour of us forgetting the sailing and setting up as gigolos, but although tempted, as it seems an intriguing lifestyle, I was still keen to sail the Caribbean. At Cap’n. Mike’s the next day, I learned that only he could hire Captains and Mates (which I aspired to) and he was in White Plains, New York, (his home). At my insistence, they phoned him, I spoke to him convincingly, and he agreed to interview me if I would front up at his premises there. This presented a transport problem for us in Fort Lauderdale, but when scanning the local newspaper (which we read thoroughly every day) I had seen ads. which read something like: ‘drivers wanted to deliver cars to New York, Philadelphia, Boston etc. Fuel costs paid and $100 fee on successful delivery. Phone XXX’
I phoned, got an appointment and went. They were impressed by my sober and older appearance and said that the car would be ready in the morning. Imagine my surprise when, the next day I was given a white Lincoln Continental convertible, an address in New York State and petrol and oil vouchers good at any Chevron (or was it Amoco) station. It seems that many people drive their cars to Florida, use them on a winter holiday, but do not drive them back (why)? Coming from Australia, the distance from Florida to New York doesn’t seem that great. Anyway these transport firms did exist and charged a large fee to the owners. The problem for the firms, they told me, was to get reliable drivers.
Next morning, we loaded our luggage into the trunk and, armed with suitable maps and a full tank, we were off; it was a sunny day, coolish but we had the hood down anyway and rolled along like a couple of millionaires. We stuck to the Highway Route 1 which goes through many large cities but there was always a bypass. Perry wanted to pick up female hitchhikers, but I was too cautious. We slept overnight in the car down a side road and I can’t remember any rain the whole 2 or 3 day trip which ran smoothly except for one incident. This happened near the very end. We were in New York City trying to get to the upmarket suburb to deliver the car when I got lost. I didn’t have a street map of New York City, just the major roads. Somehow we got into a poor Negro area and stopped near a group of youths to ask the way. They seemed to move menacingly towards us but I think that our accents, naivety and politeness saved us, as we were directed back to the nearest big road and found the suburb (can’t think of its name) about half an hour later. In the suburb, an inquiry at the gas station, and we found the location of the car-owners street. He was delighted at getting his car back safely and gave me a $20 tip as well as the promised $100. He also ran us to the address of Capn. Mike in White Plains, New York State which was not very far away.
Windjammer Barefoot Cruise Line
These two clips from the internet in 2009 show what eventually happened to Cap’n Mike and Windjammer, but at the time, 1970, they seemed to me to be prospering. I think that the Yankee Clipper and the Polynesia were eventually replaced by other ships.
Originally founded in 1947 by Captain Mike Burke, Windjammer Barefoot Cruises operated a number of handsome original tall ships as well as one motor vessel, Amazing Grace, which also serves as a supply ship for the rest of the fleet. Unfortunately, the company came upon hard times in 2007 and simply and quietly went out of business. There was never a formal bankruptcy filed and there is a lot of controversy about what happened. Many people – customers and others, feel they were cheated after they pre-paid for several cruises and invested in a timeshare cruise ship that never materialized. With its very casual lifestyle – the term “dress code” was not known onboard Windjammer’s ships – and its free rum drinks and focus on pure fun was extremely popular with a certain clientele. Unfortunately, it did not prove to be a sustainable business model. At this point there is no way to contact the cruise line or anyone who used to work there.
The line has a fleet of five sailing ships plus one freighter and a supply ship (Amazing Grace). Most cabins have bunk beds and private facilities, but not much beyond that. Shorts and beachwear is the full-time dress code. There are not any casinos or any type of organized entertainment aboard. Passengers could participate in operating the sails if they wish so. There were absolutely fabulous Caribbean itineraries. Windjammer Barefoot Cruises, still a family-run company, was founded in 1947 by Captain Mike Burke. He took a dilapidated 70-foot ketch and began offering ultra-informal trips to the Bahamas. The company is based in Miami. In the Windjammer fleet of sailing ships, the 72-passenger Mandalay, built in 1923, is its most venerable. Other ships in the line include the 64-passenger Yankee Clipper (1927), 74-passenger Flying Cloud (1935), 26-passenger Polynesia (1938), and 120-passenger Legacy (1959).
Cap’n Mike (who was more businessman than seaman) interviewed me and looked at my navigation papers and sailing references and decided that I could go as Mate on the “Yankee Clipper”. He gave me a letter, but no air tickets. I asked that Perry get a job also. I think that he thought that we were a gay couple. He was willing to hire Perry but only as crew for US$70 a month and keep (the same as they paid the black crew). I was to get US$100 a week and keep. He told me that I would get a lot of tips.
So it was that another phase of my life was about to begin. I think that had I known that I would meet and eventually marry Patty, with all that that entailed, I would have gone back to Fort Lauderdale and tried out as a gigolo instead!
So I loaned Perry the airfare and we flew, in mid May 1970 from New York to Fort de France on the island of Martinique in the middle of the Windward/Leeward Islands. At Martinique, I was assigned to the Yankee Clipper as Mate. She was a large three masted ship of 197ft OA and 327 tons displacement. Perry could not get on the Clipper and was sent to the Polynesia, a smaller schooner, but soon got tired of the work and low pay and living with the black crew so he quit. He went from there to his brother’s place in Canada and eventually to England in the hope of breaking into acting for a living. I have often looked at movie credits but never saw his name nor heard from him again.
On the Clipper, there were only two white crew; the Skipper, a bluff 50 year old American who had his wife with him, and me. The rest were locally recruited black crew, mostly from Bequia (a traditional source of Caribbean sailors for some reason). They were poorly paid, but excellent seamen, quite used to all aspects of handling the ship. Apart from navigating, dealing with customs and passengers and keeping order, the whites were barely needed. The system was that the day (when cruising with passengers) was divided into two: 6am to 6pm Skipper on duty; 6pm to 6 am Mate (me) responsible. Of course this wasn’t always adhered to but was the general rule.
The cruising schedule was as follows; every 14 days we sailed for 11days then rested, cleaned and re-stored the ship on the other 3. Because the prevailing winds are easterly and the island chains lie mostly North and South and Martinique is about the centre of the chain of islands, we were nearly always on a reach whether going North or South.
The skipper would determine our destinations based on the weather, whether the political situation on some of the islands was volatile and his favourite places where the kickbacks were best. We carried 64 passengers when full and usually had 60 or so. Because the passengers wanted to be in a new port nearly every day at dawn, and because most of the islands are about 30 miles apart, almost all sailing was done at night with me in nominal charge. The crew having done the trips lots of times was fully competent so I was mainly there to keep the peace and carry the can if anything went wrong, having to do little more than be on deck.
The Yankee Clipper was a good sailer but we never pushed her hard as she would have heeled too much and caused passenger complaints. (But why take a holiday on a sailboat if you don’t like sailing ??) We often ran the engines to keep her steady when there was a good sailing wind, just to keep the passengers from feeling sick.
My very first trip proved to be very significant, as it was then that I met Nurse Patty (Patricia Anne) McCann (nee Lynch) who (it will be seen later) had quite an impact on my life. I should mention that we had many large female groups on these trips; in fact there was usually a preponderance of 20 to 30 year old females- which is why we had to keep an eye on the crew. I am not trying to say that it was OK for the whites (Skipper and me) to screw the passengers and not the blacks – what I mean is that the whites usually left the passengers reasonably happy with the experience, whereas sometimes a crewman would swear at or beat a passenger who had initially egged him on, causing us, and the Company, a lot of trouble. (Some of them treated the white girls the way they would a Caribbean girl which did not go down well with American girls). I think I have explained everything above badly, but you will probably get what I am trying to say.
Anyway, to continue; Patty was in a group of about 15 nurses from a big hospital in Pittsburgh. I met her the first evening out, it was quiet and we were sailing from Martinique to Dominica (Dominica became politically unstable for a while after this trip and we never visited again), a distance of about 30 miles. I was sitting near the wheel, keeping an eye on things and letting those passengers who wanted to steer and have their photo taken do so, although a crewman stood behind them. Patty started talking to me and I noticed that she was slim, had long dark hair and green eyes (very Irish looking) and a cute American accent. She wore a lot of jewellery, mostly CND peace symbols, one of which was on a black choker.
I mentally called her ‘the peace chick’, and we just made general conversation. I didn’t see her in Dominica and slept most of the day, but that evening as we made for Guadeloupe-Basse Terre she came on deck again and I noticed that she had a plumpish American in ridiculous red and white striped pants in tow, but she spent her time talking to me about Australia. She was on deck every night but nothing happened until the night of the return trip on-board dance. Between Montserrat (Plymouth Harbour) and Martinique we had a steel band on board which played at lunch times and every evening. Although I was on duty, it being after 6pm, the Skipper asked me to be at the dance, both to provide a partner for any ‘wallflowers’ and to see that the black crew did not upset any passengers. Some of the women obviously liked black men, (and most of the crew were good looking young men,) and other women definitely did not. I was supposed to head off any trouble before it started.
Patty came over and asked me to dance, which I did holding her at a respectable distance. Gradually we got closer and closer, and about the third dance and quite out of the blue she said “well, d’ya wanna go down the cabin and fuck”
I had never been asked so directly before and was concerned that I had misheard so I muttered some neutral pleasantry like “… is that so?” (A thing I still do if I haven’t heard when someone is speaking to me and my mind has wandered – I suppose everyone does it?). Anyway she stopped dancing looked me right in the eyes and said in a loud voice “are ya gay or sumpin’ or shall we go now?” I realised at that point that I had not misheard and off we went to her cabin, but I then realised I was supposed to be at the dance, so I excused myself for a minute and went to see the captain. He had seen it all before and told me to be back in an hour and off I went. She had some local MJ and we sat, had a drink and a smoke (at which I spluttered like the amateur I was) and so into the cot.
After this, I could not get rid of her. I was flattered by her attention but wherever I was, she would appear and was forever tapping on my cabin door when I needed sleep – too much of a good thing is nearly as bad as a famine! Her American ex-boyfriend glared at me every time our paths crossed, but fortunately did not make a scene.
Soon, we got back to Fort de France at the end of the trip. Patty, who was flying back to Pittsburgh the next day, asked me to go for a last night at her expense to a swish resort across the bay. The skipper must have been getting a bit sick of me and grumbled a bit as I had only just started on the ship, but he let me off for 24 hours. At the hotel, we smoked and talked quite a lot, then in the evening skinny-dipped just outside the reach of the hotel lights and made love in the sea (a first time for me). I noticed before we left that Patty kept popping pills – of which she seemed to have inexhaustible quantities- and was happiest when drinking and smoking joints. (That’s a naive statement as who wouldn’t be?). I should have been warned to keep clear of any further involvement, but as events will show I did not. I had tried MJ with her, but it made me cough a lot and I didn’t think that I needed any stimulation, other than an enthusiastic woman, in order to enjoy myself.
Finally, I went to the little airport with her and sat in the bar for an hour awaiting take-off. She told me that she had just divorced and was an OR Nurse (Theatre Sister) and she was a very unhappy person. She started to cry, and caught in the mood, so did I. Then she asked me if I would reply if she wrote to me. I said I would and that I would not be the person who stopped writing – this promise caused me some problems later. So we said farewell, she back to Pittsburgh and me to the Yankee Clipper.
There was a lot of grumbling about my absence but I pitched in and worked very hard for the two days remaining and by the time we started the next cruise I was ‘rehabilitated’ but warned not to try to ‘pull that stunt again’.
So that was my life for a while, 11 days cruising, 3 days stores, cleaning and rest then off again. But every trip was different, a different route – sometimes we started south towards St.Vincent – and almost always a different girl for a shipboard romance. I think that many of the passengers came with the express intention of having a short affair. Once the Captain’s wife left the ship, even he joined in the action, at what I thought then was the ripe old age of 50!!
I have forgotten to mention the tips, which seemed to me enormous, but perhaps by American standards were not. The routine was; at the final shipboard dance in Martinique before everyone left the next morning, with everyone well boozed up the skipper praised the crew and said that whilst there had been no tipping during the cruise, anyone who wanted to could now do so in a box designed for the job. He suggested that $50 was the norm and with everyone looking on, most people felt obligated to come up with at least that sum. When you remember that we could carry 67 (max) and usually had at least 60 passengers it was not surprising that there was usually over US$3000 to split. The other factor was that the Windward/Leeward islands were in a loose federation and used a common currency, the British West Indian Dollar (known as BeeWees). As in many countries I subsequently visited around the world, the good old Yankee greenback was preferred above all the native currencies and invariably had an unofficial exchange rate much more favourable than the bank rate. The result was that passengers usually dumped all their BeeWees as well as US$ into the box at the end of the cruise, and as Captain and crew both preferred US$, I ended up with enormous quantities of BeeWees as well as quite a few US dollars as I always got the unofficial rate of exchange.
There were 24 crew all told, the Captain and I, white, and 22 coloured- most of them from Bequia, an island with a reputation for good seamen. Out of the tips of about $3000, the skipper took $700 and I got $300 (his rules!) and the other $2000 was divided amongst the black crew (2000/22=$90 ea.). When you remember that their pay was $70US a month , their fortnightly tip income was very large. In addition, there was much unemployment in the Caribbean and a job on Windjammer Cruises was highly prized which is why I was able to control them even when they were drunk or high on ‘bang’. There was no income tax or credit cards, and US$ or BeeWees or East Caribbean Dollars (also called BeeWees although they had started replacing BeeWees) were used for everything. The latter currency was not liked by most people and I often exchanged my US for BeeWees at an exorbitant rate (I think 1to 10) so that I had thousands of BeeWees and lots of US cash when I eventually paid off. I can’t remember what the official exchange rate was (about 3 for a dollar I think) but when I eventually cashed the BeeWees in a Pittsburgh bank I had made a lot of money.
I was enjoying the cruises and started to get regular letters from Patty, to which I always replied. I was enjoying the sailing and the girls and was stashing away lots of cash; in fact I had such cash hoard in my cabin that I was terrified I’d get burgled. I never bragged to anyone how much I had saved and that probably protected me as it was a fairly rough crew and cabins are easy to search. But good times never last forever and my American skipper eventually paid off and returned to Stateside. His replacement was a youngish Norwegian who did not like anybody, particularly me, and trips became noticeably less pleasant, so much so that I asked for a transfer and soon went on board the smaller “Polynesia” a 78ft schooner. My new captain was Eduard Asp, a Swede with an eye for the ladies and with whom I could get along well. I soon got used to sailing her and life was pretty much the same although I was about 50% down on tips on the “Poly”. Life was pleasant again.
Me steering the “Polynesia” off Fort de France Martinique
I got the occasional letter from first wife Liz who lived in Sydney and I was feeling a bit restless and very well cashed up as I had spent little, so I thought I would go to England on the QE II from New York, see my parents and sister and eventually Liz and the children by going back to Australia soon. So I quit the Caribbean about September 1970 and flew to Miami, Florida.
The QE II was five days from her New York sailing date and I had been in touch with Patty and had her phone number in Pittsburgh. In her last letters she had sounded depressed and did not know I had quit the Caribbean. She was surprised to hear me when I phoned, and talking to her, she pleaded with me to come to Pittsburgh, explained that she was “ill” and could not meet me, but just to take a taxi on arrival to her house in Shady Avenue, Shadyside, Pittsburgh. (There was a pop-song at the time I remembered, “The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane”!)
When I got there she was on the settee with bandages around both her ankles where she had cut a vein in each. She told me that she had already cut her wrists some years earlier. She did have wrist scars which I had never noticed before and said it was just as easy to commit suicide using ankle as wrist veins. Her wounds were healing and she had been off work a week. She was in danger of being deregistered as a nurse. Of course sex was out of the question and I was most sympathetic to her condition.
Looking back now I think she got depressed and wounded herself but did not really want to die as she wounded herself each time in situations where she knew she would probably be found. Her sister had found her this time on a weekend visit. I had never known a really “upset” person before and took to my role as “carer” with enthusiasm. After about a week she went back to work and kept her job. I drove her to work and mooched around Pittsburgh during the day, even going to the Mellon-Carnegie University to see if I could enrol; I could if I wished. I also put in my large stash of Bee Wee’s to her bank and after a week received lots of $US at the official exchange rate for them. This gave me quite a lot of cash.
As her health and morale improved fast we soon started screwing and smoking MJ together and in the weeks I was there we had ‘advanced’ as far as going to a multi-couple swinging party. Although fairly high at the time, I did not really enjoy it, seeing her being screwed by another, nor would I take part in the “daisy chain” which involved homosexual activity which I found repugnant. I am a bit of a square really. I think the height of pleasure to me is one woman, who I really like and who likes me and enjoys having sex with me. I am not naturally kinky.
Anyway, I could feel a sort of involvement developing that I did not want to be in, and so said I had to go to England to see my ailing parents (they were not then ailing). She offered to quit her job and come with me, but I declined saying I had to go to Australia after to sort out what I was going to do about my kids but we would keep in touch via my parent’s address.
Late September 1970
So I left on a convenient sailing of the QE II to Southampton, then by bus to Nelson, Lancashire and my parents. I did not tell them that I was divorced from Liz as I was too ashamed, but they told me later they were suspicious about my circumstances.
I got a letter from Liz saying the boys missed me and I wondered if I should try for reconciliation if she also was keen. As always my relationship with my father – conversations often degenerated into rows, was not particularly pleasant and I was not happy at home. So I booked a return sea trip from Southampton to Sydney on the “Oriana” which left about 5th November 1970. I should have mentioned that I sent a letter to Patty mentioning my trip and itinerary back to Australia but I did not invite her to join me.
On the “Oriana” were the two WA farmers with whom I had nearly fought (see “Canberra”), returning after their Euro trip, and we knocked around together. I cracked onto a Sydney barmaid returning after a working holiday in London and who liked casual sex and the voyage proceeded happily and without incident to Los Angeles.
After we docked in L.A. and before I went ashore with the barmaid, I was paged to go to the Purser’s Desk. There was a message for me as follows:
I have booked a ticket on the Oriana and am coming with you to Australia, be arriving LA soon – Love Patty.
She turned up about an hour later. I was, as they say, flabbergasted! I certainly had not asked her to join me. However, I told the barmaid that an old girlfriend had turned up—she was sure it was my wife and called me ‘wicked Norman’ and was highly amused and did not make a fuss.
I don’t know what it is about Patty but under the influence of her big green tear-filled eyes I have made some strange choices as you will see. Anyway, she said something like, “I have taken six months leave, sold the lease on my house and put my furniture at my mother’s. I want to be with you. I know it’s a surprise and you weren’t expecting me but please, please, don’t be angry and be with me and let me come on this trip.” I could hardly refuse as there she was. So we went to the Purser, I told him she was my fiancée and they juggled us a two-berth cabin together (at no small cost).
The barmaid was highly amused at my predicament and there was just one unpleasant incident. I happened to draw the barmaid as a partner in a “Paul Jones” or similar exchange dance, and I was more or less standing still and laughing with her about something. Patty left her partner, rushed up to us and shouted to the barmaid, “Stop dry-fucking my boyfriend you bitch.” The barmaid, who was twice Patty’s size, was stunned, everyone nearby stopped dancing and stared at us. I hustled Patty away and didn’t go dancing again and avoided any contact with the barmaid.
We eventually arrived in Sydney, by which time I was feeling that my life was being taken over by Patty and I was going in directions I did not want to. I told her that I really missed my kids and might be reconciling with Liz, but that I would show her something of Australia before I saw my family.
I bought a 350cc Yamaha two-stroke and a small tent and sleeping bags and we set off up north, eventually getting as far as Mackay. We did about 300 miles a day on the bike, eating pub lunches and always camping somewhere nice.
She had a frightening habit of going to sleep (she was probably taking Valium and with the alcohol it had a big effect) whilst on the bike and nearly fell off a couple of times. I felt her starting to go and managed to stop her somehow.
Once back in Sydney I took a room in a very cheap hotel in King’s Cross, and told her I was going away for a couple of days to see Liz and the kids. I did see them, but only for one day and I just mooched around the other. When I came back it was about 7pm and she was very drunk and sitting in the dark. I said that I was going back for a trial reconciliation with Liz and when she said “What about me?” I said, “Blood is thicker than water”, at which she rushed to the small sink in the room , smashed the drinking glass on the sink, and drew it across her wrist. This all happened in the twinkling of an eye. I wrapped her hand in a towel and rushed off by taxi (I only had a motor-bike) to a big hospital down Oxford St. The emergency section soon stitched her up and calmed her down, and the whole experience seemed cathartic in that a few days later she accepted the situation of her returning to the US when it could be arranged. Although we lied about how she came by her wrist wound, it seemed the hospital did not want the trouble of having the police involved and we went back to the hotel (and cleared up quite a bit of blood) directly.
As part of her “going away quietly,” she made me promise that if my rapprochement with Liz did not work out that I would send for her and marry her! (Now, why did I say and agree to that? And what did it cost me later – oh, for a little prescience!)
Anyway, she got a passage on a boat back to the US about ten days later, and I thought, had disappeared from my life for good. I liked her in many ways particularly sexually and felt sorry for her and was flattered at the way she clung, but on a rational level I knew that she was bad news, and that I couldn’t handle people with severe emotional problems. But in spite of the above I agreed to keep writing to her, via her mother – why did I do that? I don’t know. Ask my psychiatrist.
1970
So I saw Liz and the boys a couple of times, taking them to Manly and Taronga Park and sailing on the harbour (they lived in Sydney) and I easily got myself a job with Foxboro in Chatswood Sydney, an American electronic instrument company.
I lied about my work history as I was over-qualified but not about my ability to fix instruments, several of which I was familiar with from Fylingdales. Because I was older and more polite to customers than most of their techs and found the job quite easy I was asked if I was interested in opening a branch of the company at Wollongong (then a major BHP steelworks and coal town having lots of instrumentation). As inducement, I was told that I could rent a Company house at low cost or they would secure a mortgage for me at 3% to buy my own. I asked to take my ‘fiancée’ to view the houses in Wollongong, which they OK’d. So, I asked Liz if she would like to go with me.
But Liz did not go with me to Wollongong and when we later met, I think she was not too enthusiastic at reconciling. I also thought that too many things had probably happened to nullify the bitterness which I still felt. The children seemed to be thriving and never asked to join me. The clincher for me was seeing the houses on offer at Wollongong. They were very inferior small three-bedroom houses, not a patch on the one we had had in Canberra, and I just thought, “I can’t start all over again at thirty-seven as a small branch manager in a little house in Wollongong with someone who seems less than enthusiastic”. We talked and agreed that there was little prospect of a reconciliation succeeding, and we parted more friendly than when we had met. We are still friends in 2006.
So here I was at a sort of crossroads again and unsure what to do next, when Fate (or is it pure Chance?) intervened again.
I happened to be reading the yachting section of the Sydney Morning Herald and saw an advert for someone to sail a yacht from Townsville, North Queensland back to Sydney. I phoned Townsville and got the job. The owner was a Russian aged about sixty-five years (Russian Jim). We agreed on terms over the phone, I quit my job and went by motorbike Sydney to Townsville.
On arrival in Townsville I contacted Jim and on his assurance that I would be departing south on the yacht “soon”, I foolishly railed my motorbike back to Sydney Central. It somehow ended up in Parramatta freight yards. When I tried to reclaim it on my return to Sydney it had a broken mirror and bent gear change but was OK otherwise.
It did not take me long to discover that I had been rather rash. The yacht was far from ready and would take at least three weeks to repair and make ready to sail, also Russian Jim was sailing as Captain (which in later deliveries I would never have agreed to), and he would select the crew. As I was doing nothing, I got a job for a week at the Hotel Allen as assistant cook. The pay was awful, but the food plentiful and free. I ate Porterhouse stuffed with oysters almost every night (Carpet Bag Steak). I looked for digs and found a boarding house in West End and after a week as a cook I got a well-paid temporary job as an electrician at Kevin O’Shea’s. In the boarding house was a young blonde who I chatted up and she showed me her assignments in Psychology. She was doing a Psych. Degree at the local James Cook Uni.
I have not mentioned it before, but I had had a continuous interest in psychology for many years and had read a few books on the subject. Looking at her work I thought, “I could do that!” and the seed for returning to Townsville and the University and studying Psych. was planted. (I didn’t get anywhere with the blonde.)
I went to the University admissions to inquire if I would be eligible and met the admissions officer, one Paul Aldridge, who became a friend and still is to this day (2007). Paul was most interested in my electronics background but I eventually got him around to enrolment and completed a form etcetera. He suggested that I do a teaching degree (B. Ed.) with a psychology major to become a school counsellor as I would be eligible for a Commonwealth Scholarship of $75 a week. I still had about $10,000 from the house sale and my Caribbean period but I had been spending more than I earned (although not working much and living frugally) so the idea of a scholarship was appealing.
Anyway about two weeks later Russian Jim selected a twenty-year-old couple as crew as “Alvis” (the yacht) was ready to sail, and about December 15th 1970 we dropped our mooring and headed south. The young couple had never sailed before but were willing enough to learn. But they did make noisy love in the fore cabin fairly often. This both amused me and made me a little jealous, but it was anathema to Jim. He interrupted them whenever he heard it, and found one or the other unnecessary jobs. Tensions rose and what could have been a nice trip, with watches of one hour on three hours off, was soon spoiled.
The climax came one night as we neared Brampton Island. There was a bit of a rain squall and I was woken by the vessel’s wild motion as there was no one holding the helm and Jim and the young guy had each other by the neck. I separated them. It transpired he had used Jim’s salt on a sandwich he had made before he relieved Jim and Jim went ape! Jim ordered the couple off the yacht at Brampton Island. I should have left too but didn’t. From then on, all the way to Sydney, we sailed one hour on, one hour off, as there was no auto pilot also the steering position was exposed and uncomfortable. However, she would self steer on certain angles as she had a longish keel so we were able to get some rest.
The trip was a steep learning curve about how not to run a yacht delivery and I think I took the lesson to heart as never again did I take on open-ended unspecified tasks. Later, I always had a written agreement setting out the times and terms of the sail, and I got approval from Prudential Marine Insurance who sometimes specified me as Skipper to people moving one of the yachts they insured if they were not satisfied with the experience of the owner. Anyway, we sailed into Sydney eventually and I even thought a bit better of Jim after he regaled me with his adventures in Germany and avoiding returning to Russia after World War II. He told me he would have been sent straight to a GULAG and my later reading in history makes me think this was likely. He had had a hard life.
So there I was, in Sydney. It was about 26th December 1970 and I had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I quickly got a job with Watson-Victor who sold and serviced medical electronics equipment. They badly needed someone to work over the holidays and New Year and I was to get double and triple time. Mostly, it was to rush to hospitals and get their x-ray machines operating as quickly as possible. I had a room in North Sydney near Royal North Shore Hospital, and travelling on my motorbike or in the company van, I got around OK, although even then Sydney traffic was bad.
1971
I got a letter of offer to start a Bachelor of Education at James Cook Uni in Townsville from 28 February 1971, with the possibility of a $75 a week scholarship if I completed first year with four credits. I saw quite a bit of the kids whilst I was in Sydney, but they did not seem to need me desperately, and I believed that Liz and Alf would do their best for them. After much dithering, I decided on Uni, and arranged to stay at Uni Hall, packed everything I owned in two small suitcases, resigned my job and set off on the Yamaha 350 from Sydney about 24 February 1971.
The bike must have been a bit clapped out as it struggled to hold 60mph against the wind, so I traded it for a newer 350 Honda on the Gold Coast (near Brisbane). The new bike was much better and although the road (the main north/south road of Australia) deteriorated as I went north, I made good time until north of Rockhampton where it started to rain. (I was not aware at the time of the monsoonal system of these latitudes.) By the time I got to Marlborough, the rivers and creeks were rising and just past Marlborough the river was impassable. So I hightailed back down the road looking for a place to stay, only to be stopped at a creek I had just managed to cross earlier. I was stuck between floods. I raced back to the pub at Marlborough but all its few rooms were taken. So I slept alongside my bike on a small rise. I had on my sailor’s orange wet-weather suit, which although waterproof could not keep out the mosquitoes which descended in hordes on my face and neck. Try as I might I could not keep them off me, and in my gear I sweated heavily all night.
Next morning the creeks were still high but it had stopped raining. About 1pm I drove to the head of the queue and followed a four-wheel drive across. The water was nearly up to the carbys but somehow the exhaust came out OK and I got across. I must have crossed three or four creeks this way before finally coming to grief. There was a long shallowish creek to cross and I was following a heavy truck across. I got a little close to the edge of the road, which I could not see as it was under muddy water, then went off the road into about a metre of water. The bike was on its side, engine stopped of course, with my luggage under water. Somehow, I picked it up, found the road surface, and pushed it across. I took off the carburettors, drained the engine sump, and dried everything I could, and then reassembled it. I operated the self-starter and after nearly flattening the battery, it started. It seemed OK, but I had no oil for the sump. Fortunately, an eighteen wheeler stopped by me, and he gave me two litres of oil, which was enough to go slowly to the next town. From then on, everything went routinely although I had to slow down due to water on the road many times.
The last part was at Horseshoe Lagoon near Ayr/Home Hill, where I had to coast for three kilometres through ten centimetres of water on the road. The same road nowadays rarely gets water-blocked due to the re-routing and high-bridge building which has taken place.
When I arrived at Uni Hall it was late. I quickly unpacked my wet things (my nice off-white Caribbean linen suit was ruined by dye-run from an adjacent sweater) in the small but comfortable room and went across to the dining room. As I stared around, the Warden asked me to dine at the “top” table with him, as I was obviously “old,” being then thirty-eight. I stayed for a few days at the top table, when the warden asked if I would sit with someone who was having trouble “fitting in.” This was Paul Smith who had been a “Nasho” in Vietnam, and this, with his homosexuality, made the mass of students hassle him during meals. Paul turned out to be a lifelong friend, and once he established a stable relationship with John, a chef, in the 80s, he has had a successful life. They are still together (2007).
This table gradually attracted other “misfits.” (I like to think that I was only a misfit because of my age, but perhaps not.) One was Rena Cohen, a clever Jewish girl (I note her Jewishness only because she herself stressed it) who had just had a baby by her strange boyfriend. In fact she was still weeping milk and in a highly emotional post-natal state. She had adopted out the baby at birth and was very upset about her decision. Other people joined the table, but by about two months later everyone, including me, had integrated and gravitated to other tables.
Uni was a bit of a shock at first. I had to do four first-year subjects: English, Psychology, History and Education. It had been many, many years since I had written an essay and I was not sure how to proceed as my background was in engineering. Anyway I wrote my first four assignments and all except Psych. received a good mark. (Psych. was just a pass.) The Psych. lecturer, Roger Brittain, was a pleasant fellow but very vague and sometimes forgot to turn up for lectures. He gave me a copy of a Distinction grade model answer, which showed me how to write good assignments thereafter, once I understood what was needed. Poor Roger shot himself 10 years later.
At this time (1971) I first saw the woman who I would eventually marry in 1983 (and to who I am still happily married in 2010). Cheryl Frost was an English lecturer to whom I sent a note asking her to go to the inaugural Uni Hall Ball, as I did not have a partner of suitable age. Most girls at Uni Hall were under twenty-one. She accepted and did go to the Ball and I saw a little more of her in Cairns and around Uni, but nothing really sparked until 1982.
Meanwhile I took out Elizabeth Perkins, also a lecturer in English, Helen Brayshaw, a History Tutor, and Rae Sumner a Masters student, but my main preoccupation was Elizabeth Temple. This came about because of match-making by the Uni Hall Warden’s wife. Liz Temple was a senior tutor in French and lived in Uni Hall in superior accommodation. I also lived there but in a fairly sparse, small student room at the opposite end. The Warden’s wife threw a “get to know you party” for new Hall residents and arranged for Liz and I to be seated together. Naturally we talked and later I took her to Mt Spec on my motorbike for afternoon tea. I always did have a slightly odd relationship with her. She was about twenty-five and had done some time at a French university, where she had been seduced (she was a virgin at the time, although 22, she said) by an older married lecturer and taught some nice ways of lovemaking. When sex came up between us she was at pains to point out that she loved her seducer not me and that sex was just for her health and her complexion’s sake (a new one to me). She hoped that her lover in Paris would send for her, but of course he had only amused himself with her and during the three years I knew her, he never wrote back, although she said that she wrote often. Anyway, I could live with the arrangement and we tried to be very discreet, but soon it was common knowledge that I spent more time in her room than I did in mine.
I continued to write on and off to Patty in America replying whenever she wrote to me (when I really should have ended the relationship). Then she noticed my letters were stamped “Townsville Queensland” when I was supposed to be having a trial reconciliation with my ex-wife Elizabeth in Sydney. (It gets complicated, my love life—there are two Elizabeths and soon to be two Patricias, oh! Shades of Wuthering Heights). I told Patty that I needed Uni qualifications in Arts and had come to Townsville as the best place to get them. She must have realized that I was no longer ‘reconciling’.
So the year 1971 proceeded pleasantly enough. Everyone knew Liz Temple and I were an item and the Warden’s wife (Daphne) expected wedding bells any time. I did quite well at my studies, getting mostly distinctions and never less than a credit. I met Marie-France through Liz and through Marie her husband Jean Claude; if I was something of an MCP, he was positively Victorian in his treatment of his wife, I was embarrassed to dine with them. However to me he was polite and got me into playing squash, which 34 years later as I write this (aged about 70), I am still playing. I taught self defence for the Students Union, played soccer for Uni Hall and for the University. Only one scary thing happened; Rena Cohen’s crazy boyfriend banged on my door one night with his rifle and threatened to shoot me. Rena, who was a bit crazy herself, told him that we had been lovers, (which was never true) just to upset him. I managed to talk him into going away without opening the door.
I think Liz Temple was seeing me in a slightly different and more favourable light by November as we planned to go to her home town of Newcastle in NSW during the long university break, where I would meet her mother (father was dead) and get a temporary job for the two-and-a-half month Uni vacation. Who knows what might have happened had not my old nemesis reappeared and I responded with an attack of brain fever?
I should not have been surprised, given what happened on the “Oriana,” when in late November just before driving south with Liz Temple and whilst eating lunch in Uni Hall with her, I was paged for a phone call. History repeated itself—it was Patty saying, “I’m here to be with you. I’ve sold everything, quit my job and I am in a motel on the Townsville Strand.” I must have looked like a startled roo caught in the spotlight and about to be shot!
Coward that I am, I prevaricated to both, saying to Liz Temple that I just had to go back to Sydney to sort out a family problem with my ex-wife and would come up to Newcastle later, and to Patty, that I would go to Sydney with her, but I was still reconciling with my ex-wife. (I know Liz Rumph will forgive me for using her thus!) I trusted that a few days breathing space would help me to sort things out.
Who would have guessed that nine weeks later I would be marrying Patty? So I left my motorbike at Uni Hall and flew with Patty to Sydney and the long vac. We arrived about Dec 1st. She wanted to know how my ‘reconciliation’ was progressing. I just did not know what to do, so I put the onus on her and said “look, I can’t live with someone who drinks too much and is always half off her brain, but if you’ll get a job and just drink socially – meaning a glass with dinner and a few on weekends – and stay off the pills and do some exercise or sport, maybe we can get on OK, let’s see how we go”. I half hoped that she would stay on the booze and pills so giving me an excuse to split, but on the other hand I was enjoying her adulation and noticed the way that other men looked at her ( primitive isn’t it). Anyway, in three days, during which we were in a caravan park near the big Sydney racetrack, she had got herself a job as a theatre sister at Ryde or North Ryde hospital and I got a job at Aquatonics Marine in West Ryde which I kept until we left Sydney. Patty and I took the boys for a picnic in the Blue Mountains over Xmas and went to a Ryde Civic New Year Dance to let in the New Year.
1972
But what to do about Liz Temple who was expecting me to arrive in Newcastle? I couldn’t face telling her what had happened so kept postponing things by phoning and telling her “something has come up in Sydney which I have to deal with and I will join you later”. Just before I proposed to Patty I phoned Liz Temple and told her that an old girlfriend had arrived from America and I would be staying in Sydney. She hung up without replying.
We took a two-month lease on a flat near Patty’s hospital. In three weeks she had (or appeared to have) changed completely, looking healthier and being as charming and sexy as she could be. She reminded me of my promise to marry her if my (supposed) reconciliation with ex-wife Liz did not work. I thought it over for a few days and then proposed. I can’t understand (in 2004 as I write this) why I did that. We were married on 12 February 1972, by the Rev. Ted Noffs at the Wayside Chapel in King’s Cross and had a weekend honeymoon at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. I had by this time bought a snazzy looking but old Triumph Herald convertible. Mechanically it proved to be a bomb but did us until we settled in Townsville.
Our time in Sydney soon passed and we drove up to Townsville to arrive at the end of Uni Orientation Week, about March 3rd 1972. Patty quickly got a job at Townsville General Hospital as a theatre sister at quite high pay. I started second year at Uni and received my Commonwealth scholarship of $75 a week. We took a two-month lease of a flat near the hospital and I sold my motorbike and bought a small Arrow class catamaran which we could tow with the Herald. This was a very healthy period for Patty, as she liked sailing and living near the beach. We usually sailed to Magnetic Island at weekends or on her days off. Uni was going well for me and things were looking good. I did meet Liz Temple once in a Uni car park but she turned away before I could say a word. Who could blame her? Yet, about six months later, Patty and I went out to dinner with Liz Temple and her new veterinarian boyfriend. She and Patty hated each other at sight. Perhaps Liz wanted to show me that she didn’t care and could easily find another. I must admit I deserved everything I got.
Leafing through a sailing magazine I saw an ad for Boden’s 40 foot steel yacht plans and I mused that I would learn welding, buy the plans, build the steel yacht and sail the world with Patty. I didn’t do anything other than spending $10 on “study plans” for the “Southern Maid” centre cockpit design. But a week later, whilst driving down China St., I saw a 40 ft. steel yacht hull standing in a garden. I knocked at the house door and asked to have a look. That was how I met Henri and Andree Le Donne who were building the yacht. Henri was a French boilermaker and self-taught boat designer. The steel work on his own round-bilged yacht was excellent, so I left the study plans with him and asked him to draw up some full size plans based on them and I would think about having him build the hull.
Patty seemed keen to build a yacht and sail off into the blue, so we advertised for a rental house with enough room to build a big yacht in the garden and moved to a small house at 63 Anne St. Aitkenvale. Henri showed me the plans he had drawn. We agreed that I would have welding gas, electrodes and steel delivered as he needed it and I would pay him an hourly rate for his welding services. This agreement worked very well and he always did one hour’s work for one hour’s pay. I acted as his labourer.
The yacht was to be called “Fairweather Jack” after the poet Byron’s grandfather who was a sea captain nicknamed “Foulweather Jack” by his crew because of the bad weather he always met at Cape Horn. The lengthy log of the “Fairweather Jack” contains all the construction details, picture and sailing history for anyone interested, so I will merely mention the yacht as it arises in this writing. Anyone interested further should read the Log.
So Patty and I had our happiest months living at Anne St. She worked at the hospital, I worked part time for Chandlers fixing black and white TVs and hi-fis for $4 an hour about fifteen hours a week and helped Henri construct my yacht and did a “full-time” degree.
My Uni assignments were always on time and always got high marks. We had a short holiday on Hayman Island (not the super-expensive resort it is nowadays) where we won a dancing competition and a bottle of champagne which absolutely delighted her. I did a couple of short yacht deliveries, ran a self-defence course and decided to take my sailing Master’s Grade IV exam for which (surprisingly) my time in the 1950’s with Shell Oil and BA Oil counted as time served at sea. I passed the long exam on 13th June 1973. This entitled me to skipper sail or power vessels up to 150 tons register around coastal Australia. Shortly after, I got a frequent weekend job skippering the twin screw fishing boat ‘Mizama’ out to the reef for day/weekend trips. It brought in $75 a trip and as much reef fish as we could eat. I felt a bit bad at the fish slaughter on the reefs; everyone came back with at least 25 kilos of cleaned fish. I gave evening courses for TAFE in coastal and celestial navigation. These I continued on and off for the next 12 years. I made sure that my students enjoyed them, because, as you might have read earlier, when I was taught navigation it was a harrowing experience for me as a student.
About September 1972, friend Paul Smith who had connections at Weipa asked if I wanted to get a Uni vacation job their for three months December-February inclusive at the (bauxite) aluminium mine facility at Weipa. The pay after tax was about $330 a week, a large amount then, with all food and accommodation provided free. I asked Patty how she felt about it and she said she was feeling strong; the three months would soon pass and we would have lots more money to spend on the yacht and get it finished. I thought it over for a week, decided Patty was probably OK on her own as she was controlling her drinking and taking no pills whatever and looked really healthy, and told Paul I would go. Patty and I continued to be happy, the yacht was progressing well and with the frames now clad in steel, it was almost ready to turn over. It was constructed upside down. We had Steven, David and Robert visit for a week sold the old Triumph and bought a Holden station wagon and painted every room in the house.
I finished Uni about November 3rd (last exam), bought all of the next year’s uni set textbooks, to be read at Weipa, and flew there about November 10th 1972. Weipa is a hot bauxite (aluminium ore) enclave on the Gulf of Carpentaria. The accommodation was in a shared donga – my fellow occupant woke up every morning at 4am and sat in bed drinking – had no breakfast, went to work, came back at 4pm and started drinking. He got through 24 cans of Fourex every day. He never seemed drunk, talked little and was no problem for me, but I was sorry for his liver!
I was sent to the Calciner, a massive rotary heater where bauxite (the aluminium ore) was turned into a valuable mineral. It was off-line for a month’s overhaul as every refractory brick had to be replaced and at the same time I overhauled all the associated instrumentation (mostly thermocouples, pen recorders and flow meters). It was a very cushy number, as, although everyone worked long hours the regulars went at a slow pace and to keep the peace I worked at the same slow rate. I did manage to read all my set books during the ten weeks; probably the only uni student who had read all the set texts through!
I often queued at the only phone box to speak to Patty once a week and she assured me that everything was fine. The weeks sped on. I played soccer with the instrument section against other departments and went to the Company pub occasionally, but it was a depressing place—hundreds of males, lots of fights and horseplay, not really my scene. One Sunday afternoon I did go sailing on a large, home-built ferro-cement yacht and caught some queenfish which we barbecued later.
1973
At last, about 26th February 1973, it was time to return home. The first day back, as soon as I saw Patty I knew there was something different. She was vague, stared at me sometimes and there was a change in our lovemaking. I put it down to a bit of a relapse, but did notice that whilst before she was always clean and neat when going to work and wore little make-up, she now was quite heavily made-up and sprayed perfume as she would have done if we were going out.
The first weekend I was back, she said she had to accompany a patient by plane to Brisbane and would be away two days. I knew nurses went with patients transferred to Brisbane but thought it odd they would use an OR nurse (theatre sister), but then thought no more about it. However, when two weeks later she said the same thing I was suspicious. After she had packed her bag and left, I checked her wardrobe and immediately saw that her most glamorous dresses were missing. I knew something was up.
I seethed quietly until she came back. She arrived at about 8am in a taxi, supposedly off the early Brisbane plane. She made herself a cup of tea, went into the bedroom and I could hear her unpacking. When it went quiet I went into the bedroom and asked her how her trip had been – she answered conventionally. I went to her wardrobe and said, “And why the hell did you need two ball dresses to take a patient to Brisbane? You slut, you must be crazy doing this to me. I want you out – today!” She responded by throwing the cup of tea in my face and I momentarily lost it. I have never before or since struck or manhandled a woman but I did so now. I grabbed her, threw her face down on the bed and whacked her on the buttocks half a dozen times as hard as I could, which was quite hard and must have hurt her a lot. After what I had done and the anger I felt, I can see how a row can turn into a manslaughter charge.
I said: “Get on the phone, call whoever it is and get him to help you because I’m damned if I ever will, you’ve got half an hour, then you and your baggage will be out on the street because I’ll put you there”. She didn’t make the half hour, but about 90 minutes later, during which she stayed in the bedroom sobbing quietly after phoning, and I drank tea in the kitchen, a taxi arrived for her and she loaded her possessions into it and disappeared. She would not tell me who her lover was, but I found out later that his name was Dr. Robert Longfield Stephens, a kidney specialist at TGH, married with three children, aged about 40.
Many years later (at New Year 81-82) when I went on a skiing holiday with her, I learned the story behind our troubles which I will relate now (out of sequence).
I should never have left her alone and then maybe the story would have had a different ending. It seems that about three weeks after I left for Weipa, she went out for dinner with some nurses and interns (trainee doctors) and Dr. Stephens was also there. Stephens then had her assigned as his “scrub” nurse during his operations. The friendship developed, she started feeling guilty about me, started drinking a little, then a lot, took Valium, then stronger stuff which Stephens covered for her. Eventually they became regular lovers and went many times to Dunk Island, a tropical resort about 100 miles N. of Townsville. She told me she was flattered by the doctor’s attention, was lonely, did not like where we lived, and thought that anyway he would eventually marry her.
I soon found out where she now lived; in a nice expensive seafront unit paid for by Stephens and she still worked at the hospital. My fury at Patty had gradually subsided, and in a couple of weeks I was able to rationalise it as “maybe all for the best”, (what a rationaliser I am!). I was not on the lookout for another woman, and concentrated on my studies, my part-time job and boatbuilding.
This was the situation until, in early June 1973 I noticed a very beautiful librarian walking around James Cook Library whilst I was writing assignments. I asked at the desk what her name might be and was told “Patricia Beveridge”.
I sent her a note asking if she was interested in boat building and suggesting that if she helped me by working on my boat I would cook her a spaghetti dinner. The above is my recollection, but she always said that we had first met at a women’s self defence course which I conducted and that I asked her in person. Whichever of the versions is correct we both agree that I sent her a dozen ‘friendship roses’ to the Library for her birthday in late June, and saw her more often as she frequently came on her bicycle to Anne St. to help me with the boat. I finally suggested that she move in with me and save all that bicycling and that I really wanted her to, and was delighted when she agreed.
Patricia Mary Beveridge, a Canadian, was (is) a really nice person, kind and good natured. She had an honours degree in English Literature and the professional librarian qualification, A.L.A.A. which was the equivalent of today’s B.Lib.Sc. Over the next few years, and under her tutelage, I took the same exams externally and received my A.L.A.A. in May of 1977 – but I get ahead of myself. She was very good looking and had only one flaw, about which I did not learn until later and will mention it as it arises. We were very happy and Patricia (Paddy, as she preferred to be called because she hated “Pat”) proved a tireless worker on the yacht and a total asset all round. She was still married to Dr. Bob Beveridge-a chemistry lecturer at the Uni- but they had been separated for some time.
On the other side of town, American Patty had apparently struck a rough patch with Dr. Stephens (probably she was trying to get him to move on the marriage business) and turned up one day at my house, 63 Anne St. saying she would come back if I would be nice to her. I cruelly told her that I had someone who was her superior in “every department” and I couldn’t wait until she (Patty) vanished from my life in a divorce. Paddy arrived home from Uni on her bike just then and Patty could see that what I said was true. She left, and as the weeks passed went steadily downhill.
Patty was emotionally on the skids, threatening to tell all to Dr. Stephens’ wife, stealing drugs and being on the verge of the sack. Eventually it all proved too much for her and she broke down, ending up in Ward 3 (the psych ward). Her shrink rang me as I was still her husband. The hospital was going to bring charges against her. I phoned Stephens at the hospital and suggested we meet.
We did, in the beer garden of the Vale Hotel. I had notions of giving him a good beating for his trouble but he was so depressed and apologetic for what had happened that I forwent the satisfaction. He jumped at the chance of having Patty leave Australia if it could be arranged. I said I’d talk to her Mum in Pittsburgh and he would have to pay airfare and all expenses. So what happened was that, between her Mum, Stephens, her shrink, TGH admin and me, it was arranged that Patty would be released and accompanied by a nursing aide to Pittsburgh, detained there in a psych hospital until cured, with her mother looking after her. I managed to get her to sign the divorce papers before she left in August or September 1973 and I thought, “Well, that’s the end. I’ll never see her again,” but that was not quite true. The Matrimonial Offences legislation had gone and when two people agreed on a divorce and there were no children a divorce was simple. I did not have a lawyer, the divorce hearing was on November 20 1973 and the decree became absolute on 20 February 1974. I had been married a fortnight over 2 years. Bob Beveridge divorced Paddy at about the same time and the three of us had a celebratory drink together at the old Queen’s Hotel. Bob wished us luck for the future and we parted amicably.
1974
Paddy and I worked steadily on the yacht and Henri finished all the welding, having made a beautiful fair hull and it was up to me to see to the fitting out. I had intended to take eighteen months over this but the Jetnikoffs, who owned the house I rented, wanted to demolish it and build six flats, so they gave me notice and I had to be gone by November 1974.
About two months after we met, Paddy had the first of her attacks of acute depression or manic depression. I don’t know what the correct name is, but she would slip into it in the space of 30 minutes. Her face would change and her eyes get watery, and she would get a hunted look. These periods would last for two to four days. Then just as quickly she would come out of it, and be her charming self. I thought that I was somehow the cause of these events but she assured me she had been having them since teenage (possibly connected with her parents not encouraging her and wishing she had been a boy). I could never understand why, when she was intelligent, healthy, good looking and people invariably liked her, she didn’t have a super-high opinion of herself, but she did not. I think that had there been Prozac or similar drugs available she could have been fine.
These “phases” put a periodic strain on our relationship, but in the main we were very happy. My studies went well but my B.Ed. was not scheduled to finish until the end of 1974 (a four-year degree), so I enquired and could get a B.A. with what I had so far done, completing it in November 1973.
I had to finish the yacht, and I could then go off sailing, but needed money so I went to Yabulu full-time as an instrument fitter with quite high pay. We both worked hard finishing the yacht. I had my job and Paddy was still a full-time cataloguer at JCU library.
Fitting out and finishing a forty-foot yacht took a lot of hours and far more money than I had expected, but in September 1974 she was ready to launch, although needing the last bit of work. I had bought a trimaran mast and sails and many spares from a damaged yacht to save expense. Fairweather Jack was put on a trailer by a big crane and moved to the harbour about five a.m. with police escort. Forty feet long and thirteen feet wide and ten feet high, and fifteen tons DWT, she was quite a size. After finishing the last jobs tied up to the quayside, we did some trips to Magnetic Island, then Palm Island, but that was all Paddy’s sailing experience. We both quit our University in late September 1974 (I got a B.A.) ten we launched the yacht and were ready to sail south. Our plan was to work our way South to Tasmania by February, overwinter in Hobart, earn lots of money there and strike out for Cape Horn about December 1975.
Just before leaving Anne Street I got a phone call from Barbara, American Patty’s twin sister (less similar twins never existed for Barbara is a stable, church-going mother of three and pillar of middle America) telling me that Patty had come out of the psych ward in Pittsburgh, eventually got her nursing licence back and worked in Pittsburgh for a while then had moved to Salt Lake City. The reason for this move and my later connection with Salt Lake City will become apparent when I relate the events of the early 80’s.
Seasickness is a problem for many people, but in my experience (although I am never sick) most people get their “sea legs” within three days and thereafter are fine for the remainder of their voyage. Paddy started to feel sick shortly after we rounded Cape Cleveland a few hours after the start and we met the two-metre south-easterly swell. I fully expected her to recover soon so was not concerned, but she did not. She could not be below, so had to lie prone on the cockpit floor. She did not enjoy sailing and by the time we got to Gladstone was feeling very miserable and had lost a lot of weight. We tried seasick pills but they simply brought on a bad depression which was worse than the seasickness. I could not sail the yacht forever without being relieved, so I sent for a couple of uni students I knew who had just finished the year’s exams; David Wadley and Brett—; they joined me at Gladstone in late November and stayed with me until the following March. We had many adventures sailing towards Tasmania, for which see The Story of the Fairweather Jack.
1975
We finally reached Eden in NSW, (the last port before Bass Strait and Hobart, Tasmania) on 12 January 1975. Paddy decided that she could not face the notoriously rough crossing of Bass Strait, so left us and went by bus/ferry to Hobart. She was to camp in the little tent we had, at a camping ground we knew of at Sandy Bay. We did not by then have much money.
We took on an extra two male “crew” who Dave and Brett had met whilst drinking in the Eden pub and sailed the 13th of January. Ah! Unlucky day! The trip went reasonably until about halfway across the Strait. The wind picked up to about 25 knots—not at all high for Bass Strait. I had a fair stretch of canvas on and she was heeling nicely and doing seven knots (about as fast as she’d go). The sky was blue, we should be across soon at this rate—sailing is heavenly!
Suddenly, there was an explosion about 30 centimetres up the main mast from the deck, as the wood splintered due to too much compression. The wind took the mast and mainsail overboard. As it was tied at the top with a heavy stainless steel rope cable to the mizzenmast, this was also plucked from its place and followed the main into the sea. The event terrified our “guest crew”, who bolted below and were not seen again until we arrived back in Eden. It was my failure to see that the mast was not strong enough and was inadequately rigged which was the cause of our problems. I should have bought a new mast and got advice on the rigging; mea culpa!
Anyway, there was a lot of clearing up to be done. We salvaged what we could and let the rest sink or float away. Then I had to decide whether to go on to Hobart or return to Eden. Hobart was much further and I had no sails and only an unreliable engine, so back to Eden it was. We chugged into Eden and the “guest crew” streaked white-faced ashore never to be seen again as soon as we tied up.
It took a few days to contact Paddy in Tasmania but she eventually bussed back to Eden. Brett, our crewperson, went back to Townsville and David found a shift job, highly paid, at the wood-chip mill nearby. Paddy was offered a job at the fish cannery, a lousy job for a beautiful talented person but she declined and instead painted the inside and outside of the yacht. I got a cushy job fixing TVs in the Eden-Merimbula area, which gave me a van I could use after work and at weekends. We had little money, needed $2000 for a mast and sail, so settled down to work. Dave Wadley soon left for Christchurch University NZ (from where he was soon expelled, he was clever but could not resist drugs and women) and Paddy and I settled down to enjoy life as it was. We lived quietly, going to the RSL for a meal and cinema in Pambula most Saturday nights.
One noteworthy thing happened in Eden about a month after our arrival. A yacht arrived and tied up to us (it was a crowded public quay) and we invited the sailor aboard to tea. He had just brought a small yacht across from Hobart and was on his way to deliver it to Sydney. He noted that my yacht, forlornly mastless, needed a bit spending on it.
After a few days he got me alone and made the following proposition: my yacht would be re-masted and new sails purchased; it would be equipped with the latest electronic equipment. I would place myself 50 miles off the coast at a lat/long to be advised by radio. I would use my DF equipment to identify a floating one cubic metre 25 kilogram package. I would locate and secure it aboard. I would receive instructions by radio on where on the NSW coast to deliver it. After delivery I would owe my benefactors nothing and could sail on as I wished. I would like to say that I was morally outraged and wouldn’t do it, but actually I asked for a day or two to think it over. Paddy and I were both working and would have enough for the mast by late March, but we had no electronic gear at all, even the old radio was not working. The proposition was sorely tempting. I asked who I would be working for and was told I had to go to Sydney to see if the providers of money thought I was suitable. I went and met three people in a hotel bar in Kings Cross, who gave me the same information I had already. I think they just wanted to look at me before investing $6000. I was a bit frightened after meeting these guys who were not the most savoury of characters, but was still dithering over whether to or not.
What sealed it for me was the sight of a handgun in my sailing friend’s case when I saw him off after my return to Eden. Whether it was an accidental sight or whether it was intended to assure me that they were a group that meant business, I will never know. Anyway, it pushed me into deciding “no”. I told him that Paddy was half owner of the yacht and was terrified at the prospect and had threatened to leave me if I did. I had not told her, so it was a lie, but it served to get me off the hook. I shook hands with the sailor. He warned me to say nothing to anyone and sailed off for Sydney. I followed his advice and I now thank my lucky stars that I did!
So we worked and saved and soon had enough for the mast, but not the sail. I located a suitable mast in Sydney but being 50 feet long, I could not get an insurer for its delivery. We decided to motor to Sydney and do the job there; so quit our employment and motored off. After an incident-filled trip (see log of Fairweather Jack), we motored into Sydney and ended up on a cheap buoy mooring at Castlecrag Boatshed, Northbridge, Sydney.
I quickly found a job at Rank Electronics, Roseville, a short bus ride from Castlecrag. Paddy stayed on the yacht. It is pretty isolated, living all day on a yacht moored off-shore. To go in you have to row a dinghy 150 metres and then there is nothing but a boat shed with a toilet and cold shower, so no wonder she was bored during the week. I had the mast delivered and erected and soon saved up enough for the sail. The yacht was re-rigged from ketch to sloop, anti-fouled and painted. I wished to stay in my electronics job as I was earning well. I had little spare money. Everything I owned was tied up in the yacht—about $20,000 and I was not insured!
Paddy was offered her job back at the JCU library in Townsville, so she flew back there in June. I completed all jobs on the yacht and she was ready to sail by late July and I had $1000 cash in my hand. I sent to Townsville for crew and Dave Wadley and Brett (old crew members) and Bruce, Larry and Peter (along for the sail and also from Uni) flew in. We sailed on 24 July and after an interesting trip (see Log) arrived in Townsville on August 7th.
Paddy and I lived aboard “Fairweather Jack”, anchored on our own picks in Ross Creek. She learned to ride a scooter and I bought a small motor bike and got a job at Yabulu, a nickel smelter where I had worked before, as an instrument technician. We were happy living aboard as neither missed the amenities of houses at that time. But by December I was chafing at the bit and wanted either to settle down in a house and return to Uni or go sailing, which I realised would mean parting from Paddy who although happy to live aboard could not face the prospect of life at sea. We tried to sell the yacht but could not find a buyer.
1976
Then I saw an advert for a teacher at the Bougainville Copper Mine in Papua New Guinea. I applied and got the job and flew to PNG in early January 1976. The mine site was 3000 feet high and so it was not too hot. It was an excellent job; very highly paid, low tax, free accommodation, and meals and working in an air-conditioned classroom from 9 to 4 with an hour for lunch. My students were PNG youths aspiring to be electricians. The best of them had come from Catholic mission schools, were well educated, hard working and polite. I liked it in PNG. The nice way that males (not gay!) walked down the street holding hands and the way everybody shook hands on meeting. I didn’t like the spitting by males and females, who universally chewed betel nut and lime, which dyed their gums red and when they spat, the sidewalks were red to match.
Bougainville is rich in copper, and possibly gold. The mine at Panguna had been perhaps the most major sticking point between Bougainville and Papua New Guinea (PNG). It was vitally important to the economy of PNG, but the people of Bougainville were seeing little benefit from it. Bougainvillean leaders alleged that the mine had been responsible for devastating environmental consequences and it was hated by the local chiefs. Eventually, it was closed and wrecked, but whilst I was there only rumblings of what was to come in the 80’s could be heard, so I settled in to my new job.
I ran a self-defence course, swam in the pool and joined the sailing club. I had a brief affair with a Dutchwoman whose husband could not sail with her as they argued incessantly and he had two small yachts—one of which I sailed in races with his wife as crew. When a race was becalmed and called off, we went ashore on a small atoll and temptation overcame us. I found it hard to face the guy after and quit the yacht club.
Next, I went to a dance and saw as attractive very dark-eyed brunette of about twenty-five. She reappears in the tale later so I will mention her now. Her name was Sandra Tracey and she was a computer programmer, recently graduated.
There were not many females in that business in 1976, so I was impressed. I asked her to dance, but she said; “you won’t want to”. When I asked why, she said, “you won’t like what you feel when you dance with me.” I was intrigued, so insisted she dance and let me find out. She was wearing a silky loose white blouse. As I held her I could feel her scoliosis hump which protruded about 5 cms. She said, “there, what did I tell you” with tears in her eyes. I said something like, “You’re still beautiful and must be a great dancer, let’s dance.” After this I saw quite a lot of her. She was good company, shy about her scoliosis and relaxed with me. Sex did not occur at that time because she was engaged (promised) to a PNG man (Jesse) who lived far away near Lae. So we hung out, went to functions and occasionally kissed but nothing more.
Paddy and I wrote frequently. Then a friend wrote and said Paddy had come off her motor scooter in the wet and had to move into a flat, but was OK. I was enjoying Bougainville and when I learned that the company librarian was leaving and also the Head of Training School, I could see Paddy as Librarian and me as Head. I was the only teacher there with a degree and likely to be offered the job, and could imagine us making and saving thousands. I wrote to Paddy but she did not want to move as she is not a lover of hot places.
I felt a bit frustrated at this but then a new factor entered the equation; Paddy cabled that she had sold the yacht for $25,000—more than enough to buy a house in those days. So I quit at the end of April 1976 and returned to a blissful reunion when Paddy met me in Cairns. It was a good job that Paddy had not come to Bougainville as within a few months general rioting began which eventually closed the mine, wrecked the village and virtually all facilities; schools, hospital, police station, shops were burnt down. It was an argument about governance between PNG and Bougainville that still simmers today. The loss of $400 million a year in mine royalties beggared the PNG government and they are still dependent on handouts from Australia to keep the budget nearly balanced.
So I was back in Townsville, with about $30,000 and keen to be a householder for a few years at least. We took a flat in North Ward and bought a small van with a mattress in the back which was just long enough to sleep on comfortably. We made a trip to Ayer’s Rock which we climbed and at dusk made love in one of its low level caves. The Suzuki Carry proved its efficacy as a “campavan.” We were lucky to be at Ayer’s Rock before it became a National Park and was renamed Uluru. The car park was not far from the Rock and you could go inside the large caves on its flanks, entry to which is now forbidden. We also saw a rare heavy rainfall, which makes the Rock look wonderful.
1977
About this time Paddy said that the pill was making her fat and why didn’t men seem to think that contraception was any of their business. That was a hard argument to answer and, as I was quite happy with her and we had been through a lot and I did not want any more children (nor did she), I thought “why not”. So I had a vasectomy at the public hospital. I turned out to be quite “public” as the surgeon asked if his students could watch and I agreed. I can still see him, surrounded by students of both sexes, with the local anaesthetic needle in his hand as he plunged it into you know where. After that it was routine, and I went home later that day. A sperm count after a week or two confirmed the operation had been a success. Being sterile, I found out later, made you popular with women who wanted to engage in casual sex, it also made you look more ‘caring’, always a plus with the gentler sex!
We bought a block of land in joint names at Douglas, a Council-owned area close to the Uni. Looking at house plans of various builders, we were unlucky enough to meet Martin — who had just got his licence and had a “new” method of building (pre-cast sections then only used for large buildings). We signed a contract for a three- bed lowset at the very low price of $22,500. It had a good specification—polished floors and lined wooden walls so I couldn’t see how he would make a lot out of it.
He was slow to start, but once started it went along well until he put the roof on and reached lock-up stage. The roof was solid concrete slabs laid outer-wall to outer-wall and sealed where they met. The council would not accept it (why, if they had approved the plans?) and Martin was forced to put a conventional low incline roof over the top of it. The inner wall studs were all up, but no doors, wall lining, plumbing, electrics or fixed furniture was in. We had paid about $10,000 in progress payments by this stage. Martin had suppliers deliver a huge swag of housing materials including bath, laundry tub, vanity, kitchen sink, doors and internal wall cladding; nearly enough to complete the building. He was due another $3,000 but pleaded for $6,000 as he was short of money due to the extra roof he had had to put on. I should have hardened my heart and said “get lost” But I thought that as there was thousands of dollars of material on site and all ready to go in the house, it was safe. I authorised the payment. Martin cashed the cheque and skipped town owing suppliers about $50,000, according to the local paper.
I was working at Yabulu again as an instrument fitter and came home to find the suppliers trying to break in to my house at the back and recoup their materials. They said: “We’ve come to reclaim our goods.” I said: “Oh no, I’ve already paid Martin for these goods and I am the legal owner. You have a quarrel with Martin, not with me.” I then picked up a metal fence picket and they decided to clear off. I thought I had better quit my job and guard the building supplies and finish the house or I would surely come home and find everything gone. I also had to get the building completed.
The Council was sympathetic to my predicament—Martin had also had other houses on the go, so they gave me an “owner builder’s licence” immediately and their inspectors were always helpful as I went along. I worked full-time on the house with Paddy assisting where she could. We both moved in to the incomplete structure, and I did all the electrics myself and also all the plumbing. I got an electrician to install the fuse box and sign off the checks and likewise got a plumber to do the toilet installation and final site connection. I clad the walls in timber veneer, tiled the bathroom, laundry and kitchen and hung all internal doors, but got in a professional cabinet maker to do the fitted kitchen and bedroom wardrobes as I was not that good at carpentry. I built a queen size waterbed frame from spare timber. Martin had left a toolbox in the incomplete house when he fled, so I now owned an electric plane, hammer drill et cetera. Paddy finished what paintwork was needed and cork-tiled the kitchen floor. Soon it was finished and we had the final certificate. Living on a yacht, neither of us had many possessions so we bought a lot of new furniture. Then we found a shared interest in gardening so soon fenced the lot and in a year had roses growing.
I decided I would go and teach high school but could not without a B. Ed. so enrolled to start in February 1977. I had to do two years, not because I was short of subject points, in fact I had too many, but because my TAFE teaching and my full-time teaching at the Bougainville Copper Mine did not count as teaching thus I had to do the pracs. So I worked away at my Ed. degree deciding to teach English and Mathematics, both of which I liked and I was told that there was always a shortage of Maths teachers. I did the odd yacht delivery during Uni vacations, worked on our house and garden, took a holiday hike with Paddy in New Zealand where we walked the Routeburn Track and did other tourist things to take us to the end of 1976.
1977
This was a year of some noteworthy events. We worked on the garden. Paddy was full-time at the JCU Library. I started and plodded on with my Education degree, making a little money taking “Mizama” and other fishing boats out to the Reef. Paddy started pottery courses which became increasingly important to her and I built her a tiny “room” at the bottom of the garden made of steel tubing clad with clear roofing fibreglass. There was just enough room for her electric wheel, a small table and a drying stand. Paddy gradually moved in the direction of the alternate lifestyle like acupuncture, aromatherapy and massage and away from an ordinary career and settled house life.
I met Alastair and Lorna Mills at this time. They were a Scottish couple, he a Master of Science student and she a trainee teacher. Our first common interest was the Australian Labour Party. We were in a branch notorious for its corruption, South Townsville, which was run by a clique which would accept motions only from “clique members” and rigged plebiscites and elections. It wanted us rank and file members to simply provide numbers, run endless chook raffles to raise funds and man booths at election time. Many of the other members were also disillusioned. Thus we formed the new University branch of the ALP (Australian Labor Party) and as Alastair and I had been principal stirrers and as I had been Secretary of a Canberra ALP branch, we became Chairman and Deputy. It had about twenty members and ran well until Al and I left Uni, after which it survived for a year or two more under Dr. Bob Gilbert, and then was disbanded. Since then, although I have always voted ALP (as the lesser of two evils) I have never been a party member.
1978
So now it was 1978 when I completed my B. Ed. and according to the system was now allowed to teach. I knew a librarian (probably through Paddy) called Denise Quaid who was Teacher/Librarian at St. Pat’s, a Catholic convent all-girl high school, one of the oldest schools in Townsville. She married Peter Taylor, who got a lush posting to the London School of Economics, and she wished to join him there from October 1st. She had only been at St. Pat’s since that August—the nuns were loath to approve unpaid leave after such a short stay, but would let her go if she could produce a suitable fill-in. I was both a teacher and had an A.L.A.A., so she suggested me, and by juggling my last exams at Uni with St. Pat’s flexi-time I was able to start as a temporary employee about 15th October. I stayed with them until December 10th.
A nun without any library background had run the place for years and Denise had barely got going in organising it properly—she mainly just spent the massive grants which all schools got at that time, so that all the cupboards and shelves were stuffed with uncatalogued books. I had to start from scratch. I demanded and got a good typist and was assigned a tiny Irish nun as an assistant. I did as much as I could to set the library up properly with all the usual systems, demanded a permanent and pre-allocated budget, and wrote a final report about what I had done and what needed to be done for Denise’s benefit when she returned on 1st February. However, Denise wrote and asked the nuns for another extension of leave for six months which they refused and they hired me instead to commence February 1st 1979 as Teacher/Librarian.
1979
I was with them until I retired in July 1997 – eighteen years in a “temporary” job – the most stable I had ever been! I think the fact that the tiny Irish nun, Sister Regina (who last week, in Dec 2007, I took out for tea, gossip and to buy her a Xmas present), and the Principal, Sister Marie Geddes (with whom I played squash) both liked me, was responsible for getting me the job rather than my sheer ability!
Meanwhile, Paul Aldridge’s wife Daphne had run off with a twenty-year-old student and they were heading for a bitter divorce fight. As I was friends with both I was able to get them to a table at my house. I had them speak only to me (not each other) and having explained that most of the value of their house (the main bone of contention) would disappear into lawyers’ pockets if they continued on their present path, they were able to reach an agreement such that their eventual divorce was lawyer-free and they each got 50% of the house value. Paul also was left to raise Daphne’s daughter (who was not his) without any contribution from “liberated” Daphne, who just shot through, but that is another story.
1980
At St. Pat’s life went on without incident. I introduced Sister Marie to our squash group, then four persons, and as she was an ex-North Queensland tennis champion, she could more than hold her own and quickly became “one of the boys.” We used to adjourn to the Uni club or pub. I knew nothing about nuns other than the usual cruel jokes learned at school and at sea, but I soon came around to seeing that even the ones I did not like were all devoted to “doing good” and had a pretty limited life from my point of view, because they were doing what they believed in.
I remained the atheist I had “always” been, but I happily provided the best information on any subject, including religion, as was my duty as a librarian. Nor did I ever attempt to proselytize anyone. The library ran well, and I was able to change it, with massive grants from the government and some from Sr. Marie, away from its mainly religious focus (the biggest Dewey section when I went there was “Saints’ Lives”) and there was no English literature apart from Silas Marner, and a few Dickens’s. By the time I left, it had all the English, German, Russian, French and American classics. The science section was initially miniscule and there were no books on economics at all, even though we were a trial school for the newly introduced syllabus. I soon changed things.
Because I was paid as a teacher it was agreed that I had to teach one course (subject). Asked what I wanted, I chose English and had a happy two years. I had a lot of freedom in what I offered as I taught final year electives and found that “ghost stories” and “history and writing of sonnets” were very popular. But time and technology were about to overtake me. In 1980, when the RAM of a $2000 computer was eight or sixteen kilobytes, a competing Catholic girls’ school, St. Margaret Mary’s, bought two eight-k Tandys and put them in a converted broom cupboard.
They then advertised “the first computer department in Townsville”. St. Pat’s Sisters, fearful of losing out in pupil numbers, also wanted a Computer Department. I was called in by Sister Marie and the Head of the Order and told that since my résumé was the only one in the school that mentioned “computers” (I had worked briefly on them at Orroral Tracking Station, but they had little resemblance to desktops), I should be the person to set it up. I insisted that I was quite happy doing the library and teaching English, so we compromised. I was to visit schools in Brisbane, decide on the type of computer and software, come back and set up a facility and develop suitable courses. I would also train another teacher during the first year and he would take over; then I could go back to teaching English.
Down in Brisbane, visiting schools which already had a computer facility, I went to lunch downtown and ran into my son Robert, who I thought was busily attending Grade 11 at a Capalaba school. I asked what he was doing in downtown Brisbane. He took me to his workplace where his job was to keep up the paper supply to all the printers at a small computer firm which contracted payrolls for small businesses. I told him I wouldn’t make a fuss about him quitting school but that “he’d never get anywhere in the computing field unless he got himself a degree.” Now, in 2005, he has just returned from four months in the US where his computer company sent him for training. He gets a salary greater than I ever earned and he never got any formal qualifications – so much for my advice!
Back at school, the year passed pleasantly enough. The replacement teacher was trained and primed to take over – BUT at the end of the year he got a promotion to Computer Co-ordinator at another school and left. Any trained computer person was in much demand in 1980, so it was no surprise to me when the second teacher I had trained left at the end of the next year in similar circumstances. At this point I decided to give up any idea of returning to teaching English. After all, computing was popular with students and the assignments were either marked by the computer or were simple to mark. So, I became the computer teacher as well as librarian and held that position until I left. Of course, school computing advanced and by the time I left in 1997 the school had sixty computers in two classrooms, and I had had to take, in 1993, an external diploma in the subject with Queensland University of Technology to even be allowed to teach computing.
On the home front, Paddy was enjoying her potting and engaging more and more in the “alternative lifestyle” scene. We were not short of money, being both full-time employed and had frequent holidays. I remained sexually faithful to Paddy and I thought a bit about us getting married. Whether she was keen I would never know, but it didn’t seem to fit with her alternative and liberated image. Also, being twice married already, I was aware of the pitfalls. She had regular attacks of depression but we could live with them. She didn’t want to see a psychologist or get chemical help which was then coming on the scene, relying instead on Hatha Yoga, acupuncture and massage for relief. None seemed to me to work, but we got by.
1981
A change in our relationship occurred late in 1980. I was away from Christmas to the end of January 1981 delivering a trimaran from Perth to Townsville. This was an adventurous trip, about which I wrote and sold an article to “Australian Sea Spray” (see article).
When I returned, Paddy said she wanted to move to Magnetic Island and keep her job at the library. To do this, she would buy my half of the little campavan we had, keep it near the ferry terminal and commute to her uni job. I was upset about her going but she assured me “it was not against me, but for her” and she would stay with me whenever she was in the City. She still owned part of the house we lived in and her name was on the deeds, although I had paid for most of the house. I was perplexed at the deal but could do nothing about it. She often stayed with me when she didn’t go back to the island overnight and was, as always, most affectionate. There never was anyone else for her until years later when she was living in Lismore NSW and learning and practising Naturopathy; but I get ahead of myself.
I now had no transport so bought a Kawasaki 400 motor bike. Paddy bought a shack on a nice block on Magnetic Island having only cold water, no flush toilet or bath. Today it would never be approved for residence, but in the 70’s and early 80’s it could not be bulldozed as people had lived there for many years. I put in a hot water heater, shower, bath and septic toilet (all illegal electrical work and plumbing) and a sliding picture window for her and spent many weekends with her there when I was not otherwise engaged. She painted and potted and lived the alternative lifestyle, but without the drugs often associated with ‘hippies’.
Now occur some rather strange episodes. I was living mostly alone at Chauncy Crescent (the house Paddy and I had built; she still owned some of it), still friendly with Alastair and Lorna and not aware of any friction between them. (This is surprising as I saw Al twice a week for squash and both of them at parties but apparently, they were fighting like cat and dog.) Anyway, one evening, Al and Lorna arrived, and Al made the following proposition: he wanted to spend the night at his house with the wife of a professor at JCU. He asked if Lorna could stay at mine and told us both he didn’t mind if “anything” happened. So off he went. Lorna and I sat around for ages as there was no history of attraction and I thought her (at fifteen years younger) too young for me. Anyway, by midnight it was bedtime, and the inevitable happened. After this night, Lorna became a frequent visitor. Whether she told Al I never inquired although Al and I continued to play squash and he is still a friend to this day. Six months later Lorna told him she wanted a divorce and they had a relatively amicable split. So now I had two sex partners! But it gets worse (or better).
At this time my old boat-builder friend Henri and Andrée split up. She rang me at school; I met her in Queen’s Gardens where she talked about her unhappiness. This led, after a few weeks to her too becoming a visitor to Chauncy Crescent—what the neighbours thought I do not know. But then it got even more complicated. Sandie, the friend with scoliosis from Bougainville, with whom I exchanged an occasional letter, had been living near Lae for a few years with Jesse, but got tired of the primitive conditions and (she said) the hostility of the PNG women and called it quits. She wrote me and asked if I would pick her up in Cairns where the Port Moresby shuttle landed. I agreed to, and she moved in with me for two months. I had a hard time juggling things with Paddy, Lorna, Sandie and Andrée. (I wouldn’t mind half your trouble I can hear some of my male friends saying.) I don’t think any of the ladies knew of my other relationships.
At last Sandie left for Sydney where she underwent an excruciating operation to straighten her spine. I saw her once during this time and she had pins through her knees, was held by a head frame which screwed onto her skull and was on a rack with weights which slowly straightened her spine. I last saw her in January ’82 and her spine was almost straight.
Paddy went away for two months on a European holiday, which she did not enjoy. When she returned I asked about the house and how awkward it would have been if she had died in Europe or found someone and never came back. After that we agreed to have three independent house valuations and call the average of their figures the value of the house. The valuers came up with figures that differed by only $3000 and I bought Paddy out at the agreed figure.
Being a financially careful fellow and earning lots as a teacher, I was putting together a reasonable sum. At this time, I started to sail with local businessman Beau Lyons on his yacht “Adele” and did several long-distance races as navigator. Beau was a bit of a wild one. At his house parties, with everyone nicely oiled, he would shout—“all in the pool” and from then on, no clothes were allowed. I met a Welsh girl at a party there and had a brief fling with her. She confessed to her boyfriend and I had Scouse Frank after me; he rang and threatened to kill me. Fortunately, he was too dissipated from booze and fags to do much, so after one altercation he backed off, but even twenty years later he still looks straight through me when I cross paths with him at the Yacht Club where we are both still members (2004). It’s a bit ridiculous with him at sixty-five and me at seventy plus, him still carrying the torch for her when in fact she left him a month after our affair and went off to Cairns with someone else.
In the August holidays that year one of the teachers at St Pat’s and her husband were going skiing and wanted three others to share a house at Mount Hutt New Zealand. They asked me, and I must have mentioned I was going when on the phone to Sandie in Sydney. She said she could ski and would like to come. So she did. The other teacher from St. Pat’s was a Christian fundamentalist who was horrified that Sandie and I were in one bedroom. I took lessons and by the end of four days I could do the skiing basics and by the ninth day could do rough parallel skiing. Since then I have skied many times and count myself a high intermediate, which means that about ninety per cent of the slopes are OK for me.
Whilst I was in Sydney seeing Sandie, I called at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia at Rushcutters Bay and found that in 1982 there was going to be a yacht race Sydney to Rio around Cape Horn. I must have read a dozen books about sailing around the Horn and I was afire to go. I entered my details in the crew register, stating that I could navigate, cook, was never seasick, understood diesels, had a Ham licence and do Morse code in addition to having quite a few miles of sailing and yacht delivery experience. Many months went by and at the last minute, with only a week’s lead time before the Lord Howe race, I got a call in Townsville from the owner of “Destiny” in Sydney. He said he had seen my résumé in the crew registry and was looking for a navigator for the Cape Horn race as his regular navigator could not get the time off. I jumped at the chance. But there was one proviso: I had to sail as navigator on his yacht in the Gosford to Lord Howe Island race (500 nautical miles) and that sailed in seven days. This was in the middle of school term, and as everyone knows, teachers get lots (ten weeks) of holidays and are not expected to be missing during term time. So, I went to the Principal and pleaded. She knew I was a bit of a sailor and I said, “It’s like a mountaineer being given the chance to climb Everest”; she kindly gave me ten days unpaid leave. I went to Sydney and Sandie persuaded me and the skipper to let her come on the Lord Howe race too. We got second in the race, which satisfied the skipper and he said he was happy with my navigation and I could go with him around the Horn on ‘Destiny’. I was ecstatic.
I had been getting the odd letter from (second wife) Patty’s sister Barbara in the USA and later got them direct from Patty. She had re-established herself as a nurse in Pittsburgh. She then got a call from Dr. Stephens who was on a 2-year sabbatical at the Utah University Hospital which apparently was at the forefront of kidney dialysis research (his specialty). He asked her to move there and get a job at his hospital which she did and took up the affair which had wrecked her marriage to me, but it did not lead to anything permanent as he went back to Australia at the end of his time. So, Patty was alone in Salt Lake City, and started writing me once a month, which she continued for many years. When I replied, I told her that I had learned how to ski and liked it (I did not know then that S.L.C. is a major US skiing area). She replied telling me that she could also ski, asking me to come for a skiing holiday which she would pay for and she would buy me a new skiing outfit. I thought “what the hell, why not” and I was also curious to know what had happened and if she was as well adjusted as she said she was. So when the big school holidays started in December 81, I rented the house to Paul Hickman a sailing friend, and started my eight weeks’ paid leave (and 3 months unpaid to go around Cape Horn) by going to Sydney for a short holiday with Sandie, then flying to San Francisco to see my friends Al and Rose, before taking a bus over the Sierra Nevada to Salt Lake City and a meeting with ex-wife Patty.
1982
She had put on about 4 kilograms and had short hair but otherwise was little changed. In spite of her booze and pills lifestyle, nature did not seem to have punished her. She still looked younger than her years. Her best friends were a couple of gay guys who owned a prosperous hairdressing salon and who enjoyed cooking, so we had to have a “welcome Norm” big dinner.
Later, Patty started the “if only” routine and wished we could “try again,” but I said it was all over long ago and if she mentioned it again I would leave. So, she left it alone and we enjoyed the skiing. She knew all the locations and was a competent but not daring skier, so we had a great time. I went to Christmas and other parties with her and was a great success as a visiting “aussie” and ex-husband. All her friends told me what a wonderful person she was, but I was never tempted, even though she said I would never have to work if I didn’t want to. Finally, we said a tearful goodbye and I promised to keep on writing and said that she or her sister could ring me up if she “got into trouble.” – Meaning got on the booze or drugs again – but although she never did get seriously into booze and drugs I have had a few calls over the years from Patty and her sister as she has wrestled with serious depression.
I went from SLC to Canada to see my brother and large family. I went by bus to conserve cash, and the faithful Greyhound left Salt Lake City on time. Unfortunately, a big snowstorm set in as we headed north-east, and although the Americans are very good at dealing with big snowfalls on their interstate highways, we were finally stopped at Cheyenne, Wyoming. This town, known of from my boyhood cowboy-loving era, proved a disappointment in the day we were stuck in a motel there—just another big American town – motels, large signs and malls.
I had a nice time with my Canadian relatives then flew back Toronto/San Francisco/ Sydney, to stay with Sandie before setting off on my dream sail, Sydney to Rio via Cape Horn on Destiny, or so I hoped!
On arrival I was horrified to find that Destiny had scratched from the race, and after much turmoil I got on Buccaneer and did the race. So much happened that anyone interested should read my eighty-page log of the trip! I will just observe that in Rio I was depressed by the division of wealth in Copacabana. Downtown there was luxury. On the hills above in the favellas; extreme poverty. I was considering returning to Australia via Buenos Aires but did not and instead went Rio/Los Angeles/Sydney. This choice was perhaps fortunate as the Falklands War started at that time. My bags were rifled in Rio but I did not have much of value. I stayed with Sandie for a week and we camped and walked in Kosiusko Park and walked up the mountain, which at 2228 metres is Australia’s highest.
Now it was March 20th, 1982 and my unpaid leave was up. It was time to leave Sandie and return to school and Townsville.
In Townsville, I decided that I could afford a “new” motorbike, so I traded in my Kawasaki Z400 on a low kilometer Honda CX500. This shaft drive machine was very comfortable and I was to have it for six years and drive it 80,000 kilometres.
Back at school, things were going well, but the Principal, Sister Marie Geddes was replaced by Sister Marie Melville, a gushing and indecisive person whom I co-existed with for fourteen more years, but there was never any love lost. It may have been because she had been in charge of the library before they hired me as a professional librarian. I wrote a scathing report when I first took over the library about how bad it was and how much work was needed to get it right, not knowing that Sister Melville had been responsible for the shambles. Another problem was that she was very conservative, so we frequently crossed swords on what could or could not be purchased by the library.
Sandie, who had now reached thirty-one (I was forty-nine) and being very prosperous, wanted to get married as by this time we had known each other since 1974 and always enjoyed our time together. But I was loath to tie myself to someone so young. The old poem has a lot of sense in it!
“He who young wife takes to bower
Will find his horns within her dower”
(for the non-literary amongst my readers ‘bower’ is bedroom and ‘dower’ is dowry, which she brings to the marriage and horns are the Medieval sign of a cuckold)
So, after many protracted phone calls, I told her I was getting engaged to an older woman and not to call again. Meanwhile Andrée had gone back to Henri (he was to die very painfully of tongue cancer a few years later—ah! the Gauliose cigarettes); Lorna, after being raped on Palm Island and getting infected with an STD (she would not tell me what), spent some time in the Psych. Ward where I visited her before she fled to Darwin, Northern Territory where she became an Education consultant, and is still there in 2005; Paddy sold up on the Island, bought a house in Kirwan, and still dropped over occasionally, but soon sold her house, quit her cataloguing librarian job and went to become a professional masseuse and “natural therapist” at a naturopath college in Tamworth NSW. So, for one reason or another all my girlfriends had disappeared.
Meanwhile Beau Lyons had sold his plant nursery and started to manufacture fibreglass catamarans under licence from an English company. They seemed to sail well as I raced with them a couple of times, so I bought a trimaran and named it Whitby Lass after a Whitby fishing cobble which moored near me in Whitby in 1963.
Over the years, I named several other yachts I owned Whitby Lass
Not being one to mope, for female company I met casually with females I knew at University or at the yacht club. I did however feel that I was “drifting,” but continued to sail and crew and enjoy my work at St Pat’s. However things were about change decisively.
Like many older people, I got a bit tired of the movies that were generally available and used to go to the Cinema Club at the Warrina Cinema on Thursday evenings. On the 17th of June 1982 I went by myself to the Club, and as they were showing two movies, went to get a drink in the foyer during the interval—ah fate! Who should I meet in the foyer but my old English lecturer, Cheryl Frost, who (if you have read this biography around 1971) I had taken to the Uni Hall Ball and been out with a few times over the years. She was unaccompanied, and we decided to sit together for the second movie. I could not ask to take her home as I was on my motor bike and she in her car, but she gave me her address and phone number and said, “Come and see me sometime.” I have mentioned nowhere in this biography so far (but I should have as it has been an important feature of my life) that I have been keen on physical fitness since leaving school. It was therefore nothing special that I was going for a jog the following Saturday, but I thought, “Why not combine fitness with pleasure and jog over to Cheryl’s?” So off I trotted. It was three or four k. away and after asking for a drink of water (and me hoping to be propositioned) she then asked me if I could fix dripping taps!! I could, and I did.
After this unromantic start, we soon started a little romance, and about four weeks later, I asked her if we could live together. I was delighted when she agreed, so the only problem was “where,” as we both owned houses. We decided that hers was the nicer house, so I rented mine to Bill Ricketts and we moved in. I put my house on the market at $75,000 and not being desperate to sell rejected all offers for many months.
I still had the trimaran and took Cheryl out for her first sail to Magnetic Island. This was noteworthy as Cheryl, being a sailing neophyte, fell out of the dinghy into the water as she tried to climb aboard at the mooring. Not an auspicious start, and she did fall into the water several more times over the years, but she also crossed the Indian Ocean and sailed halfway around the world six years later, so she must have been a born sailor. (See Australia to England ’87-’88 which was on board another Whitby Lass – an S&S 34 not a trimaran)
We lived quite happily at Kalinya Street and I went to dinner a few times at her parents’. Her father Alwyn was a retired Telecom manager and her mother Madeline was an excellent typist (former legal secretary) and cook. I got on very well with her parents. What they made of us living together I do not know, but they did not let it affect our relationship. So 1982 slipped by. We went skiing to Mt Hutt New Zealand and Cheryl quickly picked it up and was soon on the “Pommer”—always difficult for a beginner to ride.
I sold my Chauncy Crescent home for $73,000 in November 1982 and my friend Al Keen (of the DewLine see 1959) from San Francisco came over for a visit and a sail. The three of us sailed to Bowen and the Whitsundays in the trimaran and he enjoyed sipping vodka tonics and admiring the bare top girls at the various resorts we visited. We had a beautiful starlight night at the very head of Nari Inlet on Whitsunday Island—there was not a sound to be heard, as, being of shallow draft we were far away from any other yachts. On the way back we fished and caught a good haul. Later we drove with Al in Cheryl’s old Holden ute to Sydney for Al to catch his plane back to the USA. On the way back to Townsville, Cheryl and I stopped off and climbed Mount Warning.
1983
In 1983 we continued to live at Kalinya Street. The neighbours were an odd couple—there used to be very loud arguments at night, usually between 2 and 4 am, and they did not appreciate my banging on their wall with a long pole to shut up. Cheryl mentioned in May that she was thinking of going to Germany for a considerable time. This set me thinking about losing her, as who knows who she might meet on her travels. On the other hand, I had already been married twice and would hate to chase Zsa Zsa Gabor’s record of eight! So, I hummed and harred but then decided that I loved her too much to leave her. We were very compatible, being fairly close on politics, religion, attitude to health, love of literature, values et cetera. I was slightly concerned about our age difference (twelve years) but thought that if I stayed fit and active it might not be too noticeable. Finally, I took a look at her Mum, as I have a theory that you can often tell how a daughter will turn out by looking at her Mum. She was a bright, active and intelligent person; I was just about midway in age between mother and daughter and so found it easy to empathise. Finally, I stopped dithering and decided to take the plunge. I thought I should do it properly for once in my life and decided to do it at the best restaurant in town, the aptly named “Affaire de Coeur.”
Cheryl knew that I was not in the habit of frequenting expensive restaurants, so to get her there thinking she was only going out for a meal I told a little porky. I said that I had won some money on a horse race and would she help me spend it? Seated in a corner alcove, we were isolated from the other clients, when after the crêpe suzettes, on bended knee, I asked her to marry me. She said, “Yes, oh yes!” much to my relief.
I formally asked her father for her hand, which Cheryl (being liberated) didn’t think strictly necessary, and the wedding was agreed to take place in September 1983. Planning for the wedding was completed and most people were coming from Brisbane as Cheryl’s was a Brisbane family and my sons all lived there. Cheryl’s father, Alwyn, who had not been in good health for some years, had a heart attack and died in hospital some days later, on 31 August 1983. We considered postponing the wedding, scheduled for 17 September, but after the funeral my future mother-in-law decided that Alwyn would have wanted us to go ahead with it.
We had the reception at the Hotel Allen from where we flew to Sydney on to our Bali honeymoon the next day. Bali is a beautiful place and we had a great time even if the raw meat and fish, eggs and prawns in a Japanese meal we tried was a bit too “strange” for us. I think we also ate frogs’ legs thinking they were chicken at a later meal. Shortly before returning to Australia and knowing that the America’s Cup races were tied two-all, we heard the fifth and final race on the radio and were delighted to learn that Australia won the Cup for the first and (in 2005) only time.
1984
Back in Australia we both went to work. I asked Cheryl if she wanted to have a baby. She did, so the first thing was to reverse my vasectomy. This was more complicated and painful than the original operation, requiring micro-surgery and three days in hospital, but a sperm count two weeks later confirmed its success. I had thought that Cheryl would become pregnant quickly. When that did not eventuate, we tried all the techniques for improving the probability of conception; the charts, the temperatures, the positions. These were mostly enjoyable but equally unsuccessful. In-vitro fertilisation was becoming popular, so we tried that three times. It was only available in Brisbane, so Cheryl had to spend ten days in Brisbane in preparation. Her mother accompanied her, and I flew down for twenty-four hours when requested by the doctor to do my part. Thrice, viable eggs were implanted and seemed to be adhering and developing so that Cheryl was technically pregnant for two or three weeks. But every time it proved unsuccessful and a period of depression followed. The medical reason was given as being due to endometriosis. Eventually I asked Cheryl to accept that we were destined to remain childless and to get on with our lives as happily as we could without children as we were too old to adopt. Cheryl reluctantly accepted this, and after a few months we were as happy as ever.
I decided we needed a more robust yacht than the trimaran to do some serious ocean sailing some day, for which a monohull was needed. I sold the trimaran at a profit (not a thing always possible with yachts). I looked for about a year before deciding on an American designed thirty-four-footer, a Sparkman and Stephens 34. I bought Halcyon for $30,000 from her owner in Cairns. She was in a sad state of neglect but basically sound. I sailed her from Cairns to Townsville with a scratch crew and was pleased at how well she went against the SE trades which were quite strong in August. Over the next few years I replaced the engine with a Volvo 2002 two-cylinder diesel and made various improvements. I also renamed the yacht Whitby Lass and Cheryl christened her in the usual manner. We did many sails between Cape Upstart and Dunk Island and Cheryl became a competent sailor in whom I had the confidence to take a nap whilst she sailed alone.
1985
In 1985, we decided to sell Cheryl’s house and build another place because a two-story house with rear verandah was going up on the block next door and they would overlook the back of our house and garden. Looking at homes for sale, there was nothing to suit, so we bought a vacant block of 2½ acres on the edge of the golf course at 21 Golf Links Drive. At that time Townsville-Thuringowa stopped at The Willows, Thuringowa Drive. We contracted a builder and sketched our requirements for a four-bedroom house, pool, garages, and billiard room. The plans were drawn, approved and built to. We had the usual problems with a builder determined to build as cheaply as possible, but by and large we were pleased with our new house and pool and the isolated area in which we lived. We had spent a lot on the new house and could not furnish it properly, but it was comfortable to live in nevertheless. We saw a lot of my mother-in-law Madeline, who was always very helpful to us in every way – the ideal mother-in-law from my point of view. We looked after each other’s houses and went on holidays together. My sons, Steven and family and David and family visited us and went to Magnetic Island.
1986
In 1986 I decided that I would like to sail to England and possibly around the globe. I felt that the S&S 34 would be good enough and shortly after there was a lot of publicity for a Mr. Sanders who had just completed a double non-stop circumnavigation in an S&S 34. During 1986 Cheryl and I had a holiday in England and visited Whitby where we saw the mayor who was enthusiastic at the idea of a yacht called “Whitby Lass” sailing from Australia to Whitby and promised us Council assistance. We also had a look at Falmouth as a possible first landing place in England, as it was the original intention to exit the Mediterranean at Gibraltar and cross the Bay of Biscay. 1988 was going to be the Bi-Centenary of white settlement of Australia, and I got approval from the Committee for the voyage to be a “Bi-centennial Activity.” I was asked to carry a videotape, letter and aboriginal message from the Shire Chairman (Mayor) of Cooktown to the Mayor of Whitby. This latter wanted us to arrive in Whitby at a specified date, Whit Monday 30 May 1988. This requirement came to dominate planning and execution of the voyage.
1987
The voyage is described in great detail in the page Australia to England ’87-’88, but the pre-planning came to affect our lives, so I will detail that. First, I read whatever books I could find, the most useful of which was Alan Lucas’s book, “Sailing the Red Sea.” Then I purchased and studied “Ocean Passages for the World,” which tell of sailing ship routes and wind directions and strengths for the whole world. I felt it would take about six months from Townsville to Whitby, and another seven to sail back to Australia. I therefore applied for a year’s unpaid leave from my school, St. Patrick’s College, where I was school librarian and computer teacher. This took a while but was eventually granted. The cyclone season is at its start in December and I did not want to sail Townsville to Darwin during that month, but my leave did not start officially until December 6th, so I delivered the yacht to Darwin with Cheryl’s cousin Rowan as crew. I managed to get permission to leave St. Pat’s as soon as my class marks were finalized and as I was teaching only Grade 12 (who finished earlier than others), I was soon away. I had sailed Townsville to Darwin in the September holidays and sailed from Darwin on November 2nd, 1987 at 2pm, bound for the Cocos Keeling Islands. Cheryl was also delayed by university marking so flew in to the Cocos and we sailed from there on December 8th at 7pm. Full details of the trip are contained in the log and resultant articles (a small novel in itself). Anyone interested should read the log.
1988 (Australian Bi-Centennial Year)
By careful time management we arrived off Whitby, Yorkshire, at 1330 on Whit Monday 30 May 1988. We were met at sea by the Mayor and Deputy and other town worthies and escorted by members of the Whitby Yacht Club flotilla up the harbour and to our free berth in the Whitby marina. We took part in many Bi-Centenary celebrations. We stayed with friends Jim and Shirley at Robin Hood’s Bay. One evening at the Whitby Cinema Cheryl felt very nauseous and later did not feel too well in the mornings! She was pregnant !!! She returned to Oz in July and I followed, after I had sold the yacht. We got about the same price that I had originally paid for her.
When I arrived back in Oz we soon found out that conception had occurred shortly after we landed in Whitby or at Robin Hood’s Bay. You will have read, earlier, of the efforts we made to get pregnant so the event, occurring “naturally,” filled everyone with pleasure—not least Madeline who must have despaired of ever becoming a Grandma. I had taken a year’s leave without pay, but was back in Australia in August 1988, so took a job as a temporary teacher at Ryan Catholic School. I taught computing and maths and did OK, so that they wanted me to join the permanent staff when my time was up in December, but I wished to return to St. Pat’s which I did in February 1989.
1989
Cheryl was a model mother-to be and did everything recommended to ensure a successful pregnancy and a healthy child. Michael was born on February 22nd at Park Haven. Cheryl had an epidural and a Caesarean which she endured OK, although I couldn’t help flinching as I watched. She came home after a few days and quickly recovered her health. She breastfed as best she could but it was not totally successful and she gave up about the fourth month. Michael seemed to thrive and Madeline gave us lots of help.
1990-1994
Both Cheryl and I were working full time, she at the University and writing her Ph.D and me computer teacher and librarian at St. Pats. Michael was just walking and could already swim. Many children drown in backyard pools, so we tried to drown proof him early and had a rule that whenever he was inside the pool fence he had to wear an inflatable suit which he called his ‘swimiboys’. This had 5 inflatable pockets and as he got better I gradually let the air out so that in a couple of months the suit was adding no buoyancy and in fact was causing drag. Michael still wanted to wear it, but after a while he decided himself that he did not need it. He had a girl friend next door about 6 months younger called Sammy and for many years they spent a lot of time together. I made them a tree house, but when green ants colonised the tree they got nipped too often and would not play there. I chopped down and burnt the tree and put swings there.
Across the road, a horse trotting (harness racing) track was built which brought a lot of noise, litter and misbehaviour to our neighbourhood. When their crowds started to decline they ran discos and wet tee-shirt competitions bringing in an even worse crowd. The neighbourhood which had been very quiet for many years was now frequently very rowdy. We protested to the local Council, but it was in the pocket of the State National Party government and would take no action. Eventually the trotting club went broke and the place was deserted for a couple of years and was on the point of being demolished, when it was decided to organise an NRL rugby league team (The Cowboys) there. This was the last straw for us as we did not want to live exactly opposite a big sporting arena, so we put our house on the market.
We were all on holiday in New Zealand when a satisfactory offer was made, and we signed the contract via fax. Whilst there, Michael who was standing beside me on the bank as I fly fished in an icy river, suddenly tumbled headfirst into the river. It was only a metre deep but very cold and I had him out in seconds. We dried him off quickly and he did not shed a tear and seemed to have forgotten about it by the end of the day.
1995
Madeline looked after Michael a lot and as we had a pool, she took some private swimming lessons and then practised nearly every day in our pool. She was soon swimming 10 lengths; remarkable when you remember the age at which she took up swimming. She also did all our ironing saying she “liked doing it” and we dined often at each other’s houses. Eventually, the house sale went through and we bought a house at 10 Southwick Court Annandale in 1995 in the same suburb as Madeline, and having installed a 10M pool, Madeline and Michael continued their swimming. All went well with our little family until Madeline had an accident and fell in her home. She sustained a skull fracture and died without gaining consciousness. This was an enormous shock to us all, but especially to Cheryl who was very close to her mother. Madeline died December 29th, sadly missed by us all. With Madeline gone we had a lot of re-adjustments to make as she had done so much for us, but somehow we managed.
1996
Cheryl and I had been skiing for a few times and in December 1996 we all went to Salt Lake City to stay and ski at Brighton, one of the Canyon resorts. Whilst there Michael did his first little ski down a two-metre snow pile which had been heaped up by a snowplough and I promised him that he could go up the lifts with me if he could stop, which he soon learned and being young and fearless was soon making good progress. After Mike and I spent the morning skiing whilst Cheryl had been shopping in town, she decided that she would ski alone that afternoon. I think I had the start of ‘flu and was resting when I got a phone call advising me to go to the ski resort first aid centre.
Cheryl had got on the wrong lift, gone high up to a slope far too difficult for her and decided to ski down! She got going too fast, lost control, fell and broke both fibula and tibula. When I saw her in the first aid centre she was white with shock and very bravely suffered her leg being moved to be x-rayed. We all went down the mountain to a private hospital as we had good medical insurance. The doctor cheered Cheryl up a lot and did a good operation but her skiing days were over. The nurse who looked after her (Trish Doyle) is still a friend today (2008) and we have had a nice skiing holiday with her (not Cheryl of course) in Salt Lake City a few years ago. Trish looked after Michael for a few days as Cheryl recuperated from the lengthy operation and he went to her daughter Sarah’s school for a day and was a great success in the class. Eventually, the insurers flew us back to Australia business class as Cheryl could not bend her leg. She had two plates and cadaver bone grafts and was a long time in recovering her ability to walk, going through wheel chair, crutches and walking stick stages. We also found out that she has osteoporosis and is still being treated for that in 2006.
In Dec 1996 I was 63 and was thinking of retiring in Dec 1998 when I would be 65. Cheryl recuperated slowly during the first half of 1996, but in the absence of Madeline, who had done a lot of the school transport for Michael, I found it difficult to cope with both Cheryl and me working full time.
1997
Starting the school year in February 1997, I decided that I would bring forward my retirement by over a year and retired from St. Patrick’s College on July 4th, 1997 after 19 years’ service. In retirement I found that I missed the security of being employed and having a regular income, but that was the only downside. I did not seem to be short of things to do and bought a few orchids and eventually a 200-plant orchid house where I now grow about 30 varieties.
1998
I decided that I would do a last big sail by circumnavigating Australia and looked around for a suitable yacht. As I was not in any hurry I travelled around the coast now and then and eventually found Excel in Mooloolaba, about 60 miles N. of Brisbane.
I collected the necessary gear, motored down to Mooloolaba, loaded up the yacht, sent my car to be looked after by son David and retired to a motel nearby to await a suitable departure time (230am). This departure should have put me close to Wide Bay Bar at about slack water – it can be a dangerous bar in a large swell. So I was fast asleep about 1030pm when my mobile rang. It was son David who was at home in Brisbane saying, “Cheryl has broken her leg and is having an operation tomorrow and would like you there”, I thought it was a hoax, but David assured me that Elizabeth, Cheryl’s best friend had phoned and it was no hoax. He kindly brought my car back to Mooloolaba and I set off for Townsville immediately driving the 1300km almost non-stop and arriving at the hospital just before they took her for her op. She had been on a May Day picnic at a friend’s property and had slipped on stones alongside a small river. She broke her other leg and because of the remoteness of the site had to lay prone with Mike beside her and nothing but paracetamol as a pain killer. It had started to rain before the emergency services stretchered her out. Anyway, she survived but was quite a long time recovering and had a limp which I thought would never go away, but eventually did. She is now very careful when she walks anywhere, but she still can walk 10 kilometres (2008)
I went later and picked up the yacht and sailed it singlehanded back to Townsville. It was a new 30ft Ben Lexcen hull with a new Kubota diesel but little else. Someone’s unfinished dream – there are a lot of them advertised in the yachting press – people get started and then realise how much labour and money is needed and decide to get out. The mast and sails were off a 25ft Roberts, and she looked rather stupid with such a small mast and sails.
1999
Over the year I rewired, re-masted and finished her, so that in 1999 I was ready to sail. I had been sailing with Grant who I had taught to sail around Magnetic Island. He expressed interest in sailing around Oz with me and I thought “why not”. We sailed around Australia anti-clockwise between Aug and Nov and all the details are in the Log of Excel for anyone interested. I used the yacht for a few months after but as Mike did not seem to be interested in sailing, I sold it a while later, making a handsome profit, as I was not desperate to sell
So here it was in late 99 and the much vaunted Millennium approaching. I had tried to book us into the Wrest Point Hotel in Hobart to celebrate, but a Qantas screw-up stymied that so we went to the USA for a short ski, (Mike and I, Cheryl as watcher) and then took the hire car on towards Reno. I had developed a raging ‘flu, and we had a quiet Millennium watching it on TV as the earth spun through the major cities East to West, in a motel in Carson City Nevada, before going on to the Silver Nugget at Reno.
2000
I have climbed a few hills and mountains before (nothing famous) and thought I would like to climb Mt.Whitney which is in the Sierra Nevada of California and about 100 Km south of where we ski in winter at Mammoth Mountain. I had to make a booking with the Rangers which I did on the Net, and eventually climbed it in May 15-16th of 2000. I found the altitude quite difficult after 8000 feet (it is 14505 ft high) but it was not a difficult climb as the Americans have everything well organised with a clear route and I went up the ‘easy’ non-roped way. There were still lots of snow about even in mid-May.
It was a big year for “mountains” as Cheryl got her Ph.D and became Doctor Taylor in April 2000.
2001
In 2001 I had met some friends who had walked across England on the famous East-West walk and thought that I’d like to do the same. My cousin Trevor in England organised it for me and accompanied me, but foot and mouth disease struck England at that time and we were forced to do the walk mostly on surfaced roads parallel to the track rather than the track except for the section across the North Yorks moors. In spite of this, it was a very rural walk being mostly on narrow quiet lanes. We walked it West to East in May 2001 and finished at my old habitat of Robin Hood’s Bay where I lived in the 60s
Cheryl and I wished to go to art and historic centres in Europe which Mike was not keen on so we put him in boarding school at Cathedral School for 7 weeks in October 2001 and Cheryl and I toured Germany, Spain, Italy and Greece, mostly on a first class Eurail pass, which was quite good. We saw most of the famous sites of those countries. Mike seemed none the worse for his experience and had made a friend (Ben) who still visits us in 2006
2002
Whilst on the cross-England walk Trevor asked what I was going to do next and I said I fancied crossing Australia East to West, mostly across the desert, by trail bike. He was keen to come with me, but some medical trouble (early prostate) made him call it off. I bought an XT600 Yamaha and rode from Townsville across to Geraldton and back in May 2002, although I wasn’t a great success as a dirt track rider. Anyone interested in detail should read the article which was published later. In Sept/Oct 2002 my good friend Peter Kitchen, with whom I had many youthful adventures (see Part 1) came over for a holiday. We sailed around the Palm Islands in a chartered yacht (a Folkboat), went on a day trip and snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef and finally drove to Alice Springs and out to Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) which we climbed (me for the fourth or fifth time). He said he had never had such a good holiday.
2003
2003 was the year of my 70th birthday, so Cheryl, Mike and I went to Brisbane for it and I put on a party for the family at the Heritage hotel in Brisbane.
In 2004, I asked my cousin Trevor in England if he was interested in doing the Hadrian’s Wall walk; he was and organised all the maps and accommodation. We had a very successful walk West to East with only a little rain on the first day.
In 2007 we built a house and moved to Brisbane, to the shores of Moreton Bay. Mike stayed on in Townsville. We live within 30 Km of my other sons and their families and my first wife
So here it is, now 2010 and I can’t think of what to do for an exciting project. I did take up tennis 3 years ago and took some coaching which certainly proved to be a good idea. After a year I tore the ligament from my shoulder joint and had to have a serious operation which took 8 months of physio to get better, but I have been back for the last 10 months and seem to be playing as well as ever. Here is a picture of our team in the competition:
Cheryl and I play tennis twice weekly (as long as she isn’t too busy at work): see below
Cheryl has gone back to work for Griffith University as she found it hard to adjust after Mike left home and she retired and moved away from her Townsville friends to Brisbane and I am home alone a lot of the time. I am quite happy doing what I do but decided to start a course, so I did a dual Cert III in Aged Care and Community Care Nursing starting 12 Jul 2010. I intended, when I completed this, to work a day or two a week if I can get work or volunteer if I cannot.
I completed the course which included 4 weeks practical training in what was quite a well-run and expensive nursing home in Brisbane. I was rotated through Low care, High care, Palliative care and Dementia wards. This was a salutary experience! Although a little thought should have told me what it would be like in high-care, palliative-care or dementia wards, the actual experience convinced me that I am not going there but rather will decide the day and manner of my own dying. If you read this after my death you will know if I carried out this intent or not.
So now I turn to my departure from the planet, impressed by the unimaginable age of the Universe and my planet and the uniqueness and complexity of cellular life of which I am a part. As I feel my bodily systems decline (which still seem pretty good for my age as I only have mild arthritis, read without glasses, am not deaf and can still play tennis in 2010) it keeps reminding me that although a part of unique life in a largely empty universe, I am also insignificant within it, and soon to leave it. So, the curtain descends and everything (for me) ends!
When I consider what I did in my life, what happened to me and what I had done to me and did to others I usually feel, on balance, happy about it. But what am I? What have I been? I can think of little that would interest a recording angel, since I have been neither very good nor very bad: on balance: the sins of my grosser nature would all but cancel out my few virtues. I’ve had an interesting life and done the odd act of kindness. But I don’t believe in judgement anyway; although in a way I wish it were true and the villains would get their come-uppance! No, my departure will be as insignificant as a dried-up leaf, falling from a tree when its time is due. Down I’ll spiral, to form part of the universal mulch. Or, put less poetically, I will surrender the temporary loan of the elements of which I am constituted. I’m not unhappy about that. It was great to be alive. I almost always found it interesting and couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.
Sic transit Gloria mundi! 2010