(…) Adventure
noun. noun. /ədˈvɛntʃər/ 1[countable] an unusual, exciting, or dangerous experience, journey, or series of events
 
*adventure (n.)
c. 1200, aventure, auenture "that which happens by chance, fortune, luck," from Old French aventure (11c.) "chance, accident, occurrence, event, happening," from Latin adventura (res) "(a thing) about to happen," from fem. of adventurus, future participle of advenire "to come to, reach, arrive at." This is from ad "to" (see ad-) + venire "to come" (from a suffixed form of PIE root *gwa- "to go, come").
The meaning developed through "risk; danger" (a trial of one's chances), c. 1300, and "perilous undertaking" (late 14c.) to "novel or exciting incident, remarkable occurrence in one's life" (1560s).
Earlier it also meant "a wonder, a miracle; accounts of marvelous things" (13c.). The -d- was restored in English 15c.-16c.; in French the attempt to restore it at about the same time was rejected. 
 
My (Family History) Adventure  (Draft 1)
​
In 2010, during a long service leave break in which ancestry.com was advertising two weeks free subscription, and having some family mysteries which remained unresolved, I set off on an adventure.  A different type of journey of discovery, of ‘heading out into the wild blue yonder’, but still a heading out from the known to the unknown.
Like most adventures, there was a goal at the end, whether my maternal great grandfather’s journey to Australia as a ‘gold seeker’, or in this case, my overriding goal of finding my father’s other biological children, the half-brother and sister I first heard of when I was 14 and of finding out more about my paternal ‘family of origin’, my Scottish forebears. 
​
An adventure usually involves processes to be worked through, tickets to purchase, timetables to meet, resources to pack, directions, maps and more.   I’d trialled, then purchased an ancestry.com and then a My Heritage subscription, had a lap-top with lots of file storage, lots of A4 arch folders and plastic inserts from my teaching days, and an understanding of family trees and ‘family systems’ and relationships from my social work background.  Along the journey I discovered and became adept using ‘Scotland’s People’ records, ‘Find My Past’ and other resources which opened up/proved keys to my family story.

When we head out on an adventure into the unknown, other people have the opportunity to discover us, people we may not ever have connected with otherwise.   This proved to be the case quite early in my journey, with two family mysteries via messages received from cousins through ancestry…  Not only to discover us remotely, but to visit and re-establish contact with us. 

Adventures can also feature ‘serendipitous’ moments – my quest to find out more about my father’s family of origin involved one of these.   A young first cousin, twice removed, studying social work in Edinburgh, Scotland had begun to create a family tree during a trial of ancestry.com not long before I put in the little I knew about my father’s family into the database.  A hint to her tiny tree appeared, and it seemed that my paternal grandfather had a sister Elizabeth I never knew of, the great grandmother of the young social worker.  Contact with her led to making contact with her great uncle, my father’s first cousin, who kept in treasured contact with me for seven years prior to his death in 2018 and shared so much family history with me. 

Such ‘serendipitous’ moments have been important throughout my journey, adding to the sense of adventure.  The search for my half brother and sister remained unresolved for the first three years, a black hole with so many roadblocks along the way.  I persevered with the little I knew – their names, the names of their mother and maternal grandfather, the possibility that Harry Green had a Jewish background.  Pieces had gradually fallen into place, and I became fairly certain that Harry Green had married Helena Twomey and that his name had been Aaron Gruen.  One day, on the spur of the moment, I googled Aaron Gruen and Helena Twomey and came up with a genealogy related website which included, in their family details, would you believe ‘Elenore Green m Anthony Lee’…. my father.  It was establishing contact with the very helpful and wise administrator of the website that I eventually made contact with a ‘step’ niece x 2 removed currently living in Prague, Czechoslovakia, who thoughtfully worked through a process whereby I was able to meet, love and enjoy my half-sister, now almost 96, and the family of my half-brother. 
Luck is such a factor in a family history journey… I was so lucky that the Parish records of my great grandfather’s baptism in Ireland had been faithfully recorded and kept by the priests at the time, had not been destroyed in a fire, etc….  lucky that the birth and death records of the only child they had in Scotland contained so much information about the family. 

Generally, the weather is clear, there are relatively few stormy seas, however the water is sometimes deep and storms do occur at times.  It can be quite traumatic if someone disputes, and wants you to correct, something you have put on a family tree; and vice versa….  Examples…..  It can feel as if you are in a sword fight, passions can run high, or alternatively, there can be unwanted icy cold silence on the matter. 

The aim of family history, like most adventures is discovery!  it’s a bit like going to an island with a map which might contain buried treasures Like other adventures, a family history adventure can include experiences of tragedy, of sadness, and indeed can impact on our mood. There is risk – in finding out bad or sad news, bad or mad relatives (we hope our relatives are good people)…, of having no success at all.  There is mystery.  There is joy – the joy of discovery, the ah hah moments.  There is also possible chance, fortune, luck… if someone else happens to have worked or be working on ancestry.com trees featuring links; if records have been retained and not been destroyed by war, accident or other misfortune,… and more…  What an adventure it is!
 
‘Are we there yet?’ often accompanies journeys into the unknown as children…  ‘Am I there yet?’.  I think I’ve largely completed the ‘adventure’ phase of my family history journey, a phase full of ‘ah hah’ moments, discoveries and at times frustration.  I do retrace the journey, revisiting my family tree on ancestry, at times ‘tidy up’ information and respond to messages which can often be really helpful.  The ‘ah hah’ moments are less intense these days, however I have a continuing interest in correcting the maps which other people may draw upon.    You never know, perhaps finding my tree may prove ‘serendipitous’ to them as they embark on their family history adventure!
 
Beverley Lee
September 2023

Over a 10-year period from 1994 to about 2004 I worked as an alcohol and other drug counsellor with people who wanted, or the courts or their families wanted, to quit using substances.  I’ll admit now to the people who said to me ‘That must be Hard Work’, it was!    

There’s a model used in alcohol and other drug work, Prochaska and Di Clemente’s ‘Stages of Change’ model, which helps to track people’s movement from not identifying the need for change (the pleasures are greater than the pains); to contemplating change as the pleasure being gained was waning and the pain and problems attached to deciding to change increasing; followed up by a decision to change, preparing for the change, making the change or changes  and hopefully, maintaining the change for a long period. 

The model reminds us that relapse is common at any stage, that the average number of attempts to change is seven…. that quitting is indeed ‘Hard Work’.  It's hard work for people trying to quit or even reduce substance use, it's also hard work for those working to support their efforts to change. 

Later I taught people who would work with people dependent on alcohol and other drugs.  At the beginning of our classes I asked them to give up something they loved for a week and to write a journal about the experience.   We laughed as they read out their journals the following week… quitting was so hard! 

I participated in the activity, choosing yet again to try to give up coffee.   I had ‘made myself’ drink coffee (“ugh”!) as a student at Monash University in the late 1960’s… and despite trying many times I’ve barely stopped ever since.  I usually reported that I had, in fact binged on Day 1, had reverted to substitution of decaffeinated coffee on Day 3, and hadn’t manage to quit at all by Day 7.   

I also read out to them a piece by legendary Australian writer Henry Lawson who was dependent on alcohol for most of his adult life to help them to better understand people who struggled to quit…. I’m adding it below for you to read. 

Before I go … I’ve just had a cup of coffee, and think I’ll have another one!...

Beverley

..........

Dear Bulletin

I’m awfully surprised to find myself sober.  And, being sober, I take up my pen to write a few lines, hoping they will find you as I am at present. I want to know a few things. In the first place: Why does a man get drunk? There seems to be no excuse for it.  I get drunk because I am in trouble, and I get drunk because I’ve got out of it. I get drunk because I’m sick, or have corns, or the toothache: and I get drunk because I’m feeling well and grand. I get drunk because I was rejected; and I got awfully drunk the night I was accepted. And, mind you, I don’t like to get drunk at all, because I don’t enjoy it much, and suffer hell afterwards. I’m always far better and happier when I’m sober, and tea tastes better than beer. But I get drunk. I get drunk when I feel that I want a drink, and I get drunk when I don’t. I get drunk because I had a row last night and made a fool of myself and it worries me, and when things are fixed up I get drunk to celebrate it.  And, mind you, I’ve got no craving for a drink.  I get drunk because I’m frightened about things, and because I don’t care a damn.  Because I’m hard up and because I’m flush.  And, somehow, I seem to have better luck when I’m drunk.  I don’t think the mystery of drunkenness will ever be explained – until all things are explained, and that will be never. A friend says that we don’t drink to feel happier, but to feel less miserable. But I don’t feel miserable when I’m straight. Perhaps I’m not perfectly sober right now, after all. I’ll go and get a drink, and write again later.

Henry


An edited version of 'I Quit', written for the class in 2015
Suggested Reading... Henry Lawson - Poet of the People - the Battle with the Bottle https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/henry-lawson-poet-people/hard-times
​

​"In, over, through and off'...it's almost seventy years ago and my loved grandmother is sitting at my side, patiently encouraging me to repeat this as I follow her instructions after I showed interest in learning to knit .  "In, over, through and off". 

Each time I stay at my grandparent's house I'm encouraged to pick up my knitting.  I progress from mastering 'plain' to learning 'pearl', to casting on and off.  Then on to casting on an even number and knitting 'one plain, one pearl' to form 'rib'; followed by casting on an odd number of stitches and knitting one plain one pearl. The result, my favourite, moss stitch!  

My grandmother teaches me to follow patterns, to increase, decrease and more. I make my first rib stitched beanie, with a pom pom. I loved making pom-poms!  A circular piece of paper with a hole in the middle forming a tool around which wool was wound, the process completed, a wonderful pom pom!  Scarves, then over time jumpers and cardigans follow, with Nanna's servicemen's knitting books providing patterns using four needles to make gloves or socks. What confidence was gained in persevering to achieve the milestone of turning the heel of a sock!

These were times of post war shortages, times when clothes were still made of wool and cotton, when tariffs protected the Australian clothing and textile industries.  It would be some decades before the mass production of acrylic fibres and the mass production of cheap knitted clothing.

We would sit by the little fire in my grandparents' sitting room after dinner, listening to the 3DB News, my grandmother knitting woollen jumpers with cowel necks for my grandfather and uncle, or knitwear in various shapes and sizes for her grandchildren which were destined to became hand me downs as we grew out of them.  
  
Ever resourceful, my grandmother often used left over wools to make striped jumpers of which we always seemed to have at least one.

By learning to knit I learnt that if I persevered, eventually there would be a result which would almost always be useful, pleasing, perhaps even something to be proud of.  I learned about 'patterns'; to problem solve when I dropped a stitch; to ponder about  how reversing a process slightly could lead to a different result, to try different ways to solve problems.  I learned about textiles, about different 'ply's', about the impact of changing needle sizes; and more.  Knitting even helped me to learn about atoms -  I could imagine atoms making up wool, which could then be used in different ways to construct a physical entity.  But the biggest lesson was the preparedness to take up a project, select patterns, wools, colours, then persevere to complete a product I'd be pleased with.

Over time I also learnt to crochet - equally fascinating to do, but different.  I'd  grown up familiar with Afghan squares on bedspreads made by my grandmother joined together then affixed to a sturdy floral poplln material.  In 1977, having returned from overseas and bought a little house in Daylesford, I had very little money to spare.  However, wool could be put away at the local drapery store to buy on an as needs basis, so I began to make an afghan square rug based on the colours of polyanthus flowers with black borders and edging.  Over time it grew to become a large double bedspread, quite a joy to behold!

Not so long ago, I spent some time restoring the edging on this bedspread, which is now almost fifty years old. It epitomizes to me the results of  perseverance.  I think of it when I doggedly persevere to add the Newsletter reports to the group pages on the web site each month.  I go into 'Afghan Square' making mode when doing this and always enjoying seeing the reports of group activities and the stories written by As Time Goes By and Family Research group members build up over time. 

Adding the newsletter reports and the stories each month is a labour of love which requires perseverance. Sometimes I think about succession planning and ask myself ...'would anyone else be prepared to persevere to do this if I couldn't do it?'  

I have my doubts, but then again, perhaps someone might be able to persevere, if they'd learnt to knit and crochet! 


Bev Lee
​May 2023

It was summer in Australia, but mid-winter in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada when I arrived for a year-long teacher exchange in late December 1981. 

While my exchangee John was learning to cope with a cottage on Wombat Hill in Daylesford without air conditioning in summer, with flies, tarantulas and other insects, I was learning to cope with snowy footpaths and icy roads, learning to understand and dress for chill factors. 

My beloved leather soled boots were completely inadequate.  I still remember slipping and falling on my bottom as I first walked up the icy footpath towards the front doors of ‘Kam High’, much to the amusement of mingling students, many of whom arrived, cowboy hat and boots commonplace, in family pick up utes from nearby cattle ranches.

Another adjustment involved driving, not only on the right side of the road, but on icy winter roads.  John had left an old car, complete with snow tyres, in the basement garage for me to drive. My early attempts at driving on icy local roads featured the car slewing from side to side and my valiantly trying to put it back in the basement garage without wrecking it before phoning a local driving instructor for some lessons in managing to drive on icy roads. ​

Finding it difficult to sleep, I open up ‘In Conversation’ with Richard Fidler on my Podcast app.  Scrolling through the program list, I notice a recent interview with Paulie Stewart.  I know a little about Paulie and follow him on Twitter.  I’m interested in knowing more, in knowing his side of the story, a story which had ramifications on people from my past.

Backtrack to October 18, 1975 – I’m teaching at Elwood High School and living in a share house in Malvern.  My house mate is Duncan Ness, an ABC rural reporter.   His many journalist friends often drop by– all working for different papers or TV news stations, they live fairly intense lives and enjoy catching up with one another.   In late October, 1975, during the tumultuous news period preceding ‘The Dismissal’, they are deeply affected by news of the murders of five journalists and camera men in East Timor on October 16th. Duncan is particularly affected by the death of former coworker, Greg Shackleton.   It is never clear cut, from the beginning, what had happened, there has always been a sense that there may have been a withholding of knowledge from the families, of political expedience.  Almost five decades have passed during which I’ve followed the work of Shirley Shackleton, wife of Greg, in her struggles to ensure that the truth be told about her husband’s death. 

Fast forward to Daylesford in the late 1980’s – There’s a new doctor at one of our local surgeries in Daylesford.  His name, Greg Stewart.  At times he’s the doctor I see at the clinic.  He and his doctor wife are active in the community and I find myself socializing with them.  I’m aware that Greg is a brother of Tony Stewart, the 21-years old camera man who died in East Timor with other members of the Balibo 5.  We don’t talk about it.  In the mid-nineties, working in the town as a social worker, I have professional contact with Greg.  One of the few doctors in the region registered as a methadone prescriber, I value the way in which he works so thoughtfully and warmly with the clients with addictions I refer to him.  In time, Greg’s sister Annie, a talented professional story teller and actor, moves into town to raise her young children.  I know Annie in passing.  

It's late 2022 as I listen to the interview, completely engaged, resisting the inclination to go back to sleep.  Paulie Stewart, Tony, Greg and Annie’s ‘out there’ younger brother, a member of the wild ‘Painters and Dockers’ band, has just published his memoir ‘All the Rage’. Richard Fidler is expertly drawing him out, allowing Paulie’s humour, life experience, humanity and memories to flow freely.

What would our experience have been like if we were teenagers and an older sibling had allegedly been murdered by the army of a neighbouring nation in politically difficult circumstances, if we, and our families had our ‘personal grief and family crisis foisted upon the main stage as part of a story that has haunted the Australian media for decades’ (Annie Stewart*).   Indeed, the Australian War Memorial Website currently states, ‘the details of precisely how or why the Balibo 5 died are still not publicly known’.
 
I’m so glad that, almost 50 years later, I listened to Paulie’s interview.  It has filled in some gaps, helped me better understand the impact on his family - on Paulie as Tony’s 15-year old younger brother, on his parents as they tried to shepherd their children through a traumatic time despite their own grief, and on Greg and Annie.
  
Thank you, Paulie, for speaking about it. 

I’m time travelling as I add Carmyl’s ‘This (Reading) Life’ story to the website, moving rhythmically to a collection of 70s songs selected for me by Spotify… just now, ‘I Love You Just the Way You are’…. now, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ by Simon and Garfunkel’ …. ‘when tears are in your eyes, I’ll dry them all, I’m on your side when times get low, and friends just can’t be found, like a bridge, over troubled waters, I will lay me down’…….

I lived in Spain for a year in the 1970’s.  I knew when I left Madrid that it was unlikely that I would ever return.  I type ‘The Music of my Madrid’ into the website search bar, locating a story written for ATGB many years ago which continues to bring me joy, punctuated as it is by video segments relating to my time in Spain. 

Later, browsing bookmarks in Youtube, I walk virtually around my old haunts in Madrid, past La Casa Inglesa in Plaza de Salamanca, which I sadly notice 45 years later is now boarded up; along Calle de Padilla, where I shared an apartment;  into streets and lanes with bars frequented during ‘chateos’, late afternoon walks in which I often met up with expat friends over Spanish wines and tapas – whether garlic mushrooms, calamari in its ink, tortilla, olives.

I visit the Facebook page of ‘Coral de Moraria’, the flamenco bar I frequented often with friends, over four decades later almost deluged with video clips of the flamenco dancers and singers of today performing on the stage I came to know so well all those years ago. 

Still unwinding to music of the 70’s in the background, I continue editing the website, subconsciously practicing Spanish via an ‘app’ which changes selected words to Spanish

“En octobre we are looking forward to celebrating Get Online Week, with a free almuerzo for U3A members and members of the older Benalla comunidad on miércoles 19 October at 11.45am. This lunch is being provided by a grant from the Fundación Cosas Buenas… . The theme of el almuerzo is ‘Prueba una cosa’…”

Later, I search SBS On Demand for Spanish films, then seek out Rick Stein’s culinary adventures in Spain.  I watch with joy as he visits the places and food of ‘my’ Spain.  I’m soon searching for the little diary containing the recipes for paella and tortilla I learnt from our cherished cleaner, Carmen, in Madrid – I have lots of olive oil, potatoes, onions and eggs in the pantry, so tortilla it will be!

Later I lie in bed, unable to sleep, and sleepily say to the open air… “Okay, Google, play Spanish classical guitar music,” then sometime later…  “Okay Google, Goodnight”…

 
Beverley Lee,
October 2022

At lunch with like-minded friends concerned about the treatment of refugees last week, I venture – ‘What do you think of this … ‘No One Left in Limbo’.  The day before, Anthony Albanese had used the phrase ‘No One Left Behind’, for another worthy ambition, poverty reduction, but I want more. 
 
Pondering about ‘next steps’, I look up from my laptop to see a photograph of the ‘Imagine’ banner created by the Daylesford Embroidered Banner Group in 1982.  The first of many ‘social cause’ banners, it was constructed drawing upon a ‘library’ of embroidered letters created by community members – women, men and children – in a project inspired and curated by local Daylesford artist Margaret Leunig, working alongside writers Diane Parsons and Christine Stokes.

I was quietly embroidering a smocked calico nightdress during Margaret Leunig’s embroidery class at the old Victoria Hotel in late 1981 when Margaret raised her idea.  The group brainstormed the concept and began early planning.   However, not long after, I left Daylesford on a teaching exchange to Kamloops Senior Secondary College, in British Columbia.
 
A few months later a letter arrived at my Kamloops address from members of the embroidery group inviting me, as a 'founding member’, to contribute a letter to the first banner.  Titled ‘Imagine’ and inspired following the first anniversary of John Lennon’s tragic death in New York on December 8th 1980, it is to be made up of embroidered letters on same sized squares featuring black, white and gold fabrics and threads.  

Thrilled to be invited, I bid for the letter ‘M’.  I’d just completed a Patchwork course in Kamloops - ‘M’ is geometrically suited using patchwork!   I also decide to embroider an outline of a peace dove in gold thread in the white space under the top of the M – this seems a fitting way to remember John Lennon’s concern to ‘give peace a chance’. 
 
My longed-for summer break and holiday with cousins in New York arrive.  I am sure there will be some amazing fabric stores in New York!  With the help of my relatives, I visit a wonderful fabric warehouse, rather like the old Job’s Warehouse in Collins Street, Melbourne, where I purchase some black and white shot silk, along with a ‘gold lame’ like metallic fabric. 

Returning to Kamloops, I become absorbed in working on my square in the evenings until it’s time to post it, together with unused gold fabric, to the group in Daylesford. 

Photographs of the completed ‘Imagine’ banner with ‘my M’ begin to appear in my letterbox –the unused gold lame fabric I’d sent also appears in an ‘E’ featuring music bars and notes.
   
For over two decades, ‘my M’ will at times be selected for use in a ‘social cause’ banner, as will the ‘E’ featuring the gold lame fabric from New York.

Forty years later, the letters which make up the Daylesford Embroidered Banner Project are carefully stored and thoughtfully curated by the Daylesford Historical Society.  I find a numbered photograph of ‘my M’ in an album of all letters when I visit the Historical Society– it is clearly in good hands.  

How does all of this relate to my idea ‘No One Left in Limbo’, you may well ask!  Well, I have a vision of creating a banner made up of same sized embroidered squares –

“ N O   O N E    L E F T    I N    L I M B O ! “

Interested?

Beverley Lee
July 2022
 ​

Election day.  May 21, 2022.

I make my way from Benalla to the Tatong Polling Booth, driving at the maximum speed limit as I’m running slightly late.  Turn left at Tiger Hill Road, nearly there.  The Liberals and Nationals, marquee erected, corflutes facing the road, take up one side of the entrance to the Tatong Hall, while Helen Haines’ Voices for Indi volunteers are setting up on the other side.

Responding to a request by a Labor friend, I find myself once again volunteering, handing out ‘how to vote cards’ for Labor.

Unpacking the basket of handouts and the corflute ‘Nadia David 1 for Indi’, I balance them on the walker I plan to sit on during the day and head towards the space next to Helen Haines’ orange themed stall.  Janet, Tim and David greet me warmly, making room for me. 

A marquee is soon being set up beside me.  People from the community arrive, setting up a ‘democracy sausage’ sizzle, a fundraiser for new flagpoles to be erected outside the hall.

Voters arrive in clusters, often in farm utes, the latter typically greeting the National and Liberal Party volunteers by name and chatting about the price of beef, wool or milk.

Younger voters, almost without exception, wave us all away, their voting intentions already researched and stored on their smart phones.

My sister and her husband, who farm on Tiger Hill, arrive to vote, ‘We wondered if you’d be here today’. There’s time to catch up on family news.  

By early afternoon most people have voted and many 'democracy sausages' consumed.  I walk over to the National and Liberal party tables, welcomed by volunteers I’ve chatted to at election days over the years.  There is warmth in the conversation, though with the odd political prickle here and there for me to mull over later in the day. 

With no one available to replace me, my friend had said, “stay as long as you can manage, and then leave the ‘how to vote’ fliers somewhere accessible”. 

However as always, I stay until it is time for the scrutineers to arrive, keen for Tatong to have the full democratic menu on display. 

​After all, preferences count too!

Bev Lee
​June 2022

Post script 2: The picture below was taken standing near Tim's improvised fire place at Tatong on a cold day in July, 2016! 

I've been pondering about 'community'...suddenly ... a light bulb moment! ...  'educational communities'!  I've always loved going to school!   

From the red brick pioneering years Clayton North Primary School, to the 'baby boomer' needed grey cement blocked 'Brown's Road' Clayton Primary School in Grade 3 a transition had to be made, thankfully to the warm welcome and happy classroom of Mrs Farr, followed by Mr Jackman, Mr Humphries and Mr Manzie. Then another transition to Malvern Girls Secondary School. 

​The class sizes during my childhood were enormous, often up to 50 children, however somehow I remember the schools as happy communities, remember my parents attending 'parent teacher nights' and working hard so that we could 'get an education'.  

A final year at Oakleigh High School preceded four years at Monash University, the Economics/Politics degree and Diploma of Education all geared towards becoming a high school teacher, with a 'teaching studentship' having funded my studies requiring a three year commitment to the state's high school system.   

The year at Oakleigh High linked me back to students I'd been at Clayton North with so many years before - helping me to fit in quickly to a welcoming, socially active group of students who'd been at school together for many years.  Pauline Bailey, our German for Beginners convenor, and Ivan Durrant, the artist who formerly farmed, lived and brought up his family in the Benalla area, were both in this 'Year 12 community'.  It was wonderful to connect up with them again when I arrived in Benalla.

University is usually an example of a 'community or communities of interest', but for me it was also within my geographic community.  My sister was a secretary there, I could walk to lectures, my babysitting jobs were often for University lecturers living in the area.  The University 'pub', the Nott (Nottinghill Pub), was our local pub.  My communities of interest were the other students in my lectures and tutorials, which again included Ivan Durrant  from Oakleigh High, and other students like me, on teaching studentships.   Monash was very active politically at the time, with activists such as Albert Langer and the student newspaper, Lot's Wife, featuring Michael Leunig and other creative radicals, challenging our ideas  Maharishi Yogi, who influenced the Beatles, also visited our campus at the time.  I was curious to see him, which I did from a distance, a further recent dint to my then fairly conservative view of life a result.  The decision to participate in a student overnight 'sit in' at the university library to prevent funding cuts to the library, was one of my first 'rebellions'...a first example of involvement with 'a community of interest' concerned about education reflected throughout my life.  Two other 'communities of interest' I belonged to at University were 'Modern Dance' and 'Social Involvement', reflecting my years studying ballet at Miss Kenyon's, and then Heather Scott's Ballet Schools in Clayton; and also my long term concern about social justice.

Then came twenty years or so immersion in state school communities in both city and rural settings. The rural communities of Heywood, Yarram and Daylesford stand out, particularly Daylesford, where I participated in the local arts cooperative.   Two school communities which made a particular effort to help new teachers make a transition to their communities were Heywood, where we were taken on an excursion which to a sheep station, complete with peacock roaming homestead garden, during shearing; and Flemington, where we were taken to a flat in one of the top floors of a public housing high rise estate.  

In each of these schools, and following a return to teaching at GOTAFE after decade long career change to social work, I became  immersed in the educational community.  Concerned about teaching conditions, which to me affected learning conditions for students, I was always an active union member - another 'community of interest'.  My passion for curriculum developmen linked me to a community of like minded teachers who enjoyed sharing ideas, preparing newsletter articles and setting up conference sessions for the Victorian Commercial Teacher's Association's annual conference.  A key and treasured outcome of this period was the development of a new, progressive curriculum for Year 11 Economics which I'm still very proud of and passionate about!   

This story is getting far too long!  I still haven't spoken about the educational communities of Madrid in Spain and Kamloops in British Columbia in which I was also in the 'expat' community; my years at GOTAFE, or the educational community of U3A Benalla which immerses me and is so important to me these days.  Perhaps another time!


Bev Lee
May 2022

Trees have a special place in memories of my Melbourne childhood – the ‘acorn’ producing oak trees that lined Clayton Road at that time; pussy willow trees with soft to stroke seed pods in the ‘Taylors’ garden opposite;  lemons lying on the ground under the lemon tree in our back garden; the ‘soap’ tree nearby (we called it this because, if we rubbed the blue flowers between our palms, a soapy substance was created); the spreading ‘shiny leaf’ tree in which we made ‘cubbies’ and played; the Liquid Amber tree In our front garden, and more.  

My parents moved to still rural Clayton Road in 1950 when I was three.  A 9 square red brick two-bedroom home funded through a war service loan, an acorn bearing oak tree grew happily on the nature strip. 

Pine trees and cypress hedges dotted the landscape, almost certainly planted by the original farmers.  Mr Einsedel, the old German farmer who had owned the land on which our house was built, still lived in a nearby farmhouse and could occasionally be seen breaking in horses and tending cows and calves in the paddock outside our kitchen windows.

Two large pine trees had special significance to me. 

The first stood tall in our backyard – some of my earliest memories are of looking out at it through our bedroom window.  I remember collecting pinecones and the touch and smell of pine needles. Looking back, I suspect my parents had tried to keep this old tree, however it may have become dangerous so ‘had to go’.  Unfortunately, they didn’t explain this to me, and I remember clearly feeling devastated watching through my bedroom window as it was being cut down.

The other pine tree stood outside the new Clayton Hall, not far from the Clayton Railway Station.  The local boys enjoyed climbing high up this tree.  Less adventurous, I can remember climbing its comfortable lower branches. 

I was delighted to find this Facebook post recently in "I grew up in Clayton:..."

“We'd run a mile (we hardly ever walked anywhere) to Clayton Hall. Out front near the road (Clayton Rd) there was an enormous old pine tree with quite a magnificent girth.  Five to six feet up, maybe more, there was a 'bowl' formed where branches met.  We'd scramble up the trunk, throw a leg over a branch and haul ourselves in. It was a rite of passage needing multiple visits until achieved. Five or six kids could easily fit in. Does anyone remember that tree? ...”   Sylvia L

My brother John and I sometimes reminisce about the time a local ‘bully’, we’ll call ‘Barry Bird’, suddenly leapt out of this pine tree as we were walking home from primary school, landing directly in front of us.  He accosted John menacingly, saying ‘John Lee, I have a bone to pick with you!’  Now my brother, John, who had just that day returned to school after being very ill, was also my best friend and kindred spirit.  I was so angry!  ‘Leave him alone, you bully!!’ I yelled at Barry.  I apparently defended John with such gusto, dressing Barry down verbally with such energy and anger, that Barry rather sheepishly let us past!

Pine trees featured large in my life during the twenty years I owned a miner’s cottage on Wombat Hill, near the now Convent Gallery, in Daylesford.  Wombat Hill is covered with pine trees.  I loved walking through them or standing at the back of my cottage looking up at them, towering above me. Sadly, at one stage I had to make the difficult decision to ask my neighbours, who had a pine tree on the border of our properties, whether, if I paid half, they would agree to have one tree removed.  I’d been advised that it would fall downhill towards my cottage it if it fell. 

Visiting my uncle’s farm at Molyullah as a child had introduced me to gum trees – but they had been completely cleared near his house in his efforts to develop a viable farm on marginal, rocky land. It seemed he was forever “ring barking” gum trees.   Camping in the bush while at university and teaching in the country for many years developed my love of gum treed landscapes, though often the houses in which I lived had Pine Trees and Cypress Hedges outside, possibly as wind breaks. 
 
Returning to Benalla 24 years ago, with by now a great affection for gum trees, I chose to buy a house with four large gum trees in the garden.  Two had to be cut down over time as they were near electricity and fence lines.  Seedlings and suckers have had to be removed over the years. 

Two cherished gum trees remain which I have paid quite a lot of money over time to keep safe.   I’d prefer not to have them cut down ‘on my watch’.  One is quite young, healthy and strong, however the other, like me has aged, weakened and somewhat arthritic branches …

Sadly, like the old pine tree in Clayton Road so many years ago, and the pine tree on my neighbour’s property boundary in Daylesford, it may soon ‘have to go’….
​
 
Bev Lee
March 2022

There are so many photographs!  Where to start?  With a goal of adding at least one photo to ancestry.com a day I have found myself immersing myself in the lives of two great aunts, ‘Auntie Beat’ (b 1872) and ‘Auntie Min’ (b 1877).  

​‘Auntie Beat’, my eldest maternal great aunt, never married, looking after her parents until they died, then living with nieces and nephews’ families until she passed away.  My only memory of Aunty Beat is peeping into a bungalow to see her while holidaying with an aunt who was caring for her not long before she died.  Recent finds include a beautiful carte de visite taken when Beat was 11 to 13, in the mid 1880's, and a loose photo of Beat on the back of which is written ‘Beatrice Hooper – the eldest’.  A dressmaker, Beat is wearing a dark trimmed check dress, standing in front of a rose bush.  It was probably taken in the early 1900’s and now sits in her ancestry ‘gallery’ with other gems from her scrapbook which suggest that she may have travelled with a theatre company to New Zealand.  While most of her younger sisters were dancers with J C Williamson’s, perhaps, being a dressmaker, she was in the wardrobe department?  There is a wonderful photo of Beat playing cards with a group of friends, another in an outfit suggesting she may have been a suffragette! 

​I now feel quite ‘resolved’ about the representation of Auntie Beat’s page on ancestry which now includes photos across her life span, including some in which she appears to be enjoying time spent travelling with friends.  ​

Do you have a person in public life in your family tree who other relatives all lay claim to?  ‘Auntie Min’ is that person in our family.   ‘Auntie Min’, my grandmother’s older sister Minnie Hooper, became quite famous as a choreographer and ballet mistress for JC Williamson and is remembered for having taught Robert Helpmann to dance.  While I have many photos of Auntie Min, until my visit to the farm last weekend they were almost all quite theatrical, revealing little of her life. 

I’d met Auntie Min when visiting Sydney as a child and remember her as a rather serious woman of considerable wealth who lived in a house looking over Sydney Harbour which had a path down to a private boat ramp.  I remember her son, John Rose, as being quite eccentric.  John was always described by my mother as a change of life baby, born when Auntie Min was 46 and after Min’s husband, Ernest Rose, had had a stroke. 

Family research revealed that Min, who had married ‘Uncle Ern’ at 20, had a little boy who only lived for a few months during her twenties, followed by decades working in the theatre, before having John, at aged 46.  John was born with a disability which affected his development.  Min’s beloved husband died at 59 when John was 8 years old leaving Min to care for John. Janette’s envelope for Auntie Min contains portraits of Uncle Ern pasted on a textured card and a portrait of John in early adulthood. 

​Adding this photo, and the portraits of Ern and John, to their profiles on ancestry a day or two ago, somehow ‘rounded off’ my ‘time travels’ with Auntie Min’s family—at least for the moment. ​

​It wasn’t my father’s fault that I hadn't studied French at school.  He’d studied French at Grammar School in England, had interpreted for his officers in Beirut during WWII, and was a card-carrying member of Alliance Francaise.  He tried to create a little French speaking world around our kitchen table when I was at primary school, encouraging us all to say ‘Comment allez-vouz?’, ‘Tres bien, et vous?’ and more.  

Learning ballet expanded my French vocabulary, with words such as developpe, jete, petit jete, ports de bra and more responded to in ballet classes for many years.  

Sadly, as it happened, French was not on the curriculum 'menu' of the girls secondary school I attended in the early 1960's.

'I only I'd .... studied French at school" I exclaimed when not having a language precluded an Arts degree when choosing to go to University in 1966. 

'If only I'd ... studied French at school' I exclaimed a decade later when trying to learn Spanish while teaching English in Spain.  A romance language with similar conjugation of verbs, understanding French would have made learning Spanish so much easier.  . 

‘If only I’d ….studied French at school’ .. also brings back memories of an incident in Paris.

While living in London before teaching in Spain later in 1976, I shared a house in Wandsworth with a group of young Londoners, teachers and lawyers. We decided over dinner one evening that we’d all take time out to go to Paris for a week or so.  A roommate had been offered the use of a French apartment which wasn’t being used by one of her friends.  We crossed the channel to France and spent days walking the streets of Paris, visiting galleries and other sites, our lunch usually a picnic of French baguettes, pates and cheeses. 
​
I’d become accustomed to not eating much meat since leaving Australia, it was so expensive in London.  Our household was adept at making all sorts of meals out of mince – shepherd’s pie, moussaka, lasagne and many variations of pasta were invariably on the menu. 

However, I was quietly pining away for a piece of steak!  I kept my secret longing to myself as I knew the household kitty would not extend to steak.   When we decided that we would go our separate ways for a day in Paris, all I could think of was finding a French restaurant at lunch time and ordering a steak, whatever the cost! 

I chose a restaurant a little off the beaten tourist track, discovering after sitting down that the menu was only written in French,  The waiter (and as I found later the chef) didn’t speak any English at all. 

"If only I’d ... studied French at school!"  I couldn’t make sense of the menu, the only thing that sounded likely to be something I might like was ‘Steak Tartare’.  I ordered, waiting expectantly. 

I was somewhat overcome a little later when the waiter appeared with a plate replete with diced fillet steak – raw –with an uncooked egg yolk in the middle, small side dishes of chopped capers, chopped onion and gherkins, and a side dish of salad. 

I looked at it–quite bewildered—for some minutes, before beckoning the waiter.  Not understanding me, he proceeded to mix the egg into the meat, stir in the capers, and reshape it, smiling at me as he suggested in French, that I try it.   He’d been so helpful, I thought I should at least try to eat it.  I managed to eat a little before I decided I just couldn’t …‘stomach it’. 

Noticing I’d barely eaten anything, the waiter brought the chef out.  I tried to suggest, using sign language, that perhaps they could cook it a little, but they didn’t understand me, and I didn’t understand them!  (I suspect now it would have been sacrilegious for them to cook it.)

Exasperated, but still polite, I pushed the plate away, chose something from the dessert menu, which proved to be delicious, ordered a coffee.  I left the restaurant…sorely disappointed, still longing for a piece of steak, medium rare, perhaps with a mustard sauce. 

It was to be quite a long time before I would have a steak, 'medium rare', again.... 

If only I'd ...studied French at school!

​Bev Lee
​September 2021

As I added the Music Appreciation notes to the U3A website recently I noticed the class had listened to Prokofiev’s  'Prokofiev - Peter and the Wolf' and promised myself I would listen to the link inserted into Bill's report.

Even reading the title ‘Peter and the Wolf’ triggered warm memories for me, memories of a school excursion, of going to the Melbourne Town Hall to listen to a concert to introduce school children to classical music.  It’s rather blurry, but I suspect in was in 1960, I was in the first year of high school (not quite yet a teen), and is suspect that we had caught the train from Caulfield Station to Flinders Street Station, walking up Swanston Street to the stately Melbourne Town Hall. 

I had never been to a classical music concert before.  I’d developed a love of dancing to classical music at ballet classes, and my mother occasionally sat us down with her on the piano seat at my grandmother’s and played for Fur Elise for us when we were little.  We also had fun as children selecting pianola rolls from the little rosewood cabinet at our grandparents’ house where we enthusiastically pumped the piano pedals, though the piano rolls were largely popular music of the 1930's.  We had an old, hand wound gramophone at home, but I don’t remember classical records featuring, though some jazz records did.  We didn’t listen to the classical radio music on the ABC – right at the end of the dial, I would shudder hearing operatic music on the staticky radios of the time.  My parents could not afford music lessons for us, and at the time state schools didn’t have instrumental music classes.  I grew up in the post war years, which were financially difficult years for many ex-service families such as ours. 

I still remember the conductor introducing the characters, the bird represented by the flute, the  the duck by the oboe, the cat by the clarinet, the grandfather by the bassoon, the wolf by three  French horns, Peter by the strings of the orchestra, the rifle shots by the timpani and the big base drum.  As the story developed, I began to be transported into another world.  I'm still transported there when I listen to this recent recording found on YouTube..

​It’s 2 am in the morning, I’m wide awake in my bed in the shared house I returned to after almost a year teaching English in Madrid.  I’d spent almost a year working and travelling in Spain while waiting to take up a place in into a graduate nursing program at Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow.  Before I left for Spain I had been so energised about my new nursing career, about training in Scotland, the home of my paternal forebears, but now here I was, on returning from Spain/back in England, unable to sleep as I tortured myself wondering whether I was doing the right thing going ahead.

I’d come back to looking forward to spending a few months in the house in Westover Road, Clapham, which I’d had such fun sharing with a group of young Cambridge Law graduates before going to Spain.  I was shocked to find the household breaking up.  People were moving on; there seemed to be a change in the power dynamics in the house; Nick, was more openly using drugs.  I’d had to cope when another housemate, normally so reserved, came in to my bedroom one night when he’d been drinking too much; and pressure to enter a relationship with Bruce, a happy and friendly New Zealander, at a time when I was grieving the breaking up of a relationship in Spain.  Westover Road, my only base in London now that many of my expat friends had returned to Australia, was fraught with problems.  I began to long for my friends in Australia.

I found the London I’d loved so crowded, so very crowded!  Walking the streets, relatively empty when left in late September the previous year, wasn’t relaxing.  The perpetual queueing during August, the busiest month in London’s tourism year, frustrated me immensely.  I began to long for the less crowded streets of Melbourne.  I increasingly felt that these weren’t ‘my streets’, the people weren’t ‘my people’.

I longed to see my mother and mourned for my beloved grandmother who had died while I was overseas.  Both my sister and brother had remarried while I was away, their lives moving on, with blended families keeping them so busy.  My only connections to Australia were my new brother-in law John’s parents in Manchester.  I had visited them in their ‘2 up 2 down’ in Manchester a number of times before going to Spain and was quick to visit them again on my return to England. They played me a tape of my sister’s children, who were just 6 to 8 at the time.  I felt that I was ‘missing out’.  

Throughout this time I was investigating fob watches and nursing shoes, and searching out a car to take me to Scotland and use for the next two years.  I found myself delaying these purchases, putting them off. 

One evening, Phil, a shared house friend I had travelled to France with, sat down with me at the kitchen table at Westover Rd over a cup of tea.  Suspecting I was depressed, he listened to me, then said, “Bev, I suspect you are incredibly homesick and might need to go home”…  I hadn’t identified it so clearly.  Phil’s diagnosis was ‘spot on’.   Feelings of home sickness had increasingly to begun sweep over me, sometimes in gentle, slow running waves, at others in huge, overwhelming, dumping breakers. 

I had to make a decision about what to do.  Reflecting over the next few days, I began to see that I would be unlikely to last the distance in Scotland, feeling as I did, that it would be selfish to take up a place in a course I may well decide to leave.  It was all just too hard.  I decided to withdraw, return to Australia and return to teaching. 

I put pursuing a nursing career in my ‘Too Hard’, basket!

Bev Lee
March 2020

​"Querida México (Dear Mexico),

I am writing to you to thank you, almost forty years later, for allowing me recover in your beautiful country after an exhausting year teaching in Canada in 1982. 

My friends Peter and Anne had bundled me on to the early morning train at Kamloops Station in late December 1982, my overnight bag full of papers which I needed to finish marking before my students returned after their short Christmas/New Year break.  I wouldn’t be returning to ‘Kam High’, where I’d been on an International Teacher Exchange for the past year.  Looking up from time to time to the terraced views of the Canadian Rockies, this marking needed to be returned before I left Canada after visiting friends in Vancouver to say farewell. 

The next leg of my journey would be from Vancouver to Mexico City, before returning via LA to Melbourne for the beginning of the school year at a new school in Melbourne’s bayside suburbs. 

The timing of my trip to visit you was fortunate.  I arrived at the Bureau de Exchange of the Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de México to discover that there had been a significant devaluation of the currency overnight.  My US traveller’s cheques fetched at least twice as much as I had expected!  Flush with funds, I booked in to a small, comfortable hotel suite in the beautiful central area of Mexico City rather than my usual single room in a fairly basic hotel.  How wonderful!  I was so tired after my year teaching in Canada.  I remember sinking into the comfortable bed, sleeping for hours and having meals delivered to my room, before eventually venturing out to the hotel restaurant and then on to the streets below.

The Mexico City I remember, the city of artists Diego Riviera and Frida Kahlo, was a city of wide streets, blue high altitude skies and temperate weather.  I’d arrived during the smog free Christmas to New Year holiday break.  Industries had closed.  Many people had left the city to visit families in rural areas or to take a break at one of Mexico’s many beachside holiday destinations.  The Art Galleries and restaurants which remained open in the city were by no means crowded, the people friendly and welcoming.  I eventually surfaced to explore the city, to undertake day trips to Mayan temples.   I particularly enjoyed discovering restaurants and finding waiting staff who had time to chat – I’d lived in Spain five years earlier and was thrilled to speak Spanish again.  Indeed, this was one of my reasons for choosing to return home from Canada via Mexico.

Just as I’d sought out the flamenco restaurants in Madrid, I sought out Mariachi music in Mexico.   In Mexico City (and later in Acupulco and the beach resort of Ixtapa on the Pacific Ocean), I came across Mariachi bands at local markets, restaurants and theatres.   I also followed up the music of a singer I’d seen perform in Madrid, Nacha Guevarra, who was living in Mexico.  On New Year’s Eve, I shared my table with a handsome traveller, recently divorced and keen to have company.  Serenaded by a mariachi band, we were the only diners in the restaurant.

An interest in matters political also tends to surface during my travels.  I had received a letter from friends in my social justice oriented embroidery group at home in Daylesford.  They were working to raise awareness of the work of ‘The Mothers of the Disappeared of El Salvador’ and understood that they had a base in Mexico.  My task?   To locate, and hopefully make contact with, ’The Mothers’.  I love having a project while I am travelling, however found this task enormously difficult.  I contacted a group of women’s lawyers who might have been able to give me a lead.  They couldn’t do so, however were keen to tell me about the work they were doing to raise the profile of women lawyers in Mexico’s legal system.  I sought out alternative music stores for possible leads – again without success.  One store owner showed me artwork and let me listen to cassettes of the music of El Salvador, including a revolutionary song written to lead its disenchanted people through the task of assembling a gun.  (I wonder if that is in an intelligence gathering file on me somewhere?)  Somehow I managed to bring the artwork and cassettes back to Australia to show my friends in Daylesford, eventually giving them to a young musician, an exile from Chile. 

After a year in Kamloops, in the hinterland between Vancouver and Banff in Calgary, I found myself longing to see the Pacific Ocean again.  I left Mexico City’s bus station bound for Acapulco, a rather windy but interesting journey, buying simple silver rings embedded with amethyst at Taxco along the way, rings not worn for decades, long ago taken to a local opportunity shop.

My recuperation continued rather blissfully in an historic, still beautiful but needing refurbishment, hotel in Acapulco situated high up on a hill side, its view of the ocean including the cliffs of La Quebrada where I could watch the world-famous cliff divers in amazement.  A grand old hotel which had seen better days, I loved its views and the the ocean breezes which swept into my room which look towards the ocean and opened out onto beautiful arched arcade balconies.  Time was spent sitting looking out towards the ocean from the balcony of my room, walking along the beaches, enjoying the relaxed lifestyle, enjoying mariachi music when I could find it, and at times listening supportively over dinner to another rather handsome man who had been recently widowed.  I don’t remember details.   I think I just relaxed and continued to let the stress of the past year leave my body and soul before returning to Melbourne for another busy year. 

My final week was spent at your beautiful beach at Ixtapa, north of Acapulco, a restful way of completing my year away in preparation for another busy school year.   I remember many hours spent walking along the beach, interrupted by a leisurely siesta after lunch, a swim, then an early evening stroll along the beach before dining at a beachside restaurant.  I felt so relaxed, indeed quite restored, when I eventually boarded the plane for San Francisco en route to Australia. 

Mission accomplished!

Gracias por todo, México.

Con mucho cariño,

​
 
Beverley Lee
Febrero 25, 2021

Once a ‘multi-tasker extraordinaire’, I’m slowing down.  Keeping more than one ‘plate spinning’ or ‘ball in the air’ is becoming increasingly difficult  This disturbing realisation has triggered memories of times gone by when I could almost effortlessly keep lots of plates spinning, lots of balls in the air, at the one time.

Oh, for the days when, as a busy high school teacher, I could prepare and run five or six classes a day, answering myriad questions by students, remembering all their names and where they were up to with their due assignments then attend staff meetings after school and plan, shop for and hold a dinner party for six friends that evening.  

‘Back in the day’, I could ‘rush’ to finish things, lift and carry items without pain, get into my car in one easy move.  I could clean the house ready for a dinner party in what seems now like ‘a single bound’.   The thought of having a dinner party now fills me with dread! 

These days, about the best I can do is have washing ‘on the go’ in the washing machine, dishes soaking in the kitchen sink to make them easier to wash, while I simultaneously make a telephone call.   Even that makes me feel exhausted and ready for a nanny-nap!  

​I haven’t submitted a story since August’s ‘Right Here, Right Now’, topic.  My excuse?  My growing inability to multi-task.   A fascinating writing related project has been absorbing me for the past three months and I’ve been finding it more difficult than I did even a year ago to change my focus to other writing projects, to work on more than one writing project simultaneously.   

A range of factors, alongside normal ageing, may be influencing this.  Is it a sign of early dementia?  Is a lack of oxygen to the brain caused by chronic asthma and pulmonary disease making thinking and problem solving more difficult?  Or, have I quietly had the odd ‘transient ischemic attack’ and slight brain injury as a result? 
 
I’m working through grief stages at this loss of capacity to multi-task.  The stages of bewilderment and anger have passed.  I’m grudgingly accepting the grim reality that I will never be able to so effortlessly multi-task again.  I  need to pace myself and prioritise differently! 

On the bright side…, I made it here today after writing this story following a morning Zoom meeting. 

I must admit, though… the washing is still in the washing machine, the dishes are still soaking in the sink, I’m feeling exhausted and ready for a nanny nap! 


Bev Lee, November 2020

‘Right Here, Right Now’, I’m looking at this Facebook post shared by U3A Benalla member, Andi Stevenson, from the ‘Lost Melbourne’ page.  It has taken me on quite a journey in cyberspace over the last day or so, filling up time in this lonely Stage 3 shutdown quite delightfully and connecting me to my past. 

You see, I decided to share it on the ‘I grew up in Clayton/Clarinda’ Facebook group I belong to, thinking it might be of interest. 
Little did I anticipate what would happen next.

Likes and comments appeared very quickly, all positive.  I was chuffed!

Then I noticed a thread developing in which people were questioning the statement in the post from ‘Lost Melbourne’ that the house was ‘the fifth house built in Clayton c1935. 
 
David P commented, “… My dad has the original town plan from 1927, so I think that there were more houses before this house.  The document says ‘Come to Clayton Heights, you can see the sea’… It shows the whole of Clayton near where the police station is now, shows where the train station is, has everything to do with Clayton not Clayton North…”

Carol D … “My mother was born in Clayton in 1924.  When I was young in the late 40s there were many homes well over 15 years old”

Kerrie B confirmed … ”Your family home predated 1935”

David P added, … “My grandparent’s house did too … Gone now though…”

More people entered the discussion, identifying other houses which would have been in Clayton before 1935.

Kerrie B joined in again, “…I lived in Kanooka Grove.  42 Kanooka Grove would have dated from the 1910’s, 12 Browns Rd dated from at least 1900, probably earlier.  A little further away, Hourigan House dated from the late 1800’s.  There were also Californian bungalow-era houses dotted around.  Where we were was always called Clayton.  Given the age of Clayton North Primary (originally called Clayton Primary School), there was housing there in the 1900’.  The house you’re showing is probably the 5th in a particular development’.

Not only was the list of examples of houses existing before 1935 lengthening,  I had a number of other examples to share myself!

Beverley L… “I agree with Kerrie B… there must have been some other classification it fell under.  When my parents built our brick ‘War Service Home’ at 279 Clayton Road after the war, the houses opposite us owned by the Murcotts, Copes, Taylors, Jacksons and Carsons, would have been built in the 1920’s or earlier.  Our house and the Nancarrow’s War Service Home next door were the first houses built in farmland on the lower side of Clayton Road just up from the station.  I can remember cows grazing and horses being broken in by patient trainers in the paddock next door.  The cows and horses belonged to Mr Einsedel, whose very old farmhouse faced Madeline Road.  I also remember two old houses, one attached to a second-hand furniture shop, just before the Carinish/Clayton Road intersection and railway station’.  

The following day, after checking for new likes and reading through the comments again, I became quite concerned that the incorrect information was on Museum Victoria’s website and that the image of the house on the Museum Victoria website stated that the house was the fifth house in Clayton.   It did.
  
I felt I had to do something to validate legitimate concerns expressed in the group!

Locating a ‘Got a question? Send us an enquiry’ button next to the image, I sent an online request asking for the description be reviewed in the light of the discussion on the ‘I grew up in Clayton/Clarinda’ Facebook page and included a ‘cut and paste’ of the content of my post.
​
Only a day or so later, I received an email in response from the museum:

Enquiry – Negative #76636 – Clayton Negative

Hi Beverley,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us at Melbourne Museum regarding the 1935 Clayton image.

Our curator has asked that we thank you. She has said that she has updated the record with corrected information about the development of Clayton and the likelihood that the house was the fifth in a new development.

Kind regards,

Simon.
Museums Victoria Public Information
 
Success! I’ve checked - the caption on the Museums Victoria website has been amended…

‘House in Clayton around 1935.  It was recorded as being the fifth house built in Clayton, likely referring to the fifth house in a housing development rather than in the entire suburb, which by 1935 already had a long history and many older houses.  Clayton had been a productive rural area with market gardens from the 1850’s, and township had developed after the arrival of the railway and a station on Clayton Road in 1877.  By 1933 the census recorded that Clayton had 103 residents.’ https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/772889  (accessed 22 August 2020)

A great improvement! 


Bev Lee
August 23, 2020

A few months ago, a letter arrived in the mail which stunned me.   ‘Airbag recall – you must stop driving your car immediately’.  My white 1999 Honda CRV, 325,000 on the mileage meter, was sitting in the driveway as I read the letter.  My heart skipped a beat, my stomach sank.   Oh no! Supported by my mechanic David at the local Liberty Garage, I was hoping to drive it until it dropped.   I loved it!  Even David advised me not to trade it in on my sister’s Hyundai i135 when she was selling it recently as he thought my old Honda would last longer.  But now it seemed, the decision was being taken out of my hands.

A year or so ago there had been a previous recall of Honda’s for airbag replacements.   I’d heaved a sigh of relief when I realised my 1999 model wasn’t included.  But now it seemed airbags in the older model had an unacceptable risk of deadly shrapnel being released from the airbag in an accident. Recall notices had been sent out by Honda.   This time there wasn’t the option of having airbags refitted – parts were unavailable for older models. A buy back offer was on the table - $2900 plus $400 for costs associated in making the transition. 

I was conflicted, it was a wonderful offer.  I didn’t want to let go of my car, but at the same time, would be lucky to get $500 for it if I sold it.  And, realistically, I needed a car that would be more likely to see me out, a ‘last car’, ideally another Honda CRV, but 10 years younger with lower mileage. 

You see I love Honda’s – this had been my third.  My previous favourite was a teal blue Honda Civic Station Wagon I drove during the 1980's and 1990’s, a model based on the original little Honda runabouts but with an extended chassis.  I would still be driving this car if I could!  Sadly, it never recovered after having flooded with oil by a servo attendant on work experience, ending up as a farm vehicle on my sister’s farm before being entombed in a hidden gully. 

A few cars later, another very reliable Honda, this time a dark blue Honda Accord sedan with gold special edition badging from Pat Claridge's car yard.  In an urgent quest for a replacement vehicle after an accident in which it had been written off, I found the white CRV at Laurie Lowen’s car yard.  What a find!  Reliable, comfortable to get into as knee and back problems kicked in, so easy to see out of and enjoy broad rural landscapes sitting quite high relative to the road. Although more recently items listing knocks in the engine appeared on service reports, they didn’t seem to be getting any worse and David didn’t appear worried.   I didn’t want to let go of it, but had little choice. 

The search began – for another Honda!  I unsuccessfully looked through car yards in Shepparton.  Encouraged by a friend to look on Gumtree, I found a silver-grey Honda CRV within my price range being sold in nearby Baddaginnie.  Taking my sister with me, I inspected it.  The owner and her sons showed it to me proudly, highlighting its ‘special edition’ features; that it was being serviced by a Benalla mechanic who did not think she should sell it, and more. The owner explained that she had driven it from Queensland to Baddaginnie, where, now living with her sons and rarely driving it, the money would help with extensions to their house.  My instincts were that it was going to be okay.  It would also meet my criterion of being 10 years younger -2009 - and having lower mileage - 148,000k.  The price was also in range with the payout from Honda of $3300 factored in.  Sold!

That’s not quite the end of the story, however.  A few weeks went by before arrangements were in place for the tow truck to arrive to take my treasured white CRV on its final journey to the Honda graveyard in Melbourne.  I drove it while I could still do so, each time enjoying the drive; each time wishing that I didn’t have to sell it.  I reluctantly emptied it.  The day came when the tow truck pulled up outside and I watched it being levered up the ramp and placed securely on the tray of the truck.  I felt so sad.
 
I don’t think I ‘anthropomorphized’ my car - I didn’t have a name for it or talk to it - however I valued it highly.  It had shared a decade of my life, been on so many adventures with me.  It had carried boxes of teaching resources from Wangaratta, as I made the transition from working at GOTAFE to retirement; taken my mother on many happy drives when she was living at Alkoomi nursing home in the years before her death in September 2014; driven me to Albury/Wodonga for treatments when I had breast cancer in 2013; taken me ‘north’ to meet my half-sisters and nieces for the very first time in 2014; just last year taken me back to Sydney to see my 102 year old godmother, and so much more. 

In fact, it had rarely skipped a beat in ten years.  And yet now, to reduce the risk that a piece of shrapnel would enter my body if I had an accident which could lead to my suing Honda for millions of dollars, it was on the back of a truck, heading for a crusher and car graveyard in Melbourne.

The silver-grey Honda CRV special edition 2009 now sits resplendently in my driveway.  It’s more glamorous than its predecessor (to those who care about such things) and is performing very well, despite limited opportunities to drive it far during the COVID-19 break. 

I am gradually learning to trust it, to understand its features and quirks, yet still feel quite sad when I think of my old white Honda CRV sitting valiantly on the back of the tow truck as it pulled out of Monds Avenue on the journey to its Melbourne graveyard.

It just isn’t the same.  However, one day, given my track record for becoming attached to my cars, I am sure it will be…
 
Bev Lee
July 2020

​I wish I could make waves, big waves which didn’t recede before the tide had turned…

But that hasn’t always been my experience. 

…. It’s 1981…a small country town in Victoria…

There was concern amongst many of the high school staff in which I worked that young people were leaving school before Year 12 who could have continued.  Spirited young people, they appeared disillusioned with the school setting and often tested out the school uniform policy.  
At the time, a number of progressive Melbourne high schools were addressing this issue by abolishing the compulsory school uniform for Year 12 students, to good effect. 

As Year 12 Coordinator in 1981 guiding Year 11 students making decisions about courses towards the end of the year, I was aware that a number, already testing the boundaries of the uniform requirements, were likely to leave.  

I canvassed potential allies among the other teachers, finding support for my plan to introduce a motion for change in the uniform regulations for Year 12 at our staff meeting.  I then presented a carefully prepared case at the next staff meeting; incorporating amendments which were presented, then approved, at a subsequent staff meeting. 

Success! 

I began to look forward to being able to present the new policy of optional school uniform for Year 12 students to the upcoming class.  It could encourage undecided students to see the last year of schooling fitting better with their view of themselves as young adults. 

The school’s Principal had chaired the meetings at which I had presented the motion, a motion which had been clearly accepted by staff.  I felt sure that a more progressive approach to uniform for the Year 12’s would be communicated to students and parents and proceed the following year. 

A day or so later, the end of year newsletter to parents was to be published.  Sitting at my desk in the staff room I was stunned to read, in the Principal’s column, ‘School uniform will continue to be compulsory for all students’.  Devastated, quietly in tears and feeling defeated, I sat with my head in my hands, despairing. 

It seemed that the Principal’s reading of the change was that it would not be accepted by parents and the community. 

A conservative rather than progressive leader, he would not have been able to brave the impact of the waves which I had set in train or support the change in an authentic way. 

He ‘drew a line’ in the sand. 
 
I'd made waves, for a short while, to little effect.  They receded before the tide had turned. 

Life at the school, with Year 12 students continuing to wear the still often complained about uniform, went on.

 
Beverley Lee,
March 2020

‘Beatrice, Ada, Minnie, Edith, Alf, Charlie, Ruby, Violet’- I learnt my ‘Hooper side’ great aunts and uncles names off by heart as a child.  I met them all at least once and have built up pictures of them over time based upon memories of these meetings, family stories, conversations and old photographs.  Somewhat forbidding portraits of their parents, George Charles Beech Hooper and Emma Jane Jackson, could be found hidden in a dark hallway cupboard at my grandparents’ house.  My grandmother Lily was their youngest sister.
​
‘Aunty Beat’, born in 1873, was already over 80 with arthritis and mobility problems, and possibly slowly dying, when I first met her in the 1950’s.  I remember being frightened of going into her darkened bungalow bedroom at my aunt’s dairy farm near Dandenong when on holiday there.  A woman of rounded curves who had never married, my memories of her have softened as I’ve aged.  I feel sad that I was frightened of her and do hope that seeing me and my cousin peeping around her door as she lay in bed had given her pleasure rather than pain.  Auntie Beat had cared for her parents as they aged, then rotated amongst family members when she needed care in later life.  Reputed to have been a beauty when young, Auntie Beat apparently had a suitor who wanted to marry her, but Grandpa Hooper had forbidden this. 

‘Aunty Ada’, next in line, was petite and finely boned like my mother, very approachable and loving.  I have warm memories of visiting her and her interested, well-educated husband, Uncle Wal Kemp, in Dandenong as a child.  Mum told wonderful stories of going on hayrides to country dances with her cousins May and Les when visiting the Kemps’ farm in Cranbourne during her youth.

A chance discovery concerning Auntie Beat and Auntie Ada during a family history quest some years ago caused family consternation.  The death certificate of my great grandfather listed Auntie Beat and Auntie Ada as the daughters of George and Janet ‘Jessie’ Wipers, not Emma Hooper.  A marriage certificate was registered for George and Janet ‘Jessie’ Wipers.  Jessie was also the mother of a boy George and a baby girl who died shortly after birth.  My preferred hypothesis is that Jessie, who had four children in a short time, one a toddler who died, became unwell, perhaps with Post Natal Depression, moving to Sydney to live where her parents lived, taking young George with her.  I found records confirming that both Jessie and George died in Sydney many years later.  Perhaps George Charles Beech Hooper wasn’t free to marry my great grandmother, Emma Jane Taylor? 

How did great grandfather George meet Emma?  We know he was a clerk at the Melbourne Steamship Company which was owned by Emma Jane’s widowed sister in law’s husband, Captain James Dean.    Perhaps Emma Jane had been employed as a governess for little Beatrice and Ada?  Perhaps Emma Jane was ‘in the picture’ before Jessie relocated to Sydney?  We will never know.  

Whether legally married or not, my Hooper grandparents, George and Emma, are remembered as a loving couple.  Beatrice and Ada were raised as their children and all siblings remained close.  George and Emma went on to have seven children together who interestingly all worked with J C Williamson’s Theatre Company in some capacity, the girls as dancers and choreographers, the boys in stage management, book-keeping roles. 

Born to Emma Jane in 1876, ‘Auntie Min’ was a formidable woman who achieved acclaim and some notoriety as a ballerina/actress, then as ballet mistress and choreographer for J C Williamson.  Music scores and programs from the ballets Auntie Min had choreographed were kept amongst theatre memorabilia at my grandparents’ house; hearing about them was a magical part of my childhood.  The family was particularly proud that Auntie Min ‘had taught Robert Helpmann to dance!’  Clearly a woman of spirit, Auntie Min had taken J C Williamson’s to court when they refused to pay her for two weeks when the theatre was closed during the Spanish influenza epidemic.  Although Auntie Min received recognition and accumulated ​

Trigger– watching an archival news reel ‘filler’ clip on late night television on SBS or ABC, I became aware the modern dance class in the late 1960’s I was watching was being taught by Jack Manuel.  Jack  taught the modern dance classes I attended while at Monash University in the late 1960's and choreographed a contemporary performance in which I participated.....  The film clip showing Jack working with a class took me back to this performance in 1968…

The sound of orchestrated beating on plumbing pipes of various sizes, a mezzo soprano voice soaring above them; a stage setting, lighting changing from blue, to green, to red; dancers in tights and leotards with masks on their faces, gliding across the stage, some slowly revolving with slow Catherine wheels, others on skate type boards, and some, like me, arms reaching out as tentacles, being piggy backed by another dancer. 

These memories were triggered by seeing Jack Manuel in an archival news reel clip recently.  Jack's contemporary work, 'Once' was performed in 1968 at Monash University’s newly opened Alexander Theatre.   Monash modern dance students formed the contemporary corps de ballet of which I was part, with dancers acclaimed in the modern dance community dancing lead roles. 

Far removed from my years of classical ballet training, modern dance brought in to play the techniques developed by Martha Graham, techniques based on contraction and then extension.  It had no use for the point shoes which had impacted on my feet such that I could not dance on point anymore.  How I loved the freedom of dancing in bare feet, of stretching, contracting, responding to music through movement which drew upon natural reflexes and responses. 

'Once’ introduced me to an original choreographed modern dance work, contemporary music, contemporary conceptual opera.   I remember so vividly being on stage, remember being bemused at the way in which Jack, a former dancer with the Australian Ballet, had embraced modern dance and created this imaginative, futuristic performance, a performance which for me, and I’m sure for many others, was such a paradigm shift.
​
It was wonderful to see glimpses of Jack again on my large screen television late at night.  Just for a moment.  I was back at Monash, a member of the Monash Modern Dance Group…

These introductory floor exercises introduce the role of contractions
​in Martha Graham technique.