About

From my earliest memories I was interested in “making things” and curious about the world. According to my parents they were always searching for me – but I wasn’t lost – just off exploring. When they took me out as a toddler, as a safety precaution I was in a harness with a lead because I could be gone in a blink of an eye!

I learnt to sew and knit in the conventional way for those born at the end of WWII, from my grandma and mother. Though neither of the women were “conventional”, my grandmother was a tailor of men’s suits and my mother in the early days of her marriage worked alongside my father in their local grocery shop with its attached residence in Victoria on Australia’s east coast.

In 1951 my health became so bad the Dr said to survive I needed to live where the climate was warm and dry.

Dad had been in the Navy – his ship docked at Fremantle during the war years, and he’d spent a little time in Perth so was aware of the hot dry conditions. There was no hesitation – even though Mum had never been to the West, and they didn’t know anyone in Western Australia; they sold up their business, left family and friends and off we sailed across the Great Australian Bight on a very rough voyage. At that time, it was like going to the other side of the world. Only a matter of days after our arrival, they had purchased another shop with an attached residence and went back to working together. My grandmother would come to visit for several months each year to escape the worst of the Victorian winter and spent her time sewing and knitting for me and my sister and answering my “how to” questions.

A few years later. it was my father’s illness that moved them from the shop and they both went to office work in the city. My mother was employed as a secretary in a small one-man office but finished up running the administrative and financial side of the business while her employer worked in the field. Little did any of us know history would repeat itself. 

(Image caption): 1951 Leaving Melbourne & Sisters Visiting Perth Zoo

1974 it was my turn to face the unknown when I moved to the other side of the world with my American husband and two small boys, 1 and 6yrs old.

I had worked with my husband in his business in Australia which had taken us to outback locations in Queensland and the Northern Territory, as well as in Western Australia. In the USA he worked for other companies which involved moving from city to city, so my days were taken up with setting up house and the boys schooling. I became very adept at moving, I stopped counting at 40 moves. Now I look back I can see I was “networking” but the word “networking” wasn’t in my vocabulary back then. There was no social media; Facetime, Zoom or Skype and telephone calls back to Australia were expensive, only to be used in an emergency. My mother and I exchanged weekly blue airletters, not waiting for one to arrive to answer it. These pre-stamped airletters which could be purchased from the Post Office in USA and Australia were one page, that folded over in three parts – the outsides became the envelope with space front & back for To/From addresses. Because I always have much to say, I wrote in tiny script to squeeze in maximum words; sometimes adding non-personal notes to the back.

(Image caption): 1978 I've Been Everywhere Mate - My Pacer Wagon on Long Island, New York, jobsite.

After my father died in January 1980, my mother came for a 3-month visit every other year. Her last visit was 2001, she turned 80 in March and came for a month in August to meet my only grandchild, also born that March. She used to tell people she was seeing America on the "Franco plan", because we were always in a different place. Our family song on car trips was the old Aussie ballad I’ve been everywhere mate, to which the boys would substitute names of American towns they'd been to. Moving between my husband’s job locations, I can claim to have circumnavigated the USA by car with kids in tow.

How much fun it would have been if I’d been part of the rug hooking scene back then.

(image caption): March Birthdays - Greatgrandmother Ida & James - August 2001