(piano music)

00:10 This podcast was recorded on the unceded, stolen lands of the Wurunjeri people of the Kulin Nations. It discusses events that occurred on the lands of the Ngunnawal people. We would like to pay our respects to their elders past and present.
00:25 (piano music)
PENNY: Welcome back to In Those Days. Now this is a bit of a different episode because Christina Adams is not here. She is too busy and important and she couldn't make it. But she will be back. And so as a kind of replacement we have husband of the pod, or husband of half of the pod, Lincoln Turner!
LINCOLN: Absolutely, Christina irreplaceable. A very hard act to follow. As I'm sure a lot of people going up on stage have found.
PENNY: Yeah, you're a physicist for your work Lincoln?
LINCOLN: I am.
PENNY: Do you ever use Trove at work? Have you ever?
LINCOLN: I do not think I have ever used Trove for physics. Or for actual work. And I was thinking on the way and I thought, when was the last time I was on Trove. And I think it was when we were working out whether our very old terrace house had been a brothel or whether it was merely adjacent to a number of brothels in the late 19th century. That was a very fun Trove search.
01:43 (piano music)
PENNY: Our guest today is someone who you know.
LINCOLN: Quite well. For 45 years, almost exactly.
PENNY: So let's introduce her. This is Linnett Turner.
LINNETT: Good morning Penny.
PENNY: And it's no coincidence that they're both Turners. This is Lincoln's mum.
LINNETT: Good morning Lincoln.
LINCOLN: Morning Mum.
PENNY: Linnet's here today to talk about a topic related to her, very personal to her. But before we get into that I thought I'd ask do you use Trove much?
LINNETT: Well, not enough. In the sense that it is one of David's and my great enthusiasms because of our long-time connection to the National Library, which I'm sure we can touch on later. And so I'm aware what a phenomenal success Trove has been. The efforts to secure its ongoing funding, which of cause was very tension inducing. I have used it occasionally. I recognise that I have no skills in using it. And that's what I'd like to develop. And particularly because, now that we've moved house and all the family photos and documents going back to the 1880s and 60s are in one place and await some very eager sorting and documentation. I know that I'll want to find out a bit more about some aspects of the family and their residences and so I'll be going to Trove and I'll look forward to you helping.
PENNY: Yeah absolutely, I'd love to sit down and. Because I think it's very useable. Can be a little bit frustrating sometimes. But particularly if you know specific details about people, which you do, and also the names are not very common, then you get a lot of information. So the topic that we're gonna talk about today is Alison Sanchez nee Binns. Would you like to tell us who she is?
LINNETT: Alison Binns, who became Alison Sanchez, was my mother. She was born in 1921 and she fortunately had a long life, 92 years and died in 2014. So fortunately, one of the happiest things is that my husband David knew her for many decades and they had a wonderful relationship and she knew both her children for decades. She met you. She unfortunately didn't meet Marian's partner, Jake. But she knew, she knew all her grandchildren really well.
PENNY: Yes, she was very involved, wasn't she. She travelled with you.
LINNETT: And she knew the first of her great-grandchildren.
PENNY: That was very special when she met
LINNETT: Very special. So Mum was Australian. She was born in Armidale here in Melbourne, the third of three children. And she was both very Australian, she spent her first 24 years in Australia. And then through her marriage to my father who was an American, launched into a very international life in the Northern hemisphere. So she was a person who, I think kept a very strong sense of being Australian. She never, was never interested in changing her Australian citizenship and becoming an American, which astonished many people. But she also relished and grew with the opportunities that she had by living in other places and learning other languages and just experiencing other cultures.
PENNY: We mentioned her briefly in a previous episode 'Space Available for Major Sanchez', which was about your father, Milton, who wrote letters to the editor. So if people want they can go back and listen to that but this episode is going to be much more focused on Alison. Because Milton did have a big personality, but I really want to focus on Alison today. She had a big personality as well.
LINNETT: Yes but it was less controversial.
PENNY: So Alison's parents, her father was quite a significant person?
LINNETT: He was a Scot. He came out, he was the third of 4 boys, born in Scotland in the 1880s and came out to Australia in about 1890 when he was only about 8. They lived in Sydney and his father was a very prominent congregational minister at the very famous, really very famous, Redfern Congregational Church.
PENNY: I've looked him up. He's, there's a lot about him as well. That would be a whole other episode.
LINCOLN: We're now, how many generations back?
PENNY: Yeah, it's pretty good.
LINNETT: So Ken Binns, Mum's father became a librarian after starting his career in Sydney, he moved to Melbourne for work and became the Assistant Parliamentary Librarian for the country. Then in 1926, when Canberra was established and there was the move of the public service to Canberra, my grandfather, Mum's father, was responsible for moving some tens of thousands of books from the parliamentary library to Canberra. And it took a whole year.
PENNY: I'm not surprised. That is massive.
LINNETT: There's a wonderful picture of him.
PENNY: I didn't know he did that, that's amazing.
LINNETT: Standing next to some trucks, and this was the loading of the books to go to Canberra.
LINCOLN: There wasn't exactly a wonderful road all the way to Canberra in those days either. It would have been quite
PENNY: And before this there wasn't really a town
LINCOLN: It was a paddock, wasn't it?
LINNETT: So, I'll just briefly mention Amy, my mother's mother. She was the youngest of 3 girls, also born in Sydney, lived in Redfern. And her father died very young, he was only in his 30s I think of multiple sclerosis. So Amy's mother was left, a youngish widow with 3 little girls. And she ran a haberdasher’s shop in Sydney.
PENNY: You see, now we'll have to do an episode on the haberdashery. That'll be in Trove, no doubt.
LINNETT: Yes. Sold ribbons and bows and everything. And I remember they were poor. There were no social security, no safety net in those days. And my mother Alison told me that Amy was the prettiest of the three girls, and the youngest and she was sent around to knock on the doors and collect the debts when people hadn't paid. So Amy and Ken, I mean Ken was never from a poor family but frugal Scot, and Amy came from a poor background. Mum had parents who had known hardship. And that came through my mother's values in life as well. So they moved to Canberra when my grandfather moved the parliamentary library to Canberra then eventually the books finished and he moved there. And they all moved there in 1926 or 7 and my mother used to describe it as a city with one street with streetlights. The emerging suburbs were paddocks and there were paddocks, big paddocks between the houses.
PENNY: Oh, that's so interesting.
LINNETT: And she would run across the paddocks, you know, to someone else's house or to school. It was wide open fields with a few places dotted in between.
PENNY: And then all these people leading the country. And so Alison would have been how old then?
LINNETT: She was 6 when she moved to Canberra. And her older sister was with her. But her older brother was by then would have been 11 or 12, Kenneth and he was left to board.
LINCOLN: Also Kenneth.
LINNETT: Yes, he was Kenneth, not Ken. Ken was her father. Kenneth was left to board at Melbourne Grammar because there just wasn't a school there.
PENNY: Yeah, I imagine there probably wasn't a high school.
LINNETT: I don't know, I don't remember when. There was Telopea High School. And then the Canberra Boys Grammar started fairly early. So the family had this separation. And my mother missed her wonderful fun-loving older brother greatly.
PENNY: Yeah. And I guess sort of Canberra was growing up as Alison was as well.
LINNETT: Very much so.
PENNY: So because Alison's family were quite prominent in Canberra she does get quite a few mentions in the paper, particularly in, of course, in those days they did used to report on a lot of social events.
LINNETT: Absolutely.
PENNY: And we've now sort of replaced that with social media, and things like that.
LINNETT: Celebrities.
PENNY: Well, in the newspapers yeah but I think people seek the same sort of information from social media now, I think.
LINNETT: I'm sure that's true.
10:26 PENNY: So this article is from Thursday 28th of March 1929. Alison would have been?
LINNETT: Eight.
PENNY: "Farewell evening".
And if you recognise any of the names of these people, just let me know.
"Children's Party
Quite an interesting evening"
Quite an interesting evening.
LINCOLN: By Canberra standards.
LINNETT: When you're desperate.
PENNY: "was given by Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Terrill at their home, "Monte Vista""
Which, is kind of funny that you're giving your home a posh name.
LINCOLN: There wasn't much Monte and there wasn't much Vista.
PENNY: Well, you could see the paddocks.
"Monte Vista Forrest last night, in honour of Master Noel Gamble, a student of Mr. Harry Scriven who is leaving Canberra very shortly.”
So Alison went to quite a few events at the Terrill's house, it felt like they were always getting the kids around. Okay, so the article continues:
“There were about 20 little guests, and many of them contributed enjoyable items to the evening's entertainment. The guest of honour was presented with a souvenir of Canberra,"
LINCOLN: Gosh, they got onto that early.
PENNY: Yeah, I know, I don't know what it was. Like a snow globe with a sheep in it or something.
LINNETT: Yes, exactly.
PENNY: “and a delicious supper was provided by Mrs. Terrill.
Among those present were Misses Barbara Bonniwell, Edna Parton, Corinne Carter, Nancy Sheehan, Sheila Jean and Joyce Elvins, Freda Whitlam, Elva Terrill, Marjorie Hicks, Joan and Alison Binns,”
So that is Alison and her sister.
LINNETT: Yes.
PENNY: Now the guest list goes on, but the name that I'm interested in is at the very end. And it's it G. Whitlam. But G Whitlam is actually Gough Whitlam. Cos he spent some of his childhood in Canberra.
LINNETT: He did indeed.
PENNY: But I had no idea that Alison knew Gough Whitlam until I found this article.
LINNETT: Yes, in fact, David and I met Gough Whitlam many years ago, he came to Adelaide to give a talk. He was well into his, probably his 80s then. An incredibly long talk about Australia's incredibly disgraceful human rights record. Not being the signatory to all sorts of international conventions
LINCOLN: I think I've heard that Gough talk.
LINNETT: And he spoke without notes, I think, for about an hour.
PENNY: My goodness.
LINNETT: It was one of the Mark Oliphant memorial lectures. And after I went up and introduced myself and he slotted in immediately. Oh yes, Alison Binns and oh yes.
PENNY: He remembered them? So, he remembered them too?
LINNETT: Oh yes.
PENNY: Well I mean, everyone's around at the Terrill's every weekend.
LINNETT: I think Gough had a prodigious intellect and also a fantastic memory. My mother mentioned Freda more often because Freda went to the Canberra Girls Grammar School. Was just perhaps a year younger than Mum. Certainly she remembers Freda. And Freda appeared also in the news over many years because she went on to have quite an illustrious career as an educator.
PENNY: Yes.
LINNETT: But Mum really was very enthusiastic about Gough.
LINCOLN: Oh yes.
LINNETT: My mother was very enthusiastic member of the Labor Party.
PENNY: Yes.
LINNETT: And she followed Gough's career.
PENNY: It would have been so exciting. The election.
LINNETT: Yes, that's right.
PENNY: Milton couldn't vote.
LINNETT: No, Milton couldn't vote. And I couldn't vote then. I hadn't changed my citizenship yet. Oh yes that was much later.
PENNY: Oh right. Did Alison and Milton talk about politics?
LINNETT: Oh a lot. Yes, my mother had a real intellectual partner in my father Milton. Even though they obviously didn't see eye to eye on quite a few things. But they did
PENNY: Would Milton have voted for Gough, do you reckon?
LINCOLN: That's an interesting one.
LINNETT: Oh. I don't know, how long have you got? I'll have to take that one on notice.
LINCOLN: I think he might have done, because he would have recognised the deadliness of the others and how washed up they were.
PENNY: He might have got more of a chance of a Republic with Gough.
LINCOLN: Well that's right.
LINNETT: Absolutely Penny, that's a good point.
LINCOLN: Standing on your own two feet boy, as Milton would have said. But then, at the same time, you know, ultimately it's the Labor Party and might have really struggled.
LINNETT: Yes, don't know.
PENNY: So did she ever tell you anything about what Gough was like as a boy?
LINNETT: No, because you see the boys went to the Boys Grammar School.
PENNY: And he would have been older. Was he older?
LINNETT: Yeah, he was older. He was Joan's age. I think he was born the same year as Joan, 1916. So that's a five-year difference.
PENNY: That's a lot when you're a kid.
LINNETT: Yeah, a lot when you're a kid.
14:52 PENNY: There's another article, cos it wasn’t just parties at the Terrill’s. The Terrils were also very musical. They were often hosting musical evenings. And so this one is from the Canberra Times on the 5th of August 1929. And it says:
“Children Entertain
A musical evening, which, in addition to enabling parents and friends to hear them and judge their talent, gives an opportunity for children to acquire poise and self-confidence for the time when they may be called upon to appear on the public platform, was given by the pupils of Mr. Harry Scriven, in the lecture room, Albert Hall, on Saturday night.”
So look, I know it's a hundred years later but just from reading this article I feel like we can judge these kids' talent as well. Cos there is a bit of a description about it.
“Little Elva Terrill — a flaxen haired mite of about three and a half years,"
LINCOLN: A mite!
LINNETT: Oh my goodness.
PENNY: "apparently does not need any training in that direction, for in response to her insistent request she was allowed to take her seat on the piano stool, and there, with total lack of self consciousness, common among children of five years, played her piece, "Dickory Dock."
LINCOLN: Really banged it out by the sound of it.
PENNY: I'm pretty sure this writer thought she was annoying.
LINNETT: Yes, exactly.
PENNY: “There were about a hundred present, and Mr. and Mrs. Terrill, the latter in lemon georgette with Burgundy lame coat, received the guests."
LINCOLN: This is not the first time on In Those Days where we've had the little bit of information about who was wearing what.
PENNY: Always the women.
LINCOLN: Yes, let's face it, it's always the women. Usually colourful.
PENNY: Yeah, absolutely.
"Large bowls of gum tips mingled with Iceland poppies, were very much admired."
LINNETT: Ooh I've got a new florist idea there.
PENNY: Yeah, I don't know what Iceland poppies are. Are they just poppies?
LINNETT: The conventional poppies, yep.
PENNY: "Iris Taylor was called upon to give the first item, "Mountain Melody," and though there were many stumbles, she displayed a nice touch.”"
LINNETT: A nice touch.
PENNY: And I just think it's great that just cos you're under 10 does not mean that the Canberra Times is gonna go easy on you.
LINCOLN: No I think the music reviewer here, I think, is limbering up for
PENNY: I feel like they don't wanna be there.
LINCOLN: I think they might just not have had enough of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra yet to report on.
PENNY: Yeah, I don't think they had that.
“Later, she and her sister delighted their audience with songs, "Two Dolls," and "Baggy Breeches," and recitations.
PENNY: This is all very timely I feel because all of us in this room are going to see a concert tonight of the Rookie,
LINNETT: Of our granddaughter.
PENNY: Yeah, the Rookie Brass Band. And I'm gonna send a letter to the Age. Telling everyone what I think.
LINNETT: Well, I'll say to Nina, 'Nina you had a nice touch there.'
PENNY: Yeah, a few stumbles.
LINNETT: Are you trying to, are you going to tell me that my mother was at this concert.
PENNY: Oh yeah, we're getting there, yep this is the next paragraph.
LINCOLN: Well, there were a hundred people there, I mean we have to get through them all.
PENNY: "Mack Hall played"
This is very important stuff.
"Mack Hall played 'Humpty Dumpty," Ian McDonald "Jolly Farmer," Betty Deans "Blue Bell," Harry Terrill and Alison Binns played their pieces, "Sing a Song" and "Sleep, Baby, Sleep," from memory;”
Go Alison.
LINNETT: I have never heard my mother mention ever, sitting, or touching any musical instrument then or ever again.
LINCOLN: I know, it's extraordinary. Like I was wracking my brains before thinking
PENNY: Oh, I just assumed.
LINCOLN: I never heard Alison. Cos Alison was very creative
LINNETT: She was artistic
LINCOLN: She was into art and craft and literature and had a really broad range of interests
PENNY: But did you ever ask her, 'Alison would you like to sit down and play 'Sleep Baby Sleep' from memory?'
LINCOLN: No.
LINNETT: That is astonishing.
LINCOLN: There you go.
PENNY: So there's more people listed.
LINCOLN: What did Gough play?
PENNY: Gough played 'Melody'. He would have been a bit older, so yeah. And
"all received an encore."
From their absolutely unbiased parents.
LINNETT: An encore.
PENNY: I don't know if we're gonna ask for an encore tonight. Not sure.
LINNETT: Goodness. Well maybe my mother never mentioned the Terrills because it was a terrifying memory.
PENNY: “During the evening Mr. William Nash entertained with conjuring tricks to the delight of the children, and also with songs containing humorous references to Canberra.”
So at that time, those jokes would have been quite fresh as well.
LINNETT: Canberra jokes started early.
PENNY: “At the conclusion of the programme Mr. C. S. Daley expressed his appreciation of the evening's entertainment, and congratulated Mr. Scriven. He thought bringing pupils out, be they ever so young, was an excellent idea, and related, humorously, how, at the age of seventeen, when he made his first public appearance, the music collapsed from the piano.”
Should have played from memory like Alison.
LINCOLN: I was about to say.
PENNY: That's what I reckon.
20:14 (piano music)
PENNY: So the next article is a bit of a different one. This is actually from the Argus on the 25th
LINCOLN: As in the Melbourne paper?
PENNY: Yeah, Melbourne paper. On the 25th of February 1930.
“FALL INTO BOILING WATER.
CANBERRA, Monday — Alison Binns, aged 8 years, daughter of Mr. K. Binns, librarian at the Commonwealth Parliamentary library, Canberra, was severely scalded when she fell into a bath of boiling water at her home in Forrest, Canberra, this afternoon.”
So, it's interesting that was reported in the Argus so they must have still had quite a few connections maybe wanting people in Melbourne to know. Did you hear about that accident?
LINNETT: Oh Mum mentioned it, yes. But given now having been a parent and a grandparent what the magnitude of that would have been. You know, the severity and the shock to the parents and the lack of specialist medical care there. There not gonna have a burns unit in the Canberra Hospital in 1930. I'm amazed how my mother's mentions of it passed over. I think she was admitted, I mean she was obviously admitted to hospital, I think for a few days but, you know, she never dwelt on it. She was never, in her own recollections, she didn't bring it up repeatedly and she wasn't worried about our children being in too hot baths or falling in. I mean, you know, she didn't become anxious about the next generation. She was obviously unblemished cos my mother had magnificent skin. And I don't think there was ever any sign of it. You would never had known. You would have never have said to Mum, 'What's that scar there on your breast or anything?' And I don't know what the circumstances were. Why the bath was so hot. I guess you probably boiled water to run a bath in those days.
PENNY: Unless it was for washing, or something.
LINNETT: Yes, I don't know.
PENNY: Oh yeah, maybe they put the hot water in first and hadn't
LINCOLN: I think so, yeah.
LINNETT: I mean she wasn't a little child. She was big. So how she fell in. I do remember my mother mentioning.
LINCOLN: I don't even remember Granny ever mentioning it.
LINNETT: No. She didn't, the things she dwelled on in the past. She didn't dwell in the past at all but I mean she didn't. I mean there are some people who avoid talking about the past. And my mother had a very healthy looking back and, you know, things would trigger memories of Canberra and of course, Joan her sister lived there her whole life. You know, my mother would reminisce with Joan. She continued to see Joan throughout her life. She continued to go and visit her there and we did and so on. So Canberra remained very much part of all our family. But Mum didn't, and she didn't
PENNY: Not the boiling water.
LINNETT: No, not the boiling water. So that is fascinating that it appeared in the Melbourne paper.
23:13 PENNY: But the next article is about a theatre production that Alison was in. So this is from her school days and it's from 2nd of December 1935. So she's a bit older now.
LINNETT: A lot.
PENNY: “DICKENS EVENING
Girls' Grammar School
Entertainment
On Friday evening, casts drawn from the sub-intermediate classes at the Canberra Church of England Girls' Grammar School offered a large audience at the Central Methodist Hall a varied programme of dramatic presentations of scenes from Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield and Pickwick Papers.”
Did she keep being interested in drama?
LINNETT: No, not in any personal acting sense.
PENNY: Cos there was another article I found where she was in another production when she was a bit older.
LINNETT: I don't remember that it was mentioned at all.
PENNY: Yeah.
LINNETT: She used to tell us tales about the terrible teaching at Canberra Grammar School.
PENNY: Oh, that's interesting.
LINNETT: Absolutely appalling. And she and her best friend, Joy Waterman, who Mum met on the first day of school when they were 6 in Canberra and to their delight they, not only established they were the same age, but they were born a day apart. And they remained friends from the age of 6 until my mother's death at 92.
PENNY: That's amazing.
LINNETT: Across all those years. Anyway, my mother mostly used to tell us about how she and Joy were so repressed by the school and the tyrannical teaching. I remember my mother was not gifted at numbers and she was sitting in the class and the teacher said, 'Well,' she said, 'Alison Binns will come up to the board and show us how to do that.' Knowing that Alison Binns couldn't do it.
PENNY: Oh that's horrible.
LINNETT: Yes. But she and Joy used to get up to mischief and I think they were known to really cut up. And it was just a way of coping I think. So I'm not surprised that maybe they took part in the plays, cos that would have been a source of fun and entertainment. But no, Mum never went on to participate in anything that I was aware of in Canberra like amateur repertory or anything. But when she and my father went to New York after the war in their very early year of their married life, when my mother joined my father in the states, they went to a great deal of theatre.
PENNY: Oh, that's interesting.
LINNETT: Musicals and plays, they relished what Broadway and
LINCOLN: She certainly liked taking us as kids, going to see things.
LINNETT: Yep. That's very true. And she would go in later years, she became a subscriber to the South Australian Theatre Company and went to a lot of plays but it wasn't, it was not.
PENNY: You didn't get the sense that she was wishing she was up on the stage
LINNETT: No, no.
PENNY: Well I'll read a bit about this theatre programme.
“The final item of the programme presented a large cast in the famous trial scene from Pickwick Papers. An outstanding feature of this presentation was the well selected cast, which reflected much credit on the producer's judgment. The careful dressing of the various characters greatly enhanced the atmosphere of the scene. Joyce Waterman"
LINNETT: Ah, there we go.
PENNY: That's Alison's best friend.
"Joyce Waterman sustained the aggressive character of Sergeant Buzfuz with complete command of the emotional range of the part."
LINNETT: Barking.
PENNY: And I won't read the descriptions of everyone cos there are quite a few but I'll get to Alison.
"Alison Binns made a convincing figure as Winkle."
Now I'm not familiar with this, I haven't read the book.
LINCOLN: I have not read 'Pickwick Papers'
PENNY: So I don't know.
LINNETT: I haven't either.
PENNY: I dunno who Winkle was. But she was a convincing Winkle.
"The whole production reflected the greatest credit on Mrs. Bush, who produced the scenes and personally dramatised the final presentation. The histrionic ability of the actors was abundantly rewarded by the appreciation of the audience which found ex-pression in hearty and sustained applause.”
LINNETT: Oh my goodness the wordiness of it all.
PENNY: I know. God they used to use a lot of words. And this is, this is not so bad. When you got back into the 1880s, oh my goodness.
LINNETT: And someone typeset it all letter by letter, you know and printed it up every day. Full on.
PENNY: And of course, once again, it's completely unbiased parents enjoying, giving this hearty and sustained applause.
LINNETT: Well I am learning a lot. Well, it's lovely that Joy Waterman was mentioned.
PENNY: You can imagine how much fun they would have had doing a play together.
LINNETT: One of the escapades that my mother remembers was when they tied their plimsolls, their tennis shoes, together and they hid them, I don't know why, they lifted the lid and put them in the piano. And obviously then someone came along to the play the piano and couldn't work out why it wasn't sounding right. And they got into trouble of course.
LINCOLN: A slightly rebellious streak there.
PENNY: That's interesting.
LINNETT: As I say it was a coping mechanism cos it was all grim.
28:24 PENNY: So the next article I've got is from when Alison has left school.
LINNETT: Where is she now?
PENNY: This was in 1941, reported in the Melbourne Herald. And the article is titled:
"PRIMROSE NURSES MEET TONIGHT"
PLANS for the efforts during the coming year will be discussed at the opening meeting for 1941 of the Primrose Nurses' Auxiliary of the Tweddle Baby Hospital, at the hospital tonight. The auxiliary desires to obtain more equipment and nurses' comforts. A new secretary is to be elected. The retiring honorary secretary Is Nurse Alison Binns. All Primrose nurses are asked to attend."
So that's definitely Alison.
LINNETT: Oh yes, yes, definitely.
PENNY: So she moved to Melbourne? Well first, she became a nurse when she left school?
LINNETT: All I know about Tweddle is again, pretty negative.
PENNY: Oh really?
LINNETT: My mother certainly, and Joan were very both affected as able young women by the start of World War II. So, unlike their brother, who, Ken, who went on to Sydney University, Melbourne University and you know, very solid academic and professional career. Mum and Joan were deprived of that opportunity, largely by the war. But my mother came to Melbourne to Tweddle Hospital to do what was called mothercraft nursing. So mothercraft nursing, I've no idea how long the course was but I know that my mother talked about Tweddle as almost like a penitentiary in the sense that the regimen was so strict. There was obviously a mode of New Zealand type of, I can't remember what it was called, a New Zealand type of nursing for babies. And I think this had all started, Tweddle Hospital had started to improve infant nutrition, particularly, and reduce infant mortality.
LINCOLN: Plunket.
LINNETT: Plunket. Oh that's it.
LINCOLN: When you drive around New Zealand, every little town has this thing and it says 'Plunket Rooms'.
LINNETT: I see.
LINCOLN: And when you're a tourist in New Zealand after you've gone through 4 small towns and every one of them has a Plunket Room. You think 'What's a Plunket Room?'
PENNY: I need to learn how to play Plunket.
LINNETT: Absolutely.
LINCOLN: How might one Plunket in that room.
LINNETT: You've hit the nail on the hid.
LINCOLN: And I believe the Plunket Rooms are the Maternal Child Health Centres.
LINNETT: So I don't remember much about what my mother said about Tweddle except that it was very, I mean, you know it was more like a convent. You went in there and you were being, you know, trained and you lived in. And I think they had one day free and I don't think it was just education I think it was a hospital and so it was hands-on training.
PENNY: So it was sick babies going in there.
LINNETT: I imagine so, yes. And I remember my mother, this is still in the mode of the Joy Waterman and getting up to mischief, my mother saying that they used to get over the wall at night to go out and meet the boys. And they'd climb over the wall to meet the boys, or the men, as they would have been by then. But I particularly remember she had, so she finished that and then was hired as a mothercraft nurse, but by families in Melbourne and also in rural, near Canberra on grazing properties, to look after newborn babies. So to come into the home when the baby was born and help relieve the mother.
PENNY: And did she enjoy that work?
LINNETT: No. But it was interesting because it was very formative for her. I think she was treated mostly very badly.
PENNY: Yeah.
LINNETT: Cos she was just.
PENNY: Like a maid.
LINNETT: Yeah, a maid. And these were more affluent people of course who could afford to have a mothercraft nurse come in and I think she did have a few, I think I can't come up with the details but I remember she did say that they were a very nice family and she enjoyed that. And after a couple of months when the mother had got back on her feet and the baby had settled down into, she would move onto another place. But there were some really awful experiences where she was very badly treated and it helped form her deeply, I guess, probably socialist, it's just humanitarian, views of how poorly many people are treated by people who have power and affluence and are employing you. How many people who are able to employ people, treat them poorly.
PENNY: Yes.
LINNETT: And yes, she was very, very aware of that. And the other thing I haven't mentioned is that by this time of course everyone had lived through the Depression.
PENNY: Of course.
LINNETT: And that formed a very, had a very powerful effect on her. They were in Canberra, in this magnificent home that is still there. Right across at the top of Melbourne Avenue, across from the Girls Grammar school. It's a beautiful home, it's still there, it was for sale not many years ago. There was a limited number of homes in Canberra. But my mother can remember men coming to the door during the Depression years and knocking on the door and asking if the family had any work. And my grandfather, Ken, would always try to find something for them to do, rather than just giving them money so that they had a sense of worth. And he had a big fruit orchard out the back and it was a big block and he also, Ken was a very, very talented cabinet maker. So he had a workshop. And he would find something for the men to do. But my mother also remembers women coming with children to the door and asking for food and clothes. Then this business with Tweddle and the power situation. So I think what happened was that didn't last long. One because it was unrewarding but also because I think because so many men went to war in World War II they needed women to go into the public service. So she and her sister Joan became admin, took clerical jobs in Canberra in the public service and they lived at home with the family for all the war years.
PENNY: In Canberra?
LINNETT: Yeah, in Canberra.
PENNY: So when you had kids did Alison give you advice from her time as a
LINNETT: No, no, I don't remember particularly. No.
PENNY: That's interesting cos one thing I can remember when Lincoln and I had our first baby, I can remember you telling me, you might have said something, some way that we were doing something and she said, 'Oh every generation does it differently.'
LINNETT: Quite so.
PENNY: And she was just completely uninterested in 'oh this is the right way, this is the wrong way.'
LINNETT: No, no, no. The main thing that I think she would have taken, which we'll all be glad to hear from Tweddle is its focus on normal human nutrition, ie breastfeeding. Which is fabulous.
PENNY: Because there was a time when that kind of went out of fashion medically.
LINNETT: But also because she had me as her first of 2 children in the United States and breastfeeding was 'oh my goodness'. You know, you didn't even mention it.
PENNY: And so, she breastfed?
LINNETT: She breastfed, yes.
PENNY: Oh, that's very interesting.
LINNETT: But I don't think I could have ever breastfed my son Lincoln who is now sitting next to me as a very physically healthy, robust person. Who was born so premature and I had 5 or 6 weeks of expressing, laboriously expressing breastmilk. A very, very small amount. It was extremely arduous and my mother supported me magnificently cos she said to me, 'Darling it is worth it. You will be, there's nothing better that you can give to Lincoln.'
LINCOLN: That's actually, I'd never heard that. That's lovely.
LINNETT: And, you know, it will all be worth it. And it was but she was there beside me, keeping me company while I sat and did this 5 or 6 times a day. But there was never any. You've summed it up perfectly 'Every generation does things differently'. And you know, she knew that some of the things that she'd, the rigidity with which she'd been taught things, she probably hadn't applied to her own children.
PENNY: Yeah, everyone makes mistakes, everyone makes advances and it kind of goes in a cycle. And I think for her it was just, 'Well, I'm just gonna enjoy the babies.'
LINCOLN: I've seen the cycle go all the way round.
PENNY: I don't need to have an opinion about this, I'm just gonna have fun.
LINNETT: Very much so.
37:00 PENNY: So the next article that I have is also from 1941. It's an engagement notice, from the Argus again. So it's a Melbourne newspaper.
“Alison Gwennyth Binns, younger daughter of Mr. and Mrs. K. Binns, Canberra, A.C.T., to Leading Aircraftman Geoffrey Wyndham Rose, R.A.A.F., eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. R. Rose, of Bolocho, Dalgety.”
Do you know how they met?
LINNETT: Yes! Geoff was one of 2 sons, I think, of the Rose family. They were on a rural station, a property up in the mountains. The boys went to Canberra Boys Grammar.
PENNY: Ah, and did they have social events with the girls school?
LINNETT: Yes. Mum met Geoff, I think, when she was probably in her early to mid-teens and they became a unit very early on.
PENNY: He may have even got to see her as Winkle. Who knows. He could have been there that night. But I've got a photo of him, from the paper. Here he is.
LINNETT: We have that photo of him at home.
PENNY: He's quite handsome I think.
LINNETT: Yeah, a handsome man.Yes, very blond, handsome fellow.
38:08 PENNY: Of course, you know the next article is quite sad, from the Canberra Times 26 January 1943.
"ROLL OF HONOUR
ROSE. — Pilot Officer Geoffrey Wyndham
R.A.A.F., January 8th, 1943, as a result of air operations against the enemy in the Middle East, aged 22 years. Eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. R. Rose (Boloco, Dalgety), and brother of Bert and Tom, and beloved fiancee of Alison Binns, Canberra.”
So that was obviously a tragic thing to happen.
LINNETT: He was in an air-skirmish in North Africa and shot down and died there. Was killed there. And I think the dreaded telegram came to the front door.
PENNY: It came to Alison?
LINNETT: In Canberra, yeah, that's right. Cos she was living at home. You know. That was the end of that. Devastation. Absolute devastation. Mum was 22.
PENNY: When he died, yeah.
LINNETT: And they'd been sweethearts, real childhood high school sweethearts for years and were obviously engaged. I don't know when Mum last saw him. I mean, what the interval was between when he was killed and when she'd last seen him but, you know, it was a great tragedy. I mean, she was obviously anticipating I think going to live up there on the Snowy Mountains and
PENNY: That would have been a very different life.
LINNETT: Unbelievably different. And David and I have talked about the incredible contrast that that life would have been for my mother compared to the life she had with Milton.
PENNY: Yeah.
LINNETT: And I know that she's told Theresa, very explicitly in recent years, how, you know, even though life with Milton was difficult that he was a very good husband. He provided very well for his family and was a good father. And she said, 'We had a very rich', meaning the two of them, 'very rich life together and we went to interesting places and did interesting things.' And I suspect that would, almost none of that would have happened if you're up on a grazing property in the Snowy Mountains. And the nice thing was she kept in touch with his brother Ben over decades.
40:33 PENNY: There was one other article that gave a bit more detail of how he died because a fellow airman who was Flying Officer Edward Sly, who I think sounds a little bit like a character in a book. But he gave an interview about how Geoffrey died, and this is from the Canberra Times Monday 15th of March 1943.
“"Pilot-Officer Geoffrey Rose, of Cooma, N.S.W., was killed near Buerat-el-Hsun just before the launching of the final Tripoli advance. Rose had fought a running battle with eight Messerschmitt 109's. He had put up 'a marvellous show,' and had he been able to lead the battle a little closer our ack-ack positions would have seen the tables turned.”
"It was a show in a thousand,' Sly said to-day.”"
LINCOLN: It sounds like he was outnumbered 8 to 1 or 8 to 2.
LINNETT: I didn't know any of that Penny, that's very interesting thanks.
PENNY: Did Alison talk much about Geoffrey when you were growing up?
LINNETT: Well I guess, I can't remember when but at some stage we became aware that, you know, I think she had a ring. Yes, that's right. It's just coming back to me that in her jewel box, her jewelry box, which was a very interesting jewelry box when we were growing up because my father, Milton, then bought her a number of very lovely jewels when they were in India together. Because of course jewels, stones were very cheap. And anyway, but in the jewelry box there was the engagement ring that I think she'd had. Because you know, when as a child you picked that up and you said, 'When did you get this Mum?' or something. And she said, 'Oh that was my engagement ring with Geoff.' And you know then you say, 'What happened to him' and so it goes. And so the fact that he was at the Boys Grammar and they used to go to dances. There was Telopea Park High School, which was the public high school and then there was the Canberra Boys Grammar and Canberra Girls Grammar. And as I said my mother lived right across the street from the Girls Grammar and went there throughout her schooling, except for the first few years, before it opened. And then lots of boys came from the country to the Grammar School and my grandparents would also have been very aware because Kenneth was a border in Melbourne and they would have been aware of borders needing a place to come, you know, a home. What a difference it made. And so I'm sure Geoff came to the family home and enjoyed the cakes. There was an awful lot of baking, Penny, in those early days of Canberra. I know my grandmother, Amy, my mother said Amy became very tired of the social round in early Canberra with the endless afternoon teas.
PENNY: Oh really?
LINNETT: Oh you could go to one just about every afternoon of the week. The tea trolley would come out and you know two or three cakes with various bits and pieces and lovely trios of the cups, saucers and plates. And you know a little of it went a long way. And of course, you needed a social life but equally it was very, very wearisome and
PENNY: Social life, but maybe not 7 afternoon teas a week.
LINNETT: Yes, that's right.
LINCOLN: Well I can remember Gran telling me at one point, when I was probably only a teenager that she and Geoff had been together since pretty early in high school.
LINNETT: Oh I think so.
LINCOLN: I think she was quite precocious.
LINNETT: Sexually.
LINCOLN: On that front.
LINNETT: Oh yes, I think so.
LINCOLN: Childhood sweethearts going back to 13 or 14, something like that.
LINNETT: I think that was true Lincoln.
LINCOLN: She was always quite tuned in on such things so I can remember walking along a suburban street in Adelaide near her house when I was at the most sensitive age imaginable, like, 13 or 12 or something. Happy enough to be going out for a walk with my grandmother but then sort of faintly embarrassed already and then 2 schoolgirls of about my age in their uniforms, I don't remember why I was off school for the day, coming down the footpath towards me. And I remember thinking 'Oh gosh, this is a bit embarrassing to be out with my grandmother' or something. Anyway, they passed on by and I resumed my conversation with Alison and then a few more meters down the road she said, 'Now those 2 were checking you out'.
LINNETT: Oh, how gorgeous.
LINCOLN: And I mean I'm not sure how likely that was, but at the time I thought there was exactly zero probability of that. I was, 'Gran! Don't be ridiculous.' And she was just like, 'Well, fine, but they were.'
LINNETT: Oh yes, she was very observant.
LINCOLN: Pretty cluey.
45:00 PENNY: There's another article from the Canberra Times from the 11th of December 1943. It says:
“In memory of the late Flying-Officer Geoffrey Rose, his fiancée, Miss Allison Binns, has donated £100 to be devoted to the establishment of a section of the library, specifically for books on aviation. The nucleus of the section will be donated by Miss Binns and the income from the investment of the money each year will increase the section."
This is obviously an extremely appropriate idea, particularly given her family background.
LINNETT: Yes, the intersection of Geoff and the aviation.
PENNY: It's very nice.
"The book plates will be designed by Adrian Feint.”
Was there any connection to Adrian Feint? Cos he was quite a well-known artist at that point.
LINNETT: He was indeed. He was one of the prominent Australian artists of the first half of the 20th century.
PENNY: And he did bookplates for lots of famous people.
LINNETT: He did a lot of book plates.
PENNY: Dorothy McKellar, Ethel Turner, the Duke and Duchess of York.
LINNETT: Lot of book plates. David and I have seen an exhibit at Carrick Hill in Adelaide, quite some years ago now, but we still have the catalogue of an exhibit of Adrian Feint's paintings, or which I think the Heywoods, who originally owned Carrick Hill, owned a number. But also they had a very extensive collection of bookplates.
PENNY: I love his bookplates. I saw some of them online. They're beautiful.
LINNETT: We'll show you the one when you come next of, cos we still have, the original bookplate that Adrian Feint did.
PENNY: Oh, you do have it. Cos I couldn't find it online.
LINNETT: We should donate it to Carrick Hill to go with their bookplate collection because it would add to their collection in a way that it's just an anomoly in our house. It's interesting, I don't know how my mother, or the family got together with Adrian Feint. I don't know.
PENNY: It could have just been good taste.
LINCOLN: Well the National Librarian may have known where to find a bookplate.
LINNETT: Oh yeah, but also the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery may have some information about that. But one of the interesting things is that we have in our family, and it's still on the walls, because it's very special. We have a painting by Adrian Feint that presumably my mother, and then her new husband Milton commissioned for Adrian Feint do of the hotel, it's a scene of Cronulla in Sydney, of the hotel where they spent their honeymoon.
PENNY: Oh, that's nice.
LINNETT: Yeah.
PENNY: And you have that?
LINNETT: Yes. And so
PENNY: Have I seen that?
LINNETT: You would have.
PENNY: I would have. When I see it again, I'll understand it better.
LINNETT: It's now here. We brought it over here. It's now in our apartment.
PENNY: And I'd love to see the bookplate as well.
LINNETT: Yes.
PENNY: Is it aviation themed?
LINNETT: Yes.
PENNY: Oh that sounds cool.
LINNETT: We have a number of pieces, some pieces of memorabilia of Geoff, including the bookplate, which surfaced after Mum's death when I was going through so many of the old pictures and documents. I really would like, even though it's so long, I still would like to offer some of them to the Rose family.
PENNY: And I think Alison kept up her connection with the Canberra Grammar School.
LINNETT: Well, only intermittently.
PENNY: In 1995 they reported in their Annual Journal that she was reestablishing the Geoffrey Rose Memorial Collection.
LINNETT: I do remember that. But I don't know what triggered it. Because I don't remember Mum getting a newsletter regularly from Canberra Boys Grammar or anything. But anyway, I do remember her saying that, maybe the school sought her out, asked her if she'd like to
PENNY: Maybe they did.
LINNETT: I remember her telling me that she was donating money again to refresh the Aviation Section.
PENNY: Yeah, cos you can imagine. There's been some developments.
LINNETT: So that was nice.
48:44 PENNY: There's a big change now. We're going far ahead in the future. Well, 5 years later and it's from the Canberra Times, 16th of September 1948 and it's a birth notice.
"SANCHEZ (Alison Binns) —At Daly City, San Francisco, on September 13, to Alison, wife of Milton E. Sanchez—a daughter (Linnett)."
LINNETT: Good, I've arrived.
LINCOLN: You've got an international birth notice.
LINETT: True.
PENNY: But my goodness a lot has happened for Alison in the intervening 6 years. She's in San Francisco, she's married, she's got a daughter.
LINNETT: And an American husband.
PENNY: An American husband. How did all of that, when did she meet Milton?
LINNETT: She met Milton in 1944. She and her sister Joan were on the train from Canberra to Sydney and going to spend some time there and Milton was in the carriage. And he was on active duty because this was obviously still very much in the war years and he was on active duty on a ship, because he was in the transportation core of the U.S. Army and he had weekend leave and Milton was always deeply, deeply interested in geography and workplaces.
LINCOLN: And trains.
LINNETT: Trains yes. But also capital cities and southern-most ports, most important ports and southern-most tip of the country and all of those sorts of things. Anyway, he was very eager obviously to see this new national capital Canberra. And so he took the opportunity to take the train.
PENNY: Oh, so that's why was going
LINNETT: From Sydney to Canberra. He must have spent a night or two in Canberra and then was on the return to Sydney and my mother and Joan were in the carriage. And I believe that my mother did one of her famously loud sneezes, must have rocked the carriage, and that broke the ice and then they started to chat. My father had obviously seen her as a very attractive person in the carriage and was just itching to
LINCOLN: It's not a very long train trip from Canberra to Sydney. Must have
PENNY: It's enough time to get married.
LINNETT: Some hours. I saw something the other day, a question and it said, 'What question would you ask your mother if you had the chance.'
PENNY: That's a good question.
LINNETT: And this was very tantalizing to me. I knew you had invited me to this, so it was particularly germane. With all the profound things I could ask her, the one thing that I would ask her would be 'Did you really get off the train, Mum, in Sydney and tell the man who'd come to meet you to go away?' In other words, did you give that guy on the platform the flick? And go off with Milton. Because
LINCOLN: That was the story.
LINNETT: That was the story. I've never heard who the man was who was waiting to meet Mum.
PENNY: Not your dad. That's the point.
LINNETT: He was in the carriage. But she did say, in relatively recent years that I got rid of the fellow who was there and Milton and I spent the weekend together. We were engaged at the end of the weekend.
LINNETT: And Joan must have gone off and stayed with the relatives.
PENNY: And so then they, they got married in Australia? And then she moved
LINNETT: Very shortly after. And do you know Penny one of the most fascinating things and this would be the corollary question to my mother, why in all the thousands of photos that we have of the families on all sides, the American and the English side and Scots and all the rest, going back as I said into the late decades of the 1900s, why is there not one photo of your wedding?
LINCOLN: Oh my goodness.
LINNETT: Not one. But I know that, it was obviously deeply still in the war. I think the only people at the wedding were her parents, Ken and Amy. I'm not sure Kenneth was there. Certainly Joan was. So it was not an event. It was a wedding. But my grandparents were very disapproving.
PENNY: I was gonna say, how did they take to Milton?
LINCOLN: I didn't know that they disapproved.
LINNETT: Well, it was basically Milton was an American. I'll preface that by saying Amy and Ken had been to the United States for Ken's, Ken had effectively a sabbatical in the States in the '30s. They'd had a wonderful time there. So there was no reason for them to be anti-American but of course there was this very strong sentiment that you'll be aware of that these cashed-up American men
LINCOLN: Over-paid, over-sexed and over here. I think that was the term at the time.
LINNETT: But it was also the hurry in which it happened. I think they were married only 5 or 6 weeks after they met.
PENNY: Right. And what about personally with Milton, did they find him easy to get along with, or?
LINNETT: Well of course they saw very little of him. He came one night famously to dinner. I don't know whether this was just before the wedding. Because you see he had to go back to his ship. Then he had to ask for, and I think then the ship went from Sydney to Brisbane. And he had to ask, or he did ask for special leave to go back to Canberra to marry my mother. Was granted that. So it was obviously the timing of all this was incredibly, incredibly tight. Although did obviously manage to have some days honeymoon in Cronulla, hence the painting, sort of thing. But my father came to dinner in the Canberra house, the grandparent's house and he stood up and started to sing to them a song from the musical, the American musical at the time, 'Of Thee I Sing'.
LINCOLN: Milton singing? I don't think I ever heard Milton sing once.
PENNY: I need to stop doing a shocked face and say something. Cos it's not gonna come across on the podcast. I my goodness. How did that go down? That is not
LINNETT: Well I don't think it did. I think Mum said that Milton was just sort of a degree of extroversion that they found hard to cope with. And you know I think it was probably all very tense.
LINCOLN: Wow.
PENNY: And then they, when did they move back after the War?
LINNETT: So my mother was married, obviously. My father went back onto active duty, the war ended and he was then in India when the war ended and so my mother some months later, after the end of the war, so in 1945 got on a ship with some other Australian brides, wives and travelled on this ship to India to join their husbands. So my mother, extraordinarily, my mother's first experience of anywhere outside the country of Australia was India, which must have been extraordinary. They were in a hotel in Calcutta, they were there for something like 6 weeks. And my father had nothing to do it was all just as the phrase goes in the Army, hurry up and wait. They were basically just waiting to be transported to the United States. So my mother said it was really an idyllic time because she and Milton were staying in a fairly lavish hotel and basically they were newly-weds and they had an extended, lovely honeymoon and really got to know each other. And my mother said it was a very, very happy time. I think latterly I've read, because there was an interview with her that I only found a few months ago when we were clearing out some book in our house move and anyway, she said that she and the other Australian women on the ship were really nastily treated by the Americans because people actually said to them, 'You took our guys.'
LINCOLN: It's the opposite end.
LINNETT: Anyway, she got a very warm welcome in the United States. Cos my father was one of five children. he had 4 sisters.
PENNY: So they were welcoming?
LINNETT: Very welcoming. They could hardly wait to meet their sister-in-law. And my paternal grandmother, my American grandmother was very, very welcoming of Alison.
PENNY: Oh, that's nice.
LINNETT: They were all around the New York area. There was a very lavish party, very lavish party at Marie's house, Milton's mother, to welcome Alison.
LINCOLN: Going into the New York society party coming from war-time Canberra must have been.
LINNETT: I think the only thing my mother found a bit disconcerting was that with these 4 sisters, and of course American had not experienced anything like the privations
LINCOLN: Well no, that's what I'm saying
LINNETT: In terms of fabrics or nylon stockings
PENNY: That's how they get the girls, isn't it, the Americans.
LINCOLN: Bring in the stockings, that's right.
LINNETT: So, I think there was this, 'Oh you know, Alison, you need to, we'll take you here and you can buy this. And we'll have your hair done' and everything. And it is rather disconcerting to look at my mother in those photos at the lavish party cos they are memorably wonderful photos because her hair has been permed and she's got the latest New York look, which wasn't her really at all. But she did say that she resisted quite a lot of it and very sweetly my father said to her, 'I like you just as you are. There's no need to change.' But she did go along with a certain amount of it, sort of thing. But then they decided that they needed, they didn't want to live near all the family and they moved completely across the country to California, which is where I was born.
PENNY: Yeah, in San Fransisco.
LINNETT: They bought a little house in Daly City. Daly City was a new, a huge vast new suburb with rows and rows and rows of houses.
LINCOLN: So they chose to go there? It wasn't an Army.
LINNETT: Oh no, no, this was private community. My father was out of the army then.
PENNY: So what was he doing then?
LINNETT: He was working for a company, I think. I can barely say it. An oil company.
PENNY: We didn't know, we didn't know.
LINNETT: But anyway, yes. He went back into the army for the Korean war.
PENNY: Ah, that makes sense.
59:19 So the final article that I've got is from 6 years later, it's also in the Canberra Times. It's the 17th of December 1954:
“An American war bride"
Isn't that just an awful way to summarize someone.
LINNETT: Not an American war-bride she was an Australian war bride, that would have upset her.
PENNY: Well yeah.
"An American war-bride returned to Canberra this week to visit her family after an absence of nine years."
So that was really the first time that she'd come back?
LINNETT: Yes, of course.
PENNY: Cos it's such a big deal travelling but, still 9 years.
"She is Mrs. E. M. Sanchez, formerly Miss Alison Binns, of Forrest. Married to a Captain in the American Army, Mrs. Sanchez has been living in Frankfurt in the U.S. Zone of Germany, for the last two years.
Mr. and Mrs. K. Binns went to Sydney to meet the Oceanic, and were thrilled to see their grand-daughters, Linnett 6, and Leland 3,"
Now, Leland is a boy. So that's wrong.
LINNETT: Poor Leland, yes.
PENNY: "for the first time. Mrs. Sanchez plans to spend several months in Australia.”
So, do you remember that trip?
LINNETT: I remember a little bit about the trip. It was a wonderful Italian passenger ship. It was called the Oceania. And it left from Naples, so we travelled together. So my father, of course, couldn't get leave.
PENNY: Oh, so he was not there.
LINNETT: So he farewelled us in Naples. And the main thing I remember about the trip was that there was a children's dining room on the ship.
PENNY: Fun.
LINNETT: And my mother would bring Leland and me down to the dining room for our meals and the meals, even at the age of 6, I was very impressed with the quality of the Italian cooking. Particularly they served those alcohol-laced cakes. I'm not sure I liked them but they were very different
LINCOLN: I remember going to have them, one generation later with you in Italy where you'd see all the cakes piled up and you'd try one and they'd all be soused in something and of course now the prospect is absolutely delicious but at age 8 or whatever it was 'Can't eat that one, can't eat that one, can't eat that one'. It was pretty horrible.
LINNETT: I don't remember anything else about the trip. But I vividly remember our time in Canberra. It was summer. We arrived, I think, in December. I have a napkin, we have napkin rings that date the date of arrival, which I guess were made for us by the grandparents for the occasion.
PENNY: They would have been so excited.
LINCOLN: Oh yes.
LINNETT: It was hot. It was summer and they were still in that lovely house in the top of Melbourne Avenue with a big backyard, huge gumtree with a swing hanging down off it and I used to pump up very, very high and worry my grandmother intensely by how high I used to swing.
LINCOLN: There's a good swinging gene from both sides for our children.
LINNETT: And I also used to put my younger brother Leland on the swing with me and that got them particularly worried.
PENNY: Yeah, cos he was little.
LINNETT: I think Leland probably didn't look too comfortable with that. But anyway, we had a wonderful time. Joan, we used to go into Joan's bedroom. I used to push her eyes open.
LINCOLN: Poor Aunty Joan. She did forgive you.
LINNETT: Early in the morning. Shove the books at her to be read to. My grandparents had, probably back in the '40s built a beach cottage, wooden house down at the beautiful Eden, in the South Coast of New South Wales. We went down there and my Uncle Kenneth joined us from Hobart. He and his wife, Nan. And he was great fun, wonderful, wonderful man, great fun. No children, unfortunately. We had a glorious time down at Eden. And my grandfather had a little wooden boat and we would go out and fish and we would fish from the wharf. And it was just idyllic.
PENNY: So your first impressions of Australia would have been very positive.
LINNETT: Yes.
LINCOLN: Going from post-war Frankfurt to your backyard and going down to Eden would have been quite the upgrade.
PENNY: It said you planned to spend several months in Australia and how long were you here for?
LINNETT: I think we were here for a couple of months.
PENNY: Okay. And then you went back to Frankfurt.
LINNETT: Well we were here long enough that my Uncle Kenneth was horrified, my mother used that word that I couldn't read yet.
PENNY: 6 but, yeah. Well you caught up.
LINNETT: You don't start school in the United States system until you're 6.
PENNY: Yeah.
LINNETT: He said, 'This child, she can't read. She wants to be able to read.' So he, somehow they arranged for me to literally go across the street, in my mother's footsteps and go to Canberra Grammar. I don't think it could have been
LINCOLN: Oh God summer holidays attenuated by early-enrolment at Canberra Grammar.
LINNETT: Well, maybe it was 3 months or something. But anyway, I went there for a short time and learned to read.
PENNY: Oh wow. Then you all moved back to Canberra when you were 18?
LINNETT: Absolutely. That's right. My father retired from the U.S. Army.
LINCOLN: For the second time.
LINNETT: And of course, in between, I had had a year back in Canberra.
PENNY: Oh, okay.
LINNETT: At high school when my mother came out to spend time with her family and I went to Narrabundah High School for a whole year.
PENNY: Oh okay, I didn't know that.
LINNETT: Absolutely loved it. The most liberating thing was that, I think I would have about 14 or 15. It was the year that President Kennedy was killed. So 1962, so I was 14. The most liberating thing was that there was a school uniform. Because I had been at junior high school in the United States in Virginia and the clothes competition was ferocious and the nuancing of where you'd bought your shoes and what brand they were and the label in your sweater and things. And I remember girls, this was big high school, 2000, and I remember the girls rushing in into the toilet stalls in the morning to exchange clothes. And so that they looked like they had bigger clothes and something else that someone could lend them went better with this or that. And my mother had a sewing machine that she'd bought in Germany, saved up for, and was a good sewer and she began to make me some clothes, but of course, although they were nice and I wore them, they were not the same as
LINCOLN: Didn't have the label.
LINNETT: It was terrible. So wearing this drab grey dress at Narrabundah. I can still see it. And I used to iron the pleats into it every night so that it looked nice. I was just a pig in mud, it was so liberating.
PENNY: I think that is one of the strongest arguments for school uniforms actually.
LINCOLN: I think so too.
LINNETT: Now we had a very happy year that year. My brother went to school of course at Red Hill Primary and we saw a lot of my grandparents and we went to Tasmania.
PENNY: So when you were 18 you were quite happy to move back?
LINNETT: Oh yes, very happy.
LINNETT: So my mother's lovely jewel box. Which, I can see it now, it wasn't very big. It was a carved box from India. And she had, it wasn't a vast amount of jewelry, but the stones were very, very pretty and mostly by then set in rings. It was stolen. We were standing when we left Europe to come in 1966 so my father had retired from the Army, we had finished in Munich, where I finished school, we had sailed then from Bremerhaven, or wherever it was to New York and then we were going to cross the United States and take a ship to Australia for our permanent residency here. So I was 18, coming up for 18 and we were standing, obviously, on the deck of the ship surrounded by suitcases and I think my mother had the jewelry box in a hatbox.
PENNY: Oh no!
LINNETT: A patent leather hatbox, even though she didn't really wear hats but anyway, it was a container. And I suspect that someone just came up when we weren't.
PENNY: But what a boon though, thinking you were getting a hat and then you get a jewelry box.
LINNETT: Yeah, absolutely, boy what they got.
PENNY: What a winner.
LINNETT: And I remember then we were staying with Aunt Madeliene, Aunty Madeleine, who as a wonderful person, and I was in the room with my mother and I remember my mother saying to me, 'Linn, are you awake?' or 'Linn'. And I said, 'What's the matter Mum?' and she said, 'I can't think where the hatbox is.' And I said, 'The hatbox?' And she said, 'Yes, you know the black patent one' or whatever it was. And she said, 'Do you know, have you seen it?' And anyway, I said, 'What was in it?' and she said, 'My jewelry box'. So I thought, 'Oh my God'. But anyway, she got up and of course this was an apartment that Madeleine lived in. And she went around the apartment and I think Madeleine must have heard her and she said, 'Is that you Lal?' to my mother. And Mum said, 'Yes.' And she said, 'Is there a problem?' And so and then I remember her telling Madeleine and they got up and looked around. And it was great credit to my mother I mean she was obviously. She kept it in proportion.
PENNY: That's amazing.
LINNETT: Yes, you know, even though it was obviously it had a lot of meaning to her. The things in it, the engagement ring from Geoff.
PENNY: Yes!
LINNETT: The lovely, beautiful opal and the things that my father had bought her in India.
PENNY: The engagement ring from Geoff, oh my goodness.
LINNETT: And she almost never mentioned it in successive years.
PENNY: Didn't you lose all your jewelry at one point as well, or a lot of your jewelry got stolen?
LINNETT: We had a theft. We had two house thefts. And my first engagement ring was taken. And a little tiny ring, which of course meant more. Little tiny ring, gold, with three little pearls on it, which I think was Amy's engagement ring, or something like that. It went back a long way. And you know the diamond ring was replaceable, but Amy's little ring wasn't, so, yeah. And the scarab! David had bought me when Lincoln was born. From Phillip Adams, who had been
LINCOLN: Dealing scarabs. How bizarre.
LINNETT: Who had been an antiquarian dealer at some stage. A beautiful little black scarab. It wasn't so small it was about the size of my fingernail and it had a little hieroglyph on the back of a little man. And you know the scarab is the symbol of the dung beetle and eternity so when Lincoln was born, he was continuing.
PENNY: Oh that's beautiful.
LINNETT: That was on a lovely gold chain. It was very plain. No-one taking jewelry would have known what the dung beetle, the scarab was. They probably threw it out and took it for the gold chain sort of thing. It's those things that, you know, that are sad. Anyway, my mother just she had a great, great values.
PENNY: She was a very strong person.
LINNETT: She was, but I mean the jewelry box, okay. It's gone.
PENNY: And had Canberra changed a lot? Every time you came back it would have been different.
LINNETT: Canberra was a sophisticated, small but sophisticated city when I came back and started University. We moved back in September in 1966 so I was due to start University the following year but I had 4 or 5 months to fill in. So I took a job in David Jones, right there in the middle of the city in Civic. I was lucky enough to work in the China and glassware department. And they had interesting things to sell, very varied things. And people came in from the diplomatic core, because of course there was a lot of entertaining. All sorts of women and men came in. And children would come in to buy an eggcup for their grandmother's birthdays. And it was a great place to work. And then the next year, the next summer when they had university recruits, or students come back for the summer for the Christmas rush they tried to put me in handbags and gloves.
PENNY: Oh, handbags and gloves.
LINNETT: I pleaded with them to not be there and I think I was there 2 days and fortunately
PENNY: She was no good. She kept telling people, 'You don't need a new bag'.
LINCOLN: Bit of targeted mediocrity in the handbags.
LINNETT: So Canberra has remained a part of our lives for many years because my aunt and my mother developed a, were philanthropic supporters of the National Library in honour of my grandfather. Then after my mother died, after Alison died, David and I continued that.
PENNY: Yeah, so libraries are very big thing in your family.
LINNETT: Yes, absolutely. And it remains a beautiful and interesting city. We were last there in 2019 to celebrate, I think it was the 70th anniversary of the Canberra Uniting Church, which my grandparents were very instrumental in helping to establish, Amy and Ken. And it has a very large, the Canberra Uniting Church has a very large Tongan constituent, been growing for years and years and years. And they are wonderful singers so this was a vibrant celebration and afterwards there was a Tongan feast.
PENNY: Oh wow. And Alison, do you think she missed Canberra when she moved to Adelaide?
LINNETT: No, I don't think so. Because Leland and his family were in Sydney. And we were in Adelaide and I think she was, she just felt she was with neither of us. And they decided to move to Adelaide, not surprisingly because Sydney as an alternative was so ridiculously expensive to get into the real-estate. I think Joan was, Joan missed my mother but I think my mother was very glad to be somewhere bigger, also new.
PENNY: Yeah, and she'd moved throughout her life as well. And I mean I guess, she was used to different phases of her life, different places.
LINNETT: Very good point Penny, she moved a great deal.
PENNY: Yeah, it's about being with people, isn't it.
LINNETT: And she was very adaptable. And she was a good neighbor and she made friends well even though she was not social. She liked people, she liked going to things but she liked her own time and she was a great reader and so you can't be a great reader and also she liked doing painting and all sorts of things. Calligraphy, she took up all sorts of things with quite remarkable skill.
PENNY: Yeah, it was the visual arts that she was actually quite talented in but the articles that we found were about music and drama but I guess I don't really write about that.
LINNETT: If she had her life again, which I don't think she regretted much at all, if anything but I think if she'd had the opportunity to do something as a young person. She was very interested in design and David and I were saying she would say to David, 'This new teapot is absolutely hopeless. Have you seen the way,' you know, this or that. She would analyse things very well. And I think I now remember that she actually did an adult education course in design, not to become a designer. Someone who was an industrial designer talked to them about different items and things. And she really love that. And she also liked textiles.
LINCOLN: She was interested in new things. And change.
LINNETT: She was.
PENNY: Oh that would have helped her a lot in her life.
LINCOLN: So a change like moving to Adelaide is something she would have seen as much less of a move than her previous ones and also just a new and exciting phase. But I remember in the 1990s she was determined to get a computer. I went out and bought her a computer and taught her how to do things in Word. She wanted to design newsletters.
LINNETT: She became a desktop publisher.
LINCOLN: Yeah, she did newsletter design for her church and all this sort of thing.
PENNY: I didn't know she did that.
LINCOLN: And at least at the start, initially was I guess Microsoft Word had a few fewer features then but you could still bash out a multicolumn newsletter and do all that sort of stuff. And she learned how to do all that stuff.
PENNY: Yeah, she'd have a podcast. She would have had a podcast.
LINCOLN: I think so. She would have been on it.
PENNY: Thank you so much for coming in Linnett, this is such a good talk. And the thing that I'm excited about and I'm gonna make a list of things I personally want to look up in Trove but I know you'll have a lot more as well.
LINNETT: Well, thank you Penny, it's been a great pleasure and I think your questions were wonderful.
PENNY: Well thank you.
LINNETT: And been so relaxed. And nice to do it sitting next to our son.
LINCOLN: Well likewise Mum, it's been a huge amount of fun.
(Piano music)
Child: Woooo, Go Mum!
PENNY: You weren't supposed to shout, 'Go Mum!'
Child: Awww.