​"I Changed my mind" – the story of my life, of constant changing of directions.

Studying history in school we learnt about life in our parents and grandparents’ day and the long struggle undertaken by pioneering women who changed the way we are perceived in society.  I learnt a great deal in studying the transition of women from being bred to care for the men and populate the country, to being individuals with intelligence and freedom to choose a path in life. With encouragement from both parents, I was inspired to work hard to achieve my goals. Though those goals kept moving, too.
 
The influence of my very artistic Aunt during my early childhood lead me towards becoming an author, or artist. I spent many hours watching her paint, create sculptures and write inspiring articles. Then our family began a new life in Australia so the earlier influences on my life, that aunt, my grandparents and a cousin, were not such a strong factor. I had made new connections.
 
I did all my schooling in WA and wanted to be a vet after assisting in a local vet clinic after school and during school holidays. Then a farmer, because I loved animals and grew up in a farming area. I even had ideas of being in the police force after watching UK crime dramas. Then I thought of a job on a cruise ship, though after my two cruise holidays, I decided that definitely wasn’t an option as ships bounce around too much. I kept drifting from one to another trying each career in turn and generally mastering not much!!!
 
Things changed rather dramatically following two events in my life.
 
One was visiting London at a time the IRA was very active. I was in London with my cousin and we had had long talks about careers and life in general. I said that I had not been that good at school and most careers I had thought of probably wouldn’t happen. My cousin asked why I didn’t follow my police dream.  I said I wasn’t good enough, however he insisted that they need people and would train me. The IRA were very active. Experienced officers were needed to combat those incidents while new recruits were needed to do the basic stuff. We had a bet about whether I would be accepted. I lost! They chose me………………
 
The second event was a chance encounter on a bridge. I had been through some awful experiences and had changed my mind again about being a police officer in the UK. I yearned for family and the peace of Australia. I was standing on a bridge overlooking the Thames River, deep in thought and constantly changing my mind about what to do next. A voice said, please come away from the edge, come talk to me, nothing can be that bad. I stepped back and found myself talking to a Salvation Army Officer. After boring him for two hours I made the decision to return to Australia and explore career paths there.

Once safely back at home I looked at past jobs, looked at police work and decided to find something less stressful. Again I changed my mind, deciding I had learnt a lot about myself by getting into the police, why waste it? I applied to the Navy, changing my mind when I recalled those heaving ships on cruises. So, I ended up in the RAAF. It turned out to be a good move. They put me in the Police and Security division and I had a long and rewarding career.  Well, long for me.
 
When I eventually got out of the RAAF I had careers in Human resources, Occupational Health and Safety, Stock control and purchasing. I just kept changing my mind…………………………………
 
Now I’m sort of retired, but that’s a future topic.


Heather Hartland
​July 2023

In 1966 at thirteen years old. I was the second eldest of six boys and two girls in a small village in England.
 
The whole family were all sat down at dinner one evening. Dad said, “Who wants to go and live in Australia?” The eight of us kids all spoke at once. Are you serious? When? Why?  What for? How will we get there? What about our friends?
 
Things started to settle down and we got into some serious discussion.
 
Australia had a future, we had a future, work, lifestyle, prospects. There was nothing to look forward to in England. We were six boys and two girls. Australia needs males--the ratio at the time was 7 males to 2 females we were told*. As a 13-year-old male that sounded pretty good to me.
 
After a few months of discussion with other family and friends, interviews with Immigration people were completed. There were photos for passports, medical checks, even a picture in our local newspaper. It was all happening rather quickly. We were booked to leave England on the 27th of February 1967.
 
After we said our goodbyes to everyone, we were on our way to Australia. What an experience that was. I had barely been out of our village in England for 14 years. Now I was travelling by train to London Airport.
 
Once we arrived in Australia, we started a new life.  We had to change from cold weather to hot weather, we had to get used to using a different kind of money, from pounds, shillings and pence to dollars and cents. But so had the Aussies the year before. Although Australians spoke English, it was a bit different to how we spoke English, but we soon learned how to say, “G’day Cobber, how ya goin?”
 
I loved the sun, the beach, the sea, wearing these funny shoes they called thongs, bathers, actually going into the sea water. One disappointment was, not seeing kangaroos running up the main street. But we didn’t have to go far to see them.
 
I spent a lot of time looking at things, landmarks, people, schoolwork, cars, and trucks. Everything was different, but I tried to match things to what I had been used to in England. Things were looking similar in so many ways, but they were actually very different in reality. I was confused, why did I want everything to be like it was in England. Then I learnt about Being Homesick. So was I homesick?
 
I loved Australia, but I missed a lot of what I had in England. I was depressed, miserable, I was thinking why we did come here. My dad told me to save my money and go back if I didn’t like it.
 
So, I did.  Thirty years later, I went to see relatives on both sides of my family. I caught up with some of my old school mates, people from the village I came from. My old school mates were married to each other, they still haven’t moved out of the village.
 
A lot of them asked if I liked Australia, would I ever move back “home” to England. I love Australia, this is my home, and, after my 12-week holiday, I moved home alright. To Australia.
 
My mind and life had been changed for me. But it was the best change that ever happened to me.

​​Tom Barnaby
19 June 2023
 
* Numbers listed in the 1967 Australian Year Book for 1966 were – M 5,810,216; F 5,730,518!

 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.   (I'd also been advised to practise injecting oranges using a syringe... however I was finding this made me rather squeamish...)

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. 

So, I changed my mind, and returned to teaching in Victorian High Schools for another 12 years. 

In 1991 I changed my mind again, leaving teaching to pursue social work.  This was a big decision, as it meant losing my income continuity for superannuation, my seniority with the Education Department, but I wanted to pursue something different and had been drawn to social work for some time.  With a degree in Social Work from Melbourne University came the opportunity to work in the Health system, not as a nurse, but as a social worker. I learnt so much from extended social work placements in the mental health and community health sectors, and then when working in community health and in the alcohol and other drug field which had a very strong interface with the health sector.  (An added advantage - I didn't have to give needles!)

Then, in 2000/2001, I changed my mind again.  I decided to return to education, this time at GOTAFE, where I had the opportunity for another 12 years to blending my education and social work qualifications and experience to teach in the Community Services area.... 

Interestingly, I didn't change my mind about . 'Retirement'.... but that's another story

Bev Lee
July 2023

*This is an reworked version of a story written in 2020 under the topic 'Too Hard Basket'.

Our “As Time Goes By” topic this month is about “How I changed my mind”, or “How my mind was changed for me”. Or about “The time I quit something, such as a job, a sport, or a bad habit”.  I don’t know where to start. So I will.

Most people who know me, will tell you that I am never short of anything to say and that they are lucky to get a word in. I think Bev is starting to realise this and so is trying her hardest to catch me out. Well I can tell you, I am not a quitter, and no one can make up my mind for me, not that I would admit to it anyway. Re this month’s topic. Well, I nearly changed my mind today, I nearly quit something too. But no, I am determined to push on with what Bev has asked of me.

I spent many hours thinking about when and how I changed my mind about something. In Five hundred words, that would be impossible, where would I start?

I could talk about the times I have quit a job, which I have done so many times, but to me that’s not quitting. I still worked for a living, I just changed jobs. Playing sport, well I never quit playing sport, I just didn’t start it. A bad habit, no, I didn’t quit that either. I still have the same bad habits I have always had.

But what do I write about this month then, I don’t know. I almost quit, worrying about it.  I almost changed my mind about writing anything. That would not be me though, I am not a quitter, and I can’t and I won’t, change my mind. So I have written this small story about not quitting or about changing my mind. Which is what Bev wanted me to do. I hope she likes it; I hope it is suitable for what she wants. I like to please people, and I won’t quit doing that either.

Well, I can’t believe I have written all this, I don’t understand a word of what I have been going on about. I doubt anyone else understands what I have been going on about either. But I didn’t quit the idea of writing something and I never changed my mind. I was determined to write this memoir no matter what.

Ranting and raving on as I have writing this, I think it is a memoir that I will remember writing and it tells a lot about me. I always strive to do my best at whatever I do, and if it means writing a load of garbage in other people’s eyes well, that’s me.

I have always confused people with what I say and what I write. Sometimes I confuse myself.

I could just give up writing anything, but I want to keep learning. This is probably the best way to get my message across. Yes, I am different, and I won’t quit that.
 
Tom Barnaby
June 2023

​Our daughter, Bronwyn, was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 34 when her youngest child was 16 months old. It was a week before my sixtieth birthday and we had organised a party of family and friends. That was the first thing that changed - but only by a fortnight. That was the way Bron dealt with cancer – go to Melbourne for an operation and then get on with life.

She always insisted that she was not sick, she just had cancer. And whenever she read an obituary talking of people battling cancer, she made it very clear that that terminology was not to be used for her.

She lived in Yarrawonga. We lived an hour and a half away in Tallangatta and got to know that road very well. There were three lively children and we cared for them on many occasions.

Bron lived with that cancer for nine years and lived every day as if her last. There were a number of operations, chemotherapy and radiotherapy courses but they were just distractions. Her real life was in between.

A spare piece of council land became Mary Court Park with playground equipment provided. A kinder for children with special needs was started with Bronwyn as the qualified teacher. Bron loved singing and travelled with friends to be part of a singing group in Wodonga.  I was also part of that group and loved sitting next to Bron.

The family went on a trip to Europe and this coincided with Bronwyn’s 40th. birthday so on her return, she organised a forty and a half party
.
Soon after the Taylors had moved to Yarrawonga, Bob Jane moved to build a casino on a weedy island close by. The protest group which overturned the plan  then worked to turn Chinaman’s Island into a delightful walking track. Over 1,000 trees and shrubs were planted, Rotary built a shelter, nesting boxes were constructed in a pond next door to this and it became a tourist attraction.

Bronwyn’s family moved to Albury for the last few months of her life. Her final day in Yarrawonga was spent in watering the new shrubs near the shelter. If you go there today you will find the Taylor Walking Track and a plaque beside the pond with the title