Relationships are an integral part of our lives and intertwine into the complex web of life creating the building blocks for who we become. It begins on day 1 when we are born and the bond between mother and child is formed. My bond was strong as I was my parents third child, but the first to survive. My life was full of parental love and the love of family. I felt secure and safe and was especially close to Mum. Times were tough so Dad worked long hours, while Mum took in washing and ironing to ensure we had the essentials of life. Through this I learnt to appreciate what I had and to work hard to obtain my goals. I was already in primary school by the time my two sisters were born and my parents worked hard to ensure we bonded and there was no jealousy. I felt privileged because I had a real live doll where my friends only had toys. Though I’m not sure that’s the lesson Mum intended me to learn.

On one occasion my sister was in her carry cot crying while Mum was in the kitchen. Trying to be helpful I decided to take her to Mum. I carefully lined this cot up at the top of the stairs, gave it a push, sliding it all the way down. Luckily no damage was done, but Mum was quick to explain the error of my ways. The relationship between my parents was strong and helped them through a war and numerous difficulties which led them to seek a new life in Australia.

My Aunt was a big influence, she and I had a strong bond.  I spent many hours with her watching her create beautiful landscape paintings, or sculptures from a lump of clay. From her I got my creative side. She encouraged me to trust myself and have the confidence to “go for it”. Whatever my goal, she believed I could achieve it.

I was a dreamer, often gazing out of the window and imagining what my future may hold. This led to me getting into trouble with teachers and of course, the inevitable parent teacher chats. I built strong friendships with other pupils.  We were taught the value of teamwork and learning to relate to others. Teacher pupil relationships varied, some we really loved, but our math teacher was rather stern, so we didn’t like him so much. He had the amazing talent of writing on the board with his back to the class, then spinning around and throwing the chalk at the exact pupil who was talking or playing up. “How could he see through the back of his head?” we asked.

Many relationships shaped my life, teachers, employers, work colleagues, friends. During my Airforce career the importance of teamwork and careful planning were valuable lessons learnt and afforded me new opportunities after my service finished. I built some very strong friendships and a new confidence in my ability to handle whatever life throws my way. 

Heather Hartland
​October 2024

The relationship I will describe today is my relationship with my wife of 46 years.
 
It began back in 1977 when I was undertaking pilot training in the RNZAF at the Ohakea air base near Palmerston North, New Zealand.
 
Our 176-aircrew group was invited to a party where another squadron pilot and his fiancée were celebrating their engagement, plus it was also the 21st birthday of his fiancée and her identical twin sister Karin.
 
I had asked another girl out on a date that night, so we turned up at this small flat in Palmerston North to celebrate the engagement and the birthdays of the twin girls.
 
I was sitting on the floor directly opposite this gorgeous young woman who was the happiest person, in that she had just been halfway around Australia with some backpacking friends she had met in NZ and Australia. She had this radiance about her which was hard to ignore. She also had a date who was a local farmer (she was also a country girl) and he had to go home. I met her at the door and started to chat and chat and talk and talk!  Eventually I asked one of my course mates to escort my date home and talked to Karin for a long time, agreeing that we would go on a date.
 
Karin and her twin were inseparable and, as the twin was getting married, they would soon be taking their own paths in life.  Karin and I became very close, met each other’s families and, on the night I graduated from my wings course, I asked her to marry me and go on our life’s journey together.
 
However, Karin did say that if we were going to be married, she wasn’t going to stay in the air force (mainly because her parents were both WW2 veterans, Dad a pilot and Mum in the control centres in Britain). So, I negotiated to stay at least three years to enable me to achieve hours in the air and have some experience as a pilot to enable me to join an airline in the future.
 
Karin wanted to travel, specifically to Israel (given that she was Jewish by birth), so I agreed.
​
After some time in the Airforce, going away all the time, the opportunity came for me to resign and leave. We packed our belongings and set off for a 24 x 7 x 365 holiday of a lifetime to USA, UK and Europe. In the midst of our holiday, we flew to Israel and worked on a Moshav for 6 months, travelling all over Israel (not a good place now!!)
 
We returned to NZ and, after finishing a shearing season, decided to migrate to Australia and start all over again….
 
We have been here for 44 years and have raised two kids, enjoyed our working lives, made friends and travelled to NZ, back to the family farm where Karin was happy and comfortable.
 
Best relationship I have ever had!
 
James Davey
September 2024

'Jesus Weeps'
​
(Australia wastes 78 million tons of food per year)

​Misquoting Shakespeare, one could argue that when we are born, we cry that we have come upon this stage of boundaries: societal, parental, environmental, on and on and on, including those we install ourselves. Some boundaries are temporary, others insurmountable. The topic reminded me of a woman who with a single sentence set up one such boundary. She was a Roman nun; I was a six, my first year in primary school.

Once a week a nun or a priest would come to take us for our religious instruction class. All that I was taught has been eminently forgotten. The only exception is this young nun telling us “Jesus weeps when you throw away good food”.
 
As an adult I can understand what prompted this obviously passionately held belief. The war, the German occupation of Rome and the food shortages, which ended only when the Americans entered Rome. My mother, a fabulous storyteller, used to regale me with stories of this unhinged period : descriptions of life in Berlin during the depression; her experiences as a teenager watching the rise of Nazism; life in Rome under fascism and later under German occupation, and once Germany was defeated, under an American one.

One story was of my grandmother buying bread on the black market. The seller was a German soldier. They were nearly caught, were it not for the quick wit of the soldier who enfolded my sixty-year-old grandmother in a passionate embrace. Prostitute? Lover? Whatever the commanding officer thought, if anything, it worked.

This message of not wasting food was reinforced by my  normally overindulgent mother. One of her few strict rules was that you ate whatever was presented on your plate or go hungry. The going hungry however, was not an option if we were invited guests. In that situation you ate what was offered and suffered silently.

Two memories are attached to this stricture. When we arrived in Australia, my mother’s boss provided us with our first Australian meal: a Chinese take-away from a Heidelberg restaurant. This was weird cooking that I had never encountered in my nine years of eating. Politely, and not forgetting to say thank you, I heroically ate this unnatural, unpleasant concoction.

The second memory was  entertaining a friend and her two sons for dinner. I can’t remember the dish involved, but it would not have been exotic. Her youngest looked at the dish and said “I don’t like that mum” To which mum replied “you don’t have to eat it darling”.

I was incensed. This is not how you bring up children. Not only is it rude, as my mother rightly taught me, but more importantly “Jesus weeps”.

I was six when I was given this “mantra”. Nearly seventy years later, I cannot throw food away and am still dismayed when I see it happen.
​
It’s a boundary, but a boundary I respect and for which I am grateful.


Delfina (Sept.2024)

A relationship between two people which has been important to me would have to be my parents. Without them I probably wouldn’t be here today. They were both hard workers, they brought up eight children and I know that wasn’t easy. Being the second eldest of the eight children, I saw how hard it was, working and raising eight children at the same time.
 
My parents met through my dad’s sister who worked in a department store with my soon to be Mum. Dad used to go into the store after work on a Friday evening and ask his sister if any of the other girls were free for the evening. My aunt introduced my dad to my mother one day and before anyone knew it they became a couple and so started their lives together.
 
After they had four children, my parents discussed moving to Australia from England.
 
By the time they got round to emigrating to Australia, they had eight children. At the time, in the mid-sixties, my parents were told they would be made very welcome in Australia, due to the fact that there were about six females to every male. My family comprised of seven males and three females. Australia needed more males at the time, so we were accepted instantly as “ten-pound poms”.
 
We moved to Australia in March 1967.
 
After the eight children had left school, we all started working straight away, there was never a problem finding work for any of us.
 
Personally, I have always been in work, never unemployed for more than a week, never received unemployment benefits, and quite often, I have worked two jobs at the same time.
 
This is important to me because after being in Australia for thirty years, I finally got round to going back to England for three months holiday. I visited old school mates, the village where I grew up and went to see my old boss at the farm I worked at during weekends and school holidays before I left England.
 
Before I left England, and the farm I was working at, my boss asked me if I had any mates or knew of someone that might want to take over my job once I moved to Australia. I recommended a mate, and he was given the job.
 
After thirty years, that same mate was still working at the farm. Ha had never married and had rarely been out of the village. Other mates, as well as some of my cousins, either worked for themselves or travelled abroad to get work. Very few of them owned a home, their lives appeared quite boring and depressing, and they were impressed with how my family had done so well once we had moved to Australia.
 
I could never thank my parents enough for making that decision to move to Australia.
 
After that three-month holiday, there was no doubt in my mind at all that I was much better off and having a much better life in Australia than I ever would have had if I had stayed in England. Probably still working at that old farm.
 
​Tom Barnaby
September 2024

​As one who was not raised in a family environment, I have found that relationships have formed an integral part of my life.
 
My first notable relationship was whilst at boarding school in Ballarat, in the school grade of sub-intermediate.  Ron O’Connor and I shared a desk and we became inseparable.  We were generally known as “Oke” and “Os”, (O’Connor and O’Shannessy).  We had much in common and were ‘best mates’.  After only one year ‘Oke’ left St Pat’s and our friendship terminated.  He did, however, visit me in St Arnaud some ten or so years later.  It was a great re-union, I was delighted to see him again.
 
My working life commenced in Benalla in 1950 and at my boarding house I met another boarder, Bill Keenan.  He became my second “best mate”.  Bill married Margaret Hernan and so was responsible for my lifelong association with the Hernan family and my closeness to Kevin Hernan.  Sadly, Bill was killed in a car accident in July 1970, leaving Marg with five young children.  Kevin died of a heart complaint in 1979, also leaving a young family.
 
In chronological sequence my other two important relationships came next – 1) my marriage to Bernadette – I will refer to that at the closure of this summation; 2) my business partnership with Jim Smith – I have covered this in my other writings.
 
Now, my acquaintance and relationship with Rolfe Mann.  Rolfe and I worked next door to each other.  He was the manager of the State Electricity Commission office.  Through our mutual interest in community service, Rolfe was the chairman of the 1969 Rose Festival Committee while I was his treasurer.  We worked well together and formed a close bond.  In that year I became a father for the first time, Rolfe, a father for the fourth time.  My son was born hale and hearty – Rolfe’s daughter was born, disabled.
 
Ballandella (Benalla and District Mentally Retarded People’s Welfare Association) was in the process of formation and Rolfe became Treasurer of the steering committee, then followed on in the Committee of Management.  He approached me to take on the Secretaryship.  This was the beginning of a 13 year “togetherness”.
 
Public Appeals for funds were conducted; the Ballandella Centre was constructed; a residence for the disabled was erected; both were staffed; 30 students and several residents were accommodated; a Ballandella Auxiliary was formed and carried out catering assignments and opened the Op-shop to provide financial backing; the Ballandella Bonanza was a great fund-raiser; the Tony Raffety marathon was conducted; Ballandella became the ‘flavour of the month’ for many.  The Premier, Sir Rupert Hamer, officially opened the Centre.
 
Ballandella is still operating today in cohorts with Yooralla.
 
Rolfe stood for council on several occasions and was Mayor of Benalla for three terms.  I was his ‘scrutineer’ on each election.  Sadly, he developed cancer and died at the young age of 55 years.  What a loss for Benalla.
 
I have been a long-time member of the Benalla Bowls Club and had a long relationship with Norm Matthews, in both the game of bowls, and in administration.  We were both Directors and Committee members.  We played together in Pennant Bowls and in Country Week Competitions, with some success.
 
We shared some years on Cooinda committees.  A special building is attached to Cooinda as the ‘Norm Matthews’ Wing’.
 
We joined together in the formation of the River Gums Estate syndicate which developed and sold 150 home building blocks in Benalla.
 
Regrettably Norm died of a heart complaint in 2004.
 
A memorable relationship.
 
The most important and loving relationship, of course, has been with Bernadette, my wife of 57 years.  Together we built our home in Clarke Street in the year in which we were married, raised our four children, and still live.  Bernadette has terminated her 51 years of service to the Benalla Meals and Wheels Organisation and her many years of acting as a counsellor for the St. Vincent de Paul Society.  We now live in a relaxed ‘retirement’.
 
 
Ray O’Shannessy
2 September 2024