by Judith M.A. Hunt

Back in 2010, Judith was asked by the ladies of St Paul's Anglican Church, Boronia, to "give a talk" about her life experiences.Unaccustomed as she is to formal public speaking of any kind and at any time, everyone discouraged Judith about taking up the offer. In the face of such discouragement, she determined to do it anyway. Bravo! By all reports, it was a fascinating talk and much appreciated by her audience.

This is a first for me. I have never been asked to speak to any group before. They must have got the vibes from me! So, you ladies will have the dubious pleasure of listening to my maiden speech.

What I have to tell you up-front is that I have pretty much been the type of person who was frightened of their own shadow, since I was quite small. Keep that in mind as I read a summary of my life (or part thereof) titled, appropriately, "The Wanderings of a Wimp."

I was born, at a very young age, in the year following the end of the Second World War, to John and Margaret Beeston. 

Judith and her Dad
Judith and her Dad

They had already had a little practice on my older brother, Graham, who, if rumours are to be believed was just a shade under perfect. It was hard work following this, but I really didn't have much choice. Graham was intelligent. I made up for my lack of intelligence by being cute. What can I say?

Margaret and Judith Beeston

Judith and her Mum.

Three years later we were all joined by James.

The Beeston family

The Beeston family

James came a little earlier than planned. He was premi.It didn't affect his brain at all. He now has a PhD in Science and 5 kids!

Judy, Jimmy and Graham

Judy, Jimmy and Graham

I didn't like Primary School much. Not a good place for wimps!

Moorooka State Primary School 1954

Moorooka State Primary School 1954

The Principal and teachers had permission to give the cane to whomever they wanted. Usually young over-zealous boys. I do remember bring whacked by one teacher who lined up the whole class to swipe everyone's hand with a ruler. Not sure why. Even my perfect brother got the cuts as it was called. At least once. Discipline in those days was a bit on the cruel side.

High School was much more fun because it had boys!

School Days

School Days

Primary School had boys too, I just hadn't discovered them. Most kids left school at the end of Year 10 in those days unless they knew they were going to be a doctor, engineer or something. My mother sent me back to do Year 11. Mum thought I was too young (read naive) to go out into the work force at that stage.

So I had fun struggling with Maths 1 and Geography and Bookkeeping and having a nervous breakdown every time we had an exam. I also did Shorthand, English and French but liked these subjects. In the end, Mum thought I should go to work after Year 11 to save me from having a complete breakdown. I don't think I would have, but wasn't sad to say goodbye to studies. I was sad having to give up my Prefect badge given as a Year 11 stand-in for the Year 12s while they did their exams. This meant I would have been a Prefect in Year 12 as well. It was the first time I had been singled out for any position of authority and I enjoyed the experience. Fortunately, I didn't have to make any speeches during this period!

And so to work. Well, not quite so easily. There was a Credit Squeeze on then and jobs were scarce. I was happy to stay at home and sleep in every day, getting up in time to watch the midday movie. Mum had other ideas. Annoyingly, she kept cutting out jobs from the paper and forcing me to send away for them. I went for heaps of interviews (accompanied by my mother) and nothing came of them. Until one day, the job agency sent me off to a place out in the suburbs of Brisbane, a long way by public transport. I had training for one day with the very pregnant former Receptionist-cum-Secretary. It was not enough. I had no idea what I was doing: was scared out of my brain every time the phone rang.

There was a little switchboard that had little eyes that flapped up and down when the phone rang. I don't know that I ever worked out how to answer it properly. I was scared stiff to go to the toilet because I had to cross the workshop to a temporary sort of building, miles from the phone. The workshop was full of huge cranes and things. The boss wasn't there all the time but when he was I had to take shorthand from him swearing and going on when he was talking on the phone.

It soon became pretty obvious to the boss and me that I was pretty clueless so he called me in on the Friday night, one fortnight after I had started, and more or less told me I was free to go. I, too, had been going to give notice so it saved me the trouble. He told me that I would be better off in a big office where I had other people around me. He was so right. I was so happy to be sacked. He even drove me to the tram stop. I was free again to watch the midday movie! No more dry retching in the mornings.

But Mum had other ideas. In no time I was doing the round of interviews again and this time was successful in a solicitors' office in the city. A young girl I vaguely knew from primary school days started on the same day. We became best friends and still are to this day. We grew up together on this job. I was the secretary for a young solicitor. He was 22 and I was 16, going on 17 (a song cue). He eventually became a Partner.

At this time I had been attending the Presbyterian Church in our suburb and from the age of about 16 was the one and only organist in the church. My big brother had been organist before me but he had felt a call to the ministry so left our church when he was about 19 leaving the organ seat empty. I sat in it and took up where he left off. I played for Sunday School in the morning, the morning service, Youth Fellowship at night and the evening service, plus any choirs that had to practise and weddings. My life was the church.

Music was a big part of life and my brothers and I formed a group, called "Graham Judy and Jimmy". Very original.

Graham Judy and Jimmy
Graham Judy and Jimmy

Graham and I sang and Jim played bass behind us. We used to be invited to perform at various Coffee Shops in churches all over Brisbane. It was a very popular pastime of young church kids in those times. The folk era. One time we sang at our own church and our youth group invited a group of young men singers called The New Road Trio to perform there too.

The New Road Trio
The New Road Trio

I had just broken up with a young man who had begun a Christian rock group in which I played organ. I remember looking at one of the young men in this group and thinking he looked so confident. However, he had a ring on his wedding finger so I thought he was married. Then, later, at home around the kitchen table, my Dad said "The young blond bloke in that group would make a nice son-in-law!" He must have read my mind!

I didn't think any more of it because I thought it was an impossibility, so imagine my surprise when I was phoned by my older brother saying he had just had a phone call from one, Philip Hunt, from that group and they wondered if they could "borrow" me to sing with their group when they performed down the Gold Coast at a Cabaret run by the Methodist Church over the summer. Graham, my brother, was really excited about it and, after a while, I was too. 

Philip rang me and we arranged to meet for practice. It was enormous fun. We all got on really well and I loved singing with them. Philip, unbeknown to me, had told the rest of the group that they were not to fraternise with me because it might upset the group dynamics. Then he proceeded to fraternise with me himself. They have never let him forget it.

We had a ball singing together. After the Cabaret I went back to Graham Judy and Jimmy and we continued singing out Peter, Paul and Mary/Nina and Frederick/Simon & Garfunkel stuff all over Brisbane until Philip and I got engaged  (within 9 months) and married 10 months later.

Young Marrieds 1968
Young Marrieds 1968

Philip had just finished school when I first met him and then started work in a bank for about a year. At one of the Cabarets on the Gold Coast he discovered he had a gift for radio announcing, so with the help of the director of the Methodist Department of Christian Education and a bloke who was associated with radio in Brisbane, he was given a job in Nambour with Radio 4NA.

Sunshine Coast Radio
Sunshine Coast Radio

He moved to Nambour, a couple of hours north of Brisbane in April 1968 and started work on my birthday, the 22nd. He would try to come back every weekend if he could. We were married in September of that year and I moved up there with him. He was only 20, turning 21 in January '69.

I quietly howled all the way from Brisbane to Nambour. This was the first time I was to live away from home. I was supposed to be starting my own home. I didn't have much idea how to be a housewife. Mum had done all that before. I had been terribly spoiled and was, as I have previously mentioned, a bit of a wimp.

I got a job in a solicitor's office in Nambour and so began our first year of marriage. Things probably would have been a bit easier without the Pill. It played havoc with my moods and made me sick every time I started to take it again.

After about a year, Philip applied for and got a job on 4CA in Cairns. We were moving up - literally! It was a long way from Brisbane so we really had to rely on one another more. We stayed in a one bedroom flat for a while until the one next door with 2 bedrooms became available. Then through a girl I worked with (in yet another solicitors' office) we got the idea to live in a caravan.

Van life 1970
Van life 1970

We bought ourselves a van and parked it in a caravan park. A lot of people going around Australia would be our neighbours for a while and it had a real holiday feel all the time.

Brisbane Radio days
Brisbane Radio days

Philip applied for a job on Brisbane radio and so we found ourselves towing our van back to Brisbane within about 13 months. We parked it in a park on the outskirts of Brisbane. A totally different kettle of fish to the park in Cairns. We lasted about a month there and then, with the help from Philip's father, put a deposit on a little house in the suburbs. The year was 1971.

Ferny Hills
Ferny Hills

I was back working again in (altogether now) a Solicitors' office in Brisbane. Now I was desperate to have kids. Had been since I was about three years old! I had gone off the pill in Cairns after a vomiting bout involving throwing up about 24 times! I had expected to get pregnant straight away after going off the pill. About 18 months later--still nothing. Philip had been panel operating for Lady Cilento on 4BK and she talked about adoption. He went out in his lunch hour and picked up forms. That very day, my big brother arrived from Sydney and I was called to dinner at Mum and Dad's to meet him. Turned out he had come to tell us his wife was leaving him. He was devastated. He was a Presbyterian minister. His wife eventually married her boss. Divorce was something that happened to other people in those days, so we were all reeling from this announcement.

My little brother drove me home and we picked Philip up from the radio station on the way. When we were finally alone, Philip presented me with the forms. I was ecstatic. I got up really early to fill the form out. We got Philip's father to witness it and we put it in. Philip's father thought we were too young and should wait a bit longer. I phoned my mother and she was really excited too. It helped to bring a little happiness to everyone at a time when everyone was so down about Graham's news. Good timing. Maybe God's timing!

We had to wait ten long months for our baby. We had asked for a boy. I got a phone call one lunch time, just as I was sitting down to my tomato and pickled onion sandwich. I don't think I ever finished it.

The woman said, "We think we have a nice little baby boy for you." I wanted to scream but thought she might decide that maybe we weren't the right people to give the baby to, so I behaved sensibly and took everything she said down in shorthand, only to lose the bit of paper immediately afterwards. I phoned Philip and he was on the air so I couldn't talk to thim. So I phoned my mother, and she wasn't there. No answering machine in those days. I phoned my Dad at work, a thing I never did, and, although he never really spoke in sentences of more than about three words, you could tell he was thrilled. I eventually got onto both Philip and Mum. Mum had been "up the road" shopping because she was sick of staying home waiting for a phone call about the adoption. Murphy's Law!

Jamie Philip Kinross HUNT
Jamie Philip Kinross HUNT

I got up really early to make sure everything was absolutely so ready to receive this little boy who was coming into our lives. It was an incredible experience. We drove to the hospital, really early, and got told off by the matron for being early. She said they hadn't even bathed him yet. She made us wait and I was dry retching in the waiting room with excitement. I was worried they might think I was pregnant and not give him to us. I couldn't believe it when she came out with this baby draped over her arm and handed him straight to me. She took us into a little room and let us look him over and vice versa. Although, if he hadn't liked us he would have had a devil of a job saying anything. Philip went off to get the moses basket from the car and I went down in the lift by myself with my new son. I talked to him all the way and we bonded immediately.

Jamie
Jamie

Philip took over once we had him in the basket and we had to go to the Department of Children's Services to be interviewed and pay the grand sum of $5. Not sure what for, maybe stamp duty or something. I don't remember a thing the interviewer said to us.

We then drove home where Philip set about dumping everything possible into a pot on the stove to sterilise them while I changed my first nappy and tried to calm this gorgeous little armful of humanity who was probably having his first traumatic experience! We called him Jamie Philip Kinross and he was just ten days old. We phoned Mum when we arrived home and she made it in record time from the other side of the city to come to see her new grandson. Everyone came to visit us that night and I really felt like a new mum--exhausted! Within one week, I was pregnant!

Melanie
Melanie

It was hard to believe, but true. My doctor wasn't at all shocked. Melanie Margaret Anne was born on the 24th January the following year.

Two kids
Two kids

Two little babies under nine and a half months.

Melanie Margaret Anne
Melanie Margaret Anne

I think God was pressing a point here. "Well you wanted babies, Judith!"

Jamie and Melanie
Jamie and Melanie

Philip was really busy with work, university lectures, army (CMF) and he was on a committee with the Dept of Christian Education. I became a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work two small babies generated and found I couldn't sleep when I was supposed to. I ended up with what the doctor called "an anxiety complex." We joined Philip's old church and an all age Church School there and people started to pray for me after I had laid out my problem before them one Sunday. I gradually came out of it and Philip and I ended up being leaders in the teenage group at the church. We had done something similar in Cairns.

Then, one day, when I was in bed with a viral infection that involved a lot of vomiting, Philip came in to tell me that he had been successful in his application for a job he had gone for in Melbourne. It was with World Vision of Australia. He was to write copy in the Communications Department, among other things. His major had been in Journalism so this seemed a great opportunity. I think I responded by vomiting one more time.

I thought Melbourne was the other end of the world. I was going to quite possibly die from the cold. We would have no friends, no relations, not enough warm clothes. But part of me was just a bit excited. My parents weren't too thrilled but I really admired the way they didn't try to put obstacles in our way. They started to think of taking trips to Melbourne!

Civic duty
Civic duty

We had to leave before our house had sold. We drove down in our little Honda Civic with a roof rack. Absolutely loaded to the gunnels. We rented a place in Donvale.

Donvale living
Donvale living

It was a lovely house and we would have liked to buy a place just like it in that area, but everything was way beyond our budget so we tried the market 20 minutes away in Boronia and eventually found the place we are living in today--but not for much longer.

We joined the Methodist/Presbyterian Church in Boronia and in no time Philip was a leader in the youth group and playing the organ in church. We saw the churches become the Uniting Church and also witnessed the fights among the people about possessions in each church. We were not all that happy in this church, so when we met Robert Colman at a music seminar in Cooma he invited us to go to his church during the summer. We went. It was wonderful. It was a huge church (Blackburn Baptist) and the music was phenomenal. We wrote a letter to the Uniting Church telling them we were leaving and going to the Baptist Church and we attended this church for a year. Then Philip was offered the job of setting up a fundraising office for World Vision in Hong Kong. The wanderings of the wimp continue!

Our time at Blackburn Baptist had been a great time of preparation for this new adventure. Although scared out of my brain, I was also excited. I wanted to come home on the first night in Hong Kong but, when we woke up in the morning and the sun was shining on the water outside the Repulse Bay Hotel where we were staying, I realised that maybe I could endure it.

'Enduring' the Repulse Bay Hotel
'Enduring' the Repulse Bay Hotel

One little story: One Saturday morning while we were staying in the room in the hotel, Philip went off to work to pick up the keys for the flat we were going to rent. He worked over the harbour in Tsim Tsa Tsui. We were going to live on the island. I slept in. The kids were up (I could hear them) watching TV and playing. Someone knocked on the door. I thought it was a cleaner coming to clean the bathroom, which they did every day. I let the kids open the door. Big mistake.

I looked up from my pillow and there was a Chinese girl standing at the bottom of my bed. She said something about the bathroom so I told her to go ahead. It was Chinese New Year so I thought maybe they had put on different staff to clean the bathrooms.

I heard water running, and running, and running. I got up and put on a cardigan as my robe was in the bathroom. I then heard splashing going on so decided to go and have a look in the bathroom. This girl was sitting in the bath--having a bath! Huh?

I didn't know what to do. I went to the door, opened it and beckoned to the houseboy who sat in a cubicle at the end of the corridor. He came running and I tried to explain to him that there was a girl in our bath (not easy) and maybe he could get someone to come and see to it. He looked as if he knew what I was saying and went running off. In no time he was back--and handed me a cake of soap!

The girl eventually came out--in my bathrobe--and started asking if she could live with us and be a part of our family. She raved on a bit (maybe she was on drugs--who knows?) and since I wasn't cooperating she started to get a bit nasty. I told her she had better go and get dressed and eventually she did. She came out with her hair all wet. I gradually edged her towards the door. She wanted to kiss the kids goodbye but I wouldn't allow this. I opened the door and that was the last I saw of her. To this day I have no idea where she came from and why she felt she could have a bath in our bath. Philip wondered why things like this didn't happen to him when he was travelling. I'm rather glad they didn't!

Another day, whilst still in the hotel, Jamie (9 years old) was playing with his cars in a little room just off the front door while Melanie and I were watching something scary on TV. After a while, I must have realised Jamie was very quiet so I went to check on him.

He wasn't there! Horrors!

I called to him, thinking he might be under the bed, but he didn't answer. I threatened that we would not go to Ocean Park that afternoon, which we were intending to do when Daddy came home from work, if he didn't answer me. No answer.

Here was I in Hong Kong and my son had gone missing. I thought maybe he had been kidnapped and was being sold into white slavery somewhere. I phone Philip. He was shocked too, and left work immediately and caught a taxi back to the hotel. He phoned the hotel before he left to tell them that our boy was missing. They sent houseboys running around looking for him.

They phoned me in no time to tell me that they had found him. I ran down to the front office and saw a houseboy walking in from outside with Jamie. He had been found sitting on the front steps of the hotel--waiting for Daddy to come home from work to take us to Ocean Park! He had climbed out a window into the little room and gone down the long corridor, down lots of steps, through the dining room and out the front door. The most amazing thing was he was the sort of kid who usually asked for permission to go to the toilet. Kids are so unpredictable. We had a wonderful time at Ocean Park but my kids were never out of my sight! I think the Manager of the hotel wondered why I was so worried about my son. Jamie was tall for his age and looked totally big enough to be able to look after himself.

Eventually, we moved into our flat opposite Stanley Beach.

View from our flat
View from our flat

On our first Monday in the flat I happened to look out the window and saw a jeep travelling at great speed the wrong way up the one way street outside. While I watched, a guy jumped out of a tree into the jeep. They were making a movie. This happened quite a bit in Hong Kong. They just filmed wherever they wanted to. In a city of that many people it would probably be impossible to close sections off to make a film.

Dragon boats at Stanley Beach
Dragon boats at Stanley Beach

Philip had to travel a bit with World Vision and one night, when he was in America, I was just about to go to bed when I heard guns blasting. I nearly hit the roof! I quickly turned off all the lights and snuck a look out through the curtains. I saw a man running along the footpath opposite our flat with a rifle in his hand. I didn't know what to do. I checked on the kids in their beds and suddenly the phone rang. I ran to answer it, in the dark, and it was Philip, all jolly and hail-fellow-well-met in America.

I whispered to him "There are people shooting guns outside in the street."

He said something like "Oh what? That wouldn't happen in Hong Kong."

"Well, it is, and I don't know what to do."

He, trying to calm me down, said, "It's probably nothing. I wouldn't worry about it."

Might as well have told me there was no need for me to breathe. I heard more shots. I made sure our door was thoroughly locked (we were on the third floor) and then went to bed and a restless night.

In the morning I was shocked to see that there were no dead bodies in the road. No used bullets anywhere. I drove the kids to school and the day passed normally. In the afternoon I saw a woman I knew who lived on the floor below us and asked her if she had heard gun shots in the night. Oh yes, her husband had mentioned it. It was the British Army guys practising manoeuvres! Once again, a lot of wasted worry. It would have been nice if they had given us a bit of warning beforehand, like a leaflet in the letter box or something.

"Bush" Walk in the New Territories

We spent three and a half years in Hong Kong when Philip was invited back to World Vision Australia. We were all sad to leave Hong Kong. We had made a lot of friends in the expatriate community. We had attended the English Speaking Methodist Church in Wan Chai and had started a bible study at our house for a couple of Australian families, an English couple and a New Zealand couple. This became our family while in Hong Kong. We did lots of things with them, especially Christmas.

Philip came back to a desk in the corridor of the World Vision office in Melbourne and a non-descript job description. He had thought he was coming back as 2IC but it seemed he and the CEO were the only ones who thought this. Jamie and Melanie went to high school at Kingswood College in Box Hill. I drove them there every morning and picked them up every afternoon. I loved doing this because it was one way to have the kids in the same room as me where they couldn't escape. We had fun talking and listening to the radio together.

My Mum and Dad came down one time to babysit the kids (they were about 15 and 14 at the time) while Philip and I went to the US for meetings there, stopping on the way for meetings in Singapore and Hong Kong and on the way back in Fiji to visit projects there.

Dinner with the Chief
Dinner with the Chief

This was my very first visit to the field. We visited a village, complete with chief, and they took us on a boat trip. Now, I am not a great swimmer, in fact a bad swimmer, so you can imagine my shock when I saw the boat we were in was taking in water. The chief was in our boat and he sat up front to balance it (he was a big man). I was a nervous wreck and thought I would never get back to see my children again. As we went along, women would pop up out of the water where they had been getting mussels (probably for our lunch) and wave to us. The river was really wide and we were way out in the middle. I then found out that they were actually standing up in the water. So, if our boat had capsized there is a good chance I would have been able to walk out of the river. More wasted worry!

Eventually, the CEO of World Vision left and the position became vacant so Philip and another guy put their names forward. Philip was chosen and so began eight years of busy business. Just six months before this happened, I gave birth to one of the biggest surprises of our lives, little Richard John Graham.

And then we were 5
And then we were 5

Just when we thought there was no hope of us ever having more children, along came Rich. I had had two miscarriages after Melanie was born. One in Australia and the other in Hong Kong.

Generations
Generations

 I had been working as a substitute school secretary since we had come back from Hong Kong and was working at Upwey High when I found out I was pregnant. I had been hoping that Upwey High were going to offer me a full-time position, but it was not to be. I wasn't upset though.

Our lives changed dramatically--but for the better. Philip had to travel even more as the CEO of World Vision but the big kids helped me, especially Mel, who was a baby-lover like her mother.

Daughter of her Mother
Daughter of her Mother

When Rich was about two-and-a-half Philip asked me if I would accompany him on one of his visits to the field. I himmed and haaed about it but in the end said I would.

Christmas 1990
Christmas

It was just after Christmas and we left Rich with my Mum and Dad in Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast near the beach and Mel stayed there too. Rich was happy as a pig in mud: I nearly died of fretting. I missed my little boy dreadfully. He and I had been pretty much joined at the hip since he was born so it was a real wrench leaving him behind. I wrote letters for each day that we were going to be away, and Papa retrieved them from the letter box every day (don't know how they got there when they didn't have stamps on them!). Rich didn't miss me at all. He and Mel were good mates (despite the 15 year age gap). She had mothering skills coming out her ears.

Blending-in in Ethiopia
Blending-in in Ethiopia

Meanwhile, Philip and I went to Ethiopia, via Hong Kong, Rome and Athens. I felt sick almost before touching down in Ethiopia. Couldn't eat. We drove up country in a four wheel drive vehicle and visited villages where World Vision was working. We stayed in a little old motel one night which was a hairy experience. Praise the Lord for sleeping tablets.

We had Steve Vizard travelling with us as our up-front media person. World Vision was making a film for presentation on the night of its big fundraising telethon. It was certainly an eye-opening experience for me. It also showed me how tedious travel was for Philip most of the time. I realised he wasn't exactly having lots of fun all the time while I was at home doing boring housework. 

On our last night in Addis Ababa during the night I woke up to the sound of guns and thought I heard tanks rumbling down the street. I looked out of the window and couldn't see anything, but was convinced I was right.

"Oh great. I'm never going to see my kids again. We are going to be caught in the middle of a coup."

I woke Philip up and told him about the coup.

"That's not a coup Judith," he said, "it's the air-conditioning unit."

Oh. Sorry.

We arrived back in Sydney the day before the Gulf War began (and later there actually was a coup in Addis Ababa). We were both sitting up in bed in the Sydney motel reading because we couldn't sleep with jetlag and Philip said "Why don't we try to get an earlier flight to Queensland?" which we did. We arrived back at Mum and Dad's place on the Sunshine Coast around lunch time. Rich hid behind Mel when he saw us. However, he started to come round when we produced presents we had bought overseas and in no time we were back to normal. And, to my delight, Mum and Mel had made great inroads into the potty training while I was away.

And so life went on. Both the big kids had done VCE. Jamie moved out at 19 with the boy next door into a flat closer to town and his job in the media section of the Department of Agriculture.

Mel, after completing her Melbourne University degree in Secondary Education, moved out a few years later into a flat over the other side of town in West Brunswick. This was a bit closer to her boyfriend (later her husband) but of this we knew nothing at the time.

Near the end of my 50th year, Philip came home from a meeting in the US and I happened to say to him "If ever you were offered a job in say, Geneva or somewhere, I wouldn't mind another stint overseas." He nearly died because, unbeknown to me, he had just been offered the job of Regional Vice President of World Vision in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. He had knocked it back. He didn't think I would want to go overseas again. He quickly let them know he was interested, and in no time we were packing up the house again and taking off for foreign parts.

Richard was eight years old. I had never been to Austria before so it was a completely new scene for me. We stayed in a hotel for the first week and it snowed the first morning we were there. It was wonderful. The next day wasn't quite so wonderful. It was minus 15 degrees, the coldest day in Vienna for 150 years. The thought went through my head that even Hitler had not had to endure this cold.

It was SO cold. We would poke our noses out of the hotel foyer, race across the street to a pizza restaurant, eat our pizzas, run back across the street to the hotel and stay put in our warm hotel room. The first thing on our list of things to get was warm parkas.

We went into a flat that had been vacated by an American guy who had worked for World Vision as the Admin Manager. He was going back to the USA.

Our flat - up top
Our flat - up top

We learned to love this flat and didn't really want to leave it to come back to Australia. But we did, after four years, so that Rich could start high school at Luther College.

Rich attended an American-run college and had had to endure bullying for a while that upset us all. Things improved a bit when he started to make friends. It left a sour taste in his mouth though, and he doesn't talk much about Vienna these days. We did some exciting things while there that I hope he will be able to look back on later and be thankful for. He became an American Boy Scout and went on many camping trips with them.

Dib Dob
Dib Dob

He and I went with others from school on a bus trip to Hungary--a day trip--to play in an orchestra there. He played drums. Later he started to learn the violin and had a private teacher--an Australian from Melbourne!

He learnt how to snowboard in Kirchberg while his parents tried to learn how to cross-country ski.

Pre falling down posture
Pre falling down posture

We all had enormous fun toboganning on slopes just up the road from our flat.

Off piste
Off piste

I had fun trying to find foods to feed my family. We had a tiny supermarket just down the road where I would take my trolley every couple of days, armed with a German dictionary. I came back with polenta one time that I thought was cornflour. I went back to get the cornflour and this time did what I should have done the first time--I squeezed the packet. Cornflour has a unique squishiness, recognisable in any language. Success!

Catching trams on the Ring
Catching trams on the Ring

I used to try to speak in German to shop assistants. Just things like:

"Vier Semmel, bitte." Four Kaiser buns, please.

Of course, they would come back at me with a volley of German that I couldn't make head or tail of. Then out would come, "I'm sorry I don't speak German." She probably just asked me if I wanted a paper bag or something.

Our 18th district neighbourhood
Our 18th district neighbourhood

We came back to Australia at the beginning of 2001. Philip had no job and Rich was to start High School. We had the Harslett family around for pizza one night before our furniture arrived from Vienna. We were living with the leftover furniture from storage. We mentioned that we wanted to find a church, particularly one where Richard could be a member of a youth group. They invited us to their church, St Paul's Anglican. We came the next day. And therein ends my tale.

Well almost.

Jamie
Jamie

Jamie, who had come over to visit us our first Christmas in Vienna stayed overseas a year or more than we did. He lived in the UK, Dublin, on a little island off Dubrovnik and on and off in Kirchberg, Austria. He came back to Sydney where he had a lot of friends, mostly people he had met in Austria.

The Wedding of the Century
The Wedding of the Century

Mel went on to marry David (we came back from Vienna in 1998 for this) and went on to give birth, 18 months apart, to Emily, Sophie, Zachary and Riley.

Mel and Dave
Mel and Dave

She and David moved to the US where they have lived for three years in Utah and are now living in Sammamish, Seattle.

Rich completed his 6 years at Luther and, just a couple of months ago, also completed his Bachelor of Film and Digital Media at Deakin University. His major is writing and he is now looking at doing Honours in Writing, maybe next year, at Deakin. He works part-time at Borders where he has been working since he was 18. He has found a room in a shared house in Blackburn and is relishing the idea of running his own life!

And my wanderings continue. On 22nd August I will be taking off with Melanie and her kids for Seattle. I am supposed to be going to help Mel with the kids but it might be the other way round. Philip, or should I say, Saint Philip, is staying behind to clean up the house, take what is left of the furniture down to Warrnambool and will join us in Seattle two weeks later. We will be in Seattle for three months, returning to begin the next adventure in our lives--in Warrnambool.

The wanderings of a wimp continue...