240718 Mary 3.m4a

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240718 Mary 3.m4a

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We return to Australia at the very beginning of 1978 and at that stage Linda began primary school at E Martin Primary School, where Graham was also in year 6. I. Because of my interest in physical health and sport, I had also done a course in 1976 for a fitness leaders course and in 1978 I began taking some kick fit lessons for the what was then. The South Australian women's Keep Fit association. So while while the children were at school during their. Day. I had a few hours a week where I took various classes around the McGill athelstone Burnham Court, Campbelltown area for ladies. Keep fit one of the. Import. Things about those classes is that there was always a craze provided for young children so that the mothers could come and have. An hour to themselves to do exercise, and the class is always finished up with either a some jogging or walking, and of course a lot of talking between the people in the class and and so I one of my jobs was not only to teach the class, but also to make sure that I had some. Really good crash, ladies, to take care of the children. So the mothers didn't have to have any worries on that concern. I look back on that with fond memories of the many, many mothers I met. Not only did I do some daytime classes, but I also did a couple of evening classes, one at Walkerville and another one over at Mcgill's for a short time. I didn't particularly want to work much at night because I also belonged to a choir, and that was always evening practice. And also I like to spend time with the family. Uh. So that that was the life we settled back into for a couple of years. And then Graham went to high school at the local local. What was then called Thornton High School, which these days is called Charles Campbell Secondary College. And Bruce and I were quite keen to show our support to the school. And so Bruce was on the school council at Thorndon High School, and I used to go to meetings, the school council meetings at the primary school. So, and we also began to have a little bit more care about a little bit more looking after with older people in our family around about. The early 1980s. So again, I was doing. Enjoyable part time work. But I also meant that I had time to spend with elderly members of the family who needed help. After five years at Thornton High School, Graham went to Adelaide University to study electrical and electronic engineering, which was rather following in Father's footsteps. While he was there, Adelaide University became much more open to the idea of double degrees, and so Graham. Spent five years at Adelaide University and emerged with a an an honours degree in electrical engineering plus a science degree where he did a a lot of computing, mathematics and physics. Because that was his main fields of interest. By the time he finished it, I'd like the university. Linda was just beginning high school. And she. She was a very musical child. She played the piano and the violin and sang. She used to say she played two stringed instruments. One was the violin and the other one was the tennis racket, because she also loved playing a lot of sport and which Graham did too. Uhm. Because of her musical interest, Linda did applied for a A a scholarship to Marrickville High School. We certainly did not live in the district for it, but she was accepted there as a special interest music student. And so her five years at Marrickville High School were spent. Studying academic subjects, which he loved and also doing a lot of music. Performing in the school orchestra, the school choir and continuing with her prior private individual lessons of. Piano and violin. So All in all, the those were very, very, very busy years for me. I was quite often the chauffeur driving Linda to many of her. Music and sporting A. Engagements and I remember one day after I had taken a. Group. Of of students from Maryville High School to play at a. A morning. I don't exactly know what it was, but I'm a mournings program and at the Adelaide Town Hall and afterwards I had to take the children back to Maryville High School and they all said to me, ohh, we don't want to be bothered putting our instruments into the lock up at school. Will you keep them in your car? And when you come back after school, we'll get them out and. That will be much easier for us. I remember I said yes and then afterwards, after I'd driven away, I thought, my goodness gracious me with a a couple of cellos and about four violins sitting in the back of my station wagon. I thought. I think I've got several 10s of $1000 worth of instruments in the back of my car. I need to be very careful what I do with it today, so I think I brought it home and parked it. I backed into the driveway so that nobody could run into the back of the car and. I didn't go out again until I went back to the school with all those. Instruments. I never ever did that again. With so many instruments. Because of that. Interest in music. Linda had the opportunity to travel to England and France with the school in 1987. And that meant that in return, we had students from France staying with us in 1988. So that opened up our world a lot more because. Linda told us about her travels and then when the French students came, we billet had one of them and there were a lot of activities involving the students and the parents. And so that was an interesting time for us. Linda appeared to be heading to be a musician, but she too was doing really well at school in all of her subjects. I think her German teacher cried when she gave up German. But she was still doing very well in English to maths, physics, chemistry. You name it. She did it. And so at the last minute she decided that she too, was going to do an engineering course at Adelaide University. Which she did. And she also emerged with her honours degree. And at that stage, Graham was working at what was then called DSP TO at Salisbury, and she got a job there too. He Graham then moved out away from there to what was then called Telecom, because there was a a project going the over the over the horizon radar and the research was being done at the STO. And the development was being done by the engineers at telecom. We had an amusing dinner one night when? Graham came home and he said to us, he said, well, some of my team. Went to up to Salisbury today to talk to the research people there and he said they came back and said there was a very bossy young female engineer telling us how to do our job properly and he said I looked at them and said yes, that would be right. That would be my sister. He said I didn't hear anymore complaints about the female engineer who was telling them how to do their. Work. So. After that. Linda spent two years at Dsto. During that time, she travelled extensively in the US. Ohh and other places. Yeah, now mostly in the US on communication defence communications. So she liaised with the American military quite a bit. And she said that that actually penalised her a lot because even in until quite recent times when she flies into the US, She always gets investigated because unfortunately, she's been to many of their military establishments for work. And I think they think she might be a spy in disguise, but she's not. Uh, yeah. So Graham actually moved away from telecom when they stopped working on the Jindalee over the Horizon Radar project. And he went, ended up working for GSR Great Southern Railways. Who took over when Australian National Rail? Left. The the rail network here. They walked out on a Sunday night. The Sr. took over on a Monday morning and it was a huge mess that they took over. Graham used to go to work dressed, befitting a professional engineer's suit. Shirt and tie, and quite often when he came home at the end of the day, the shirt would not be terribly clean and the tie would be missing. And one day I said to him, look, what are you doing at work? And he said, well, mum, it's like this we have to often dig across the yard down at the. Row yards at. Mile End to find out where the cables have been laid, he said. They haven't left any records of where things have been done, so he said we have to find out the. Hard. Way anyway, I was very proud of the fact that he was ready to get his hands dirty along with everybody else and do some real work as well as the. Clever work. After he'd been there a couple of years, he invited Bruce and me down one Sunday afternoon to show us what he had been doing. He and his team, and we were absolutely astounded when he went to work there. They were working basically in a tin shed. Which was part of. The. Along the the rail railway lines between Mile End and Keswick and from that tin shed, they had built a proper building, air conditioned and everything to house the computer that Graham was working on. And this would be the computer. That would give them a booking system for all of their. All the rail journeys people wanted to make and when he took us down and showed us into this beautiful, clean new building and we saw the big computer in there and how, how well and how neatly the people had worked on it, we were absolutely amazed. I'm very proud of what our son and his team had achieved and so he was no longer going to work and crawling in under under a desk to work in a in a tin tin shed somewhere behind. But he was going to work in much nicer condition. Now, during the time that he worked there, a certain young lady. And her name is Peter, spelled P/E. ITA. Who was a Melbourne girl came over to work at GSR because she was working not on the technical stuff that Graham was involved in, but she was very good on the people side of the business, booking people on holidays, working out accommodation. And generally keeping the customers happy. She's very good at. That, and so this beautiful young lady from Melbourne. And our son fell in love. And that's been a a very nice story of its own, which has in the long run produced us three beautiful grandchildren. The only downside is that they live in Melbourne. We were very sad when we heard that that Peter was going home to Melbourne and that Graham was going to follow her, but we were happy because we knew that she was the right girl and we have very much enjoyed. Watching these three grandchildren that they have produced for us grow up over the last 22 years. When Bruce and I well up until recent times, Bruce and I have been able to go to Melbourne and quite often we would go over and spend school holidays helping to look after the children, or if Peter, because of her work in the travel industry, had to go away for work, we would go over. And be the grandparents who took our children to school. And we enjoyed very much being part of their lives and knowing what they were doing. In fact, I guess we were there so often that the little kindergarten where the children went, the teachers there knew knew us and they were really, really happy when Bruce and I came, because Bruce used to take home all the broken toys and mend them. Nobody else. It. That and and if Peter was away for work, then I would go down and take her turn on the kindergarten roster, where I cut up fruit for morning lunch and had a chance to watch all the children playing and doing their activities. So we've got really nice memories of actually seeing the Melbourne grandchildren. Grow up and they are now. We've got two young men who are well over 6 foot tall. And Jay will be turning 22 just after Christmas. Ben will be turning 19 in October and Leila will be turning 14 in August. So we're very proud of of them and Jay is a student at Monash University. And Ben has just begun course, which he hopes will lead him to become a physics teacher in schools. And he's actually doing his first school placement this week. But Leila is still firmly at high school. Meanwhile, at the time when Graham and Peter were getting married very early in 2002, Linda had moved from Adelaide. She too left the STO after two years because she went across to Melbourne. University, where she did her PhD. And she was fortunate enough to have a particular, particularly special scholarship which enabled her to go overseas at least twice during her. PhD work and she worked in the Munich Aerospace Labs and. Had a good chance to do a bit of travelling while she. Was in Europe too. So while she was at Melbourne University, during that she met quite a few students from Sweden and Greece. And other countries so that when she went travelling in Europe, although she was on her own, she actually had people. That she could contact if she needed help because of her friendship with the students here. And in fact, she was amused. One day when she went to stay with one of the. Students. Families in Greece and they said to her ohh you're staying with? Andrew's family. Are you betrothed to him? She said no. We're just good friends. And the the girl he would really like to marry is actually from Sweden. She said. I don't know how they coped with that, but she said it was handy because she could get local knowledge about. Travel arrangements and so on. And. So Linda's actually had friends from all over the world because she's had the opportunity to travel both while she was a student and. For her work. So in 2000, after she finished her PhD in Melbourne in 1988, nineteen 9898, she came back to Adelaide for one year and worked at Adelaide University in 1999. But then she saw the job of her dreams advertised in Sydney. So in 2000 she went to Sydney to live. And that's where she met her husband. So by the time Graham was married, we knew that there was an we were likely to be enlarging our family again. And so in 2003, May 2003, Linda and Marcus were married. And so originally we had grandchildren in Melbourne and grandchildren in Sydney and Bruce and I did quite a bit of travelling in the car. And. And that was most enjoyable. We we both like travelling from the car and we like travelling to Paris, Melbourne and to Sydney to see our grandchildren and sometimes we did the a big triangle we would drive to Sydney first. Spend time there, then drive down to Melbourne, spend a bit more time there and then come back to Adelaide or we'd go the other way round. However in. When Linda's two children were still quite small, Marcus was not very well at all, and she found that she needed. Extra help with the two little kiddies. And so Linda and Marcus relocated back to Adelaide in 2008. And so Bruce and I ended up with two of our grandchildren in that day. And we've been able to watch Isaac, who turned 20 last.

Next.

Monday. And Olivia, who will turn 18 in September, we've been able to watch them grow up close at hand, and we've been able to share picking up, picking them up after school and taking them to trampolining, which was something that they loved and did for quite a few years. And chilled about a year ago. They both excelled at that, and that has given them the opportunity to make quite a lot of Interstate trips to national championships where they have done quite they've done well. They've got the medals to show for it. And Olivia even had a trip to Budapest. Just, yeah, less than two years ago. So they've been very lucky in that they too have had a chance to travel and meet lots of people and and do something different, quite different from my day. I, I marvel at the opportunities that young people have now. And. Young Isaac has been working at the airport this year as a baggage handler. His desire and loss would be to. Big. Be a pilot, become a pilot. He was offered the opportunity to go to Adelaide University this year to study engineering. But he deferred that because he is trying very hard to get into the Air Force. In in the meantime, he is working at the airport to earn some money and at least while he's there, busy working, working with the luggage handling, he can smell. The avgas I think that makes him happy. He certainly seems to be enjoying the job even though he has to get up very, very early some mornings while it's still pitch black or work late nights sometimes.

The.

Olivia is finishing high school this year. She's still not quite sure what she would like to do in the future, but I think she wouldn't be the only young person in that position, because when you're 17, not quite 18, it's hard to know what you really want to do for the next few years at least. But she. To replace her physical activity, Olivia has gone back to playing soccer. She's joined the Adelaide University Soccer club and seems to be enjoying that activity very much indeed. So she's still pretty active. And so is our SEC. He. He does anything from diving off high cliffs into the water. Oh, yes. So does Olivia to climbing around on the tree, climbing the city or riding a push bike. Whatever takes energy, they're very good at doing. So really, from the time our children were married in 2002 and 2003 for Bruce and me, a lot of our life has been involved with. Seeing our children supporting our children's seeing our grandchildren while we're supporting our children as best we could in any way we could, and we've had a lot of pleasure out of that. Uhm. Bruce continued working until. In July 2006, when he retired after 42 years ending up as associate professor in the electrical engineering department. At that stage, he. One of the things he took up on to do in retirement, the Rotary Club of Campbelltown were. Due to host the Rotary Conference in 2007 and they were going to do that up at the Faith Lutheran School at Tanunda, and Bruce was the. Conference secretary his friend Joe Hudspeth, was the conference treasurer. Joe was a retired banker, and so he was very good at handling money and also knowing how to talk bank, to talk to banks, to get the services he needed. Bruce, on the other hand, was the Wiz with the computer and so. Joe who? Was a few years older than US and wasn't so familiar with with things in the computing age. Jarrah and Bruce spent many, many hours together in our. Study working together and very successfully I might add, because things went very smoothly for the conference. Bruce, on the other hand, trying to get hold of some software that was supposed to have been developed for helping clubs to run these conferences. And we're talking about several 100 people coming to the conference. So with not a small. Rob and somehow or other the software was never produced and there didn't seem to be any concrete help was coming. So Bruce set out to create his own database. And much to the horror of the people who consider themselves computer specialists, Bruce used excel to do most of the work because that could cope with. Data as well word information as well as financial information, and he also managed to do mail merge so that all of the conference information that was sent out was generated. And Bruce was. Across the lot. And I have to say that when we actually got to the conference in 2007 and there were a few people who turned up at the last minute or important people who kind of came by and the the President of the club, Bob, who was running the show, would come to Bruce and say, Ohh, can we? Managed to fit this person in for dinner or do this or do that and Bruce was able to say yes and he.

Could.

And it was all there. Correct and recorded and. We patted ourselves on the back because we thought that Bruce and Joe between them did a very good job in the background, and Jim's wife Julie and I patted ourselves on the back because we thought we kept our men happy, bringing them cups of coffee and helping them in any way. I put while I were doing the necessary work in their little cubby hole. So. I jumped ahead a little bit then because that conference was in May 2007. In the mean time. We had thought that. Bruce and I would go for a little retirement holiday with Bruce's sister Helen and her husband Rob. Helen and I suggest going to New Zealand for three weeks. This was in January 2007. Bruce said no, that's too long for me to be away. I don't want to be away that long. So Helen and I booked a holiday in Tasmania for about 10 days and Bruce said yes, he was happy with that. However, whether Bruce had a premonition, I don't know. But he had documented everything he'd done on the computer with regards to the Rotary Conference. And. He said just in case something, you know, something happens to me. So we went off for our holiday in Tasmania. We were having a lovely time. And we've done most of it. We got to Launceston. And we had a very pleasant Saturday night because the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra was playing at a a park in Launceston and we went along and had a really wonderful concert. But the next morning when Bruce left our lodgings. And walk down the street to buy a newspaper. Disaster struck. A lady driving a car with her friend. Drove through a red light while Bruce was crossing the road at the pedestrian crossing. She didn't hit Bruce straight up. First of all, she hit cars that were waiting in the intersection to turn right. When Bruce had finished crossing the road. But unfortunately when she hit the car that deflected her and she. Then. Ran into Bruce. He went up over the car. Smashed the windscreen and then landed on his head on the road behind the car. I think she did. Her best to kill him but. She didn't quite succeed. Fortunately for us. That was. List. Listen, listen a kilometer away from the Launceston General Hospital. That was one good thing. The other good thing is that the car that this lady hit in a was a young lady who'd obviously done her first aid, and she could see that Bruce was no longer in a. Precarious position. He was not in the middle of the road. He was near the gutter and she said to everybody, just call the ambulance and leave him. Still, nobody's going to run over him because the cars are all stopped. And so when the ambulance crew came to collect Bruce, they there was no further spinal injury other than what had been done originally. So he was taken to Launceston General Hospital and. I remember saying to Helen Bruce has been gone too long, and with that there was a knock at the door. And somebody came to tell us that Bruce had been taken to the Launceston hospital. So we went down there. He was conscious. But his one of his ears, his right ear, looked like it had been shredded. But that wasn't the worst. When they did scans, they could see that Bruce Bruce had a fracture at C2 in his neck, and there was a further problem down the spine. Between C6 and C7. Hello, Rochelle. Look, I'm in the middle of a something else. Can I get you to call me later today, please? Light in the afternoon. No, that would be fine. Thanks, Rochelle. Boden. Right.

Yes.

OK. While Bruce was at Launceston Hospital. A really pretty young Chinese Doctor Who sewed up Bruce's ear. I think her grandmother must have taught her how to sew because she did a beautiful job and you would never know that that Bruce's ear had been anything. But in fact, she did such a wonderful job. That was one of the good things. The other good thing was that Launceston hospital looked after Bruce very well, but the bad thing was they said to me we can't deal with his spinal injuries here and I said does that mean he goes to Hobart Hospital and they said no, Hobart Hospital can't deal with it either. He has to go to Melbourne, so they arranged for a place to be held at Austin Hospital in Melbourne for Bruce and then they had to organise for him to be flown across to Melbourne. And. By the time everything had been arranged on the Sunday, the place at Austin Hospital had already been taken by a motorbike accident and so other arrangements had to be made and. They got a place for Bruce at Epworth Hospital. That was so Bruce's accident was on a Sunday morning around about 10:00 AM. And eventually, they said to us he would be flying out. Early on the Monday morning to go to Melbourne and so we cancelled Helen, Rob and I cancelled all of our. The rest of our holiday plans and Rob organised a flight for us. Again before daylight from. Launceston across to Melbourne. And at that stage, I think at that stage, we still thought he was going to the Austin hospital. And so our daughter-in-law, Peter in Melbourne had been on the phone and had organised some accommodation for us at Heidelberg, near the Austin hospital. But by the time we got over to Melbourne, we discovered that that the place that Austin Hospital had gone and Bruce would be going to Epworth, well, that was a very long Monday. We waited and waited and waited. And then we heard that about 11:00 that night. That Bruce was. Being flown across. To Moorabbin airport. And then he would be transported by Rd. ambulance. To Epworth hospital. So we went to Epworth hospital and we waited and I think it was after midnight when he came in and I have to say that the ambulance crew said they were so relieved when they got Bruce there in one piece because he'd come over really wrapped in bubble wrap, I think. Layers and layers of soft packaging so that his spine would not be. Moved to create further problems. Interestingly enough, uhm, as some grime because he was living in Melbourne, he was at the hospital with Helen, Rob and me that night as we waited for Bruce to come. And I don't remember him taking a photograph that he did. He took one of me and he took one of Helen. Days later, when I saw that photograph first, I saw Helens and I thought ohh my goodness, doesn't she look tired and and drawn? And then I saw my photograph. It's the worst photograph I've ever had taken. But I guess I I was very, very tired. I hadn't had much sleep in the previous two days anyway. So Helen, Rob and I to begin with, we thought well, we're in the wrong place. But it turned out very well because one of the rail lines. Went from through Heidelberg station and straight down to Richmond Station and Richmond Station. Was right near the Epworth Hospital, so I think we were there for three days up at Heidelberg. It really was no problem to get to the hospital to be with Bruce. But after that we moved down to accommodation much nearer to the hospital. However, it was also Grand Prix time in Melbourne and accommodation was very, very scarce. And I think in the time that. I was in Melbourne. I moved several times. Because the accommodation was so hard to get. I felt very sorry for other people that I met at the hospital. For whom? English was not their first language, and they were trying to deal with. Illness and injury in the family, as well as trying to get accommodation for family members so they could be near the the injured people and I thought I found it enough of a nightmare without having a language difficulty to deal with anyway. So Bruce got. To Epworth Hospital's in the early hours of the Tuesday morning, and he didn't have surgery until the Friday morning, so they were very anxious days. But fortunately for us. He had a talented surgeon who operated, and they had to take a chip of bone from Bruce's hip to put in his neck. And he's also got a plate in his neck, which means he had reduced mobility. But he also, when he came out of surgery, was wearing. What is sometimes called a crown of thorns because it's a a device where you or the other name for it, it's a Halo. You've got a metal ring around your. Head. Rods going down strap to support on your chest and they had lambs all padding under that so that it didn't chase Bruce's chest. And the crown of Thorns's name came because where the vertical supports go up to join the Halo screws go into your skull, into the bone. So while Bruce had that on, he had to be terribly, terribly careful not to. Jar or bump or anything like that. That was OK while he was in bed in hospital, but he was still wearing that apparatus even when we came back to Adelaide. And. Uhm. Yeah. So we had to be very careful because a fall with that could have Jarred and unset all the work that had been done on these bones. Anyway so. Helen and Rob eventually came back to Adelaide and and I stayed on in Melbourne until Bruce was able to fly home and after the initial. Accommodation near the hospital. I was later able to move down and stay with Peter's mother and again because of the wonderful train service in Melbourne, I could jump on a train near her house and get to the hospital. I just found and I became quite an. Expert on the Melbourne trains in those few weeks and I found that train service excellent. So eventually the day came when Bruce was allowed to fly back to Adelaide. Amusingly. They put us on the plane first. Bruce couldn't fit under the bulk head near the window because of what was on his because of the apparatus on his head. He had to sit near the aisle and so of course people came into the plane and they were throwing their luggage up into the overhead luggage, like overhead luggage lockers. And I'm thinking. I don't want Bruce to be hit by any of those bags. I wish that they'd let everybody else on the plane 1st and put us on last. And of course, what did they do when we got to Adelaide, they reversed the procedure and made us sit there while everybody got there, like, out of the overhead lockers again. And I was thinking, Oh my goodness. But any rate, fortunately. Nobody hit Bruce with their bag and we eventually got off the plane and we were able to come home. In the main wall. Bruce, his sister Helen had been very busy in Adelaide and she'd organised all sorts of things, so when we came home Bruce had a hospital bed in the family room and other equipment that they thought would be. Useful to us. This was being paid for by the motor accident insurance in Tasmania. And I will have to say that the Tasmanian Government motor insurance was not very generous, far less generous than everything else in the other states of mainland Australia. Tasmania seemed to be a. On its own in that regard, however, we did have everything that we needed. And versus uhm. Treatment was taken over by a doctor at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and. Bruce was managed through outpatient, so I was looking after him at home and. We had visits to the outpatients at the Royal Adelaide and this is where it became tricky about Bruce having that equipment on his head, because getting in and out of car was difficult. And we just had to be careful in public that nobody tripped him up or knocked him again. Fortunately, the doctor in Adelaide had different ideas from the Doctor in Melbourne. And we found that instead of having to wear that for 12 months, sorry 12 weeks, as the Melbourne doctor had recommended, the doctor in Adelaide said no, six weeks is enough. And so at the end of six weeks, the Crown of Thorns was removed, much to. Bruces relief and mine too. The other interesting thing was that, as I said, Bruce had cotton, lambs, wool padding. Under the. Under the rods that were strapped to his chest. And so showering was a non event really. He had to have washes and every few days they would actually remove the lambs wool and make sure that he he was properly washed. But of course, once that apparatus was gone, that made life a whole lot easier. So. We had. A lot of friends who. Did a lot of things to help us at that time, made sure our lawns were mine and things like that. And when Bruce had been given the all clear by the doctors, I remember 1 morning we had all had breakfast together at a little cafe over at. Uhm. The Lakes Lakeside Cafe over at. I can't. Some are just over here. Uhm. For once in my life I've I've forgotten something that will come back to me. We'll add that later.

OK.

Yeah. So that that was nice. And and then of course Bruce had this Rotary conference that he was really keen to get back to him get on the job and seeing that he was spending his time sitting at the computer, that was good because he didn't have to be very physical. And so he was actually able to. To what? He promised that he would do for the Rotary Club. In May, which was a really amazing recovery from February to May, he come all that way and was back. Able to do quite a quite a big job and I have to add it was a very successful Rotary conference. The the club did a really good job in that amazing venue at Faith Lutheran School.

So how many? How many months away from work?

Well, Bruce, because Bruce had retired the year before.

OK. That's. Yeah, that was after return.

Just after retirement? Yes. So it was a terrible blow. And I laughed because Bruce told me that one day while he was in Epworth hospital. He had to do some sort of a test and he didn't really remember what it was because he wasn't very interested in it and I think it was probably a psychological test and because he wasn't interested, I'm sure he would have failed at it abysmally. Because if he's not interested in something, he doesn't bother with it. But I was laughing to myself because I thought if anybody tells me that he, uhm, had brain damage, IW will bring out my little notebook because I sat by Bruce's bedside when he dictated to me everything that had to be done. On the computer for the Rotary Conference and I thought if anybody says he's got brain damage, I'm gonna say. Right. Could you do all this while lying in your bed? There? The answer would be no. And what he had dictated to me made perfect sense. I knew enough about what he was doing to know that.

Hmm.

I think I've still got. Those notes tucked away somewhere. I must show them to him one day anyway, so that was.

We we got now about 3 minutes, yeah.

3 minutes. Right? Well, I've spent a long time telling you about what was a good part of our life with children and grandchildren and a very traumatic part of our life in 2007. But in the end, Bruce got back to driving and so we were able to continue our.

MHM.

Our room. Travelling to the children. And I'll just add one more thing. One of the things that I noticed in driving Interstate was that Bruce and I shared that the driving and when we were driving the Camry. A lot of the motorists, particularly male motorists, were not terribly courteous to me as a an older female driver. But when we bought a Prado in 2012 and we started doing the Interstate trips and that all of a sudden. I was treated with much more respect. Interestingly enough, our daughter Linda has no same thing when she drives our Prado, she gets a lot more respect on the road than when she's in a small car. Hmm. I don't think that should be the case at all, but sadly it is.

The price of the car.

Size of the car. Yes. So I think we'll leave.

It there OK, one question I had was your teaching occupation ended as you were leaving to America?

Yes, there there is a bit more to it later on, but but not at that stage. Oakton is the suburb I was trying to think. Of. OK. Oakton. Yes. So you have my permission to put.

That in OK, so the Australian education system. The When a female teacher get married or have children usually. They have to.

Resign in my day. Not anymore.

They have to. Yeah. OK. When did that change?

I think in the 1970s, OK, when I was sort of busy doing other things going overseas and having children. But yes, umm, at the time I was because I grew up with brothers and I thought that. What they could do, I should be able to do too. I thought this is wrong, but a lot of my friends didn't understand why I thought it wasn't fair. They made us resigned for two days, which meant you lost two days pay. But you also lost a lot of all your entitlements.

Hmm.

That's not so anymore. So in a way like I didn't go back into the classroom for a long time, partly because I had, as I was tipped. But I've always taught. So I taught keeps it. And that encompassed other interests, like with health and physical activity and. And I've done other teaching things since, so I've I've always taught in some some way shape or form. OK, if it's not in the classroom.

Yeah.

OK. Another question I had was. The you get you gave an initial. I think your son worked up. Maybe your daughter, the initial the name of the place. Yeah.

Dsto defense, Scientific and technology organization. OK. If you write DST I, it will be recognised. It's the name has now been changed. I think it might be just DST. Originally it used to be called WR E Weapons research establishment.

Yeah.

Yeah. OK. OK.

It's had the government keeps changing the name, but if you can say defence organisation at Salisbury, people will know.

Yeah. MHM.

Yes, sorry. I'm sorry, that's not boring.

No, no, no.

Right.