A most scenic drive near where I grew up -- the road from Cairns to Port Douglas
1973
My first marriage
Dawn and I met at a Baroque Music Club meeting at Denis Ryan's place and one thing soon led to another. We lived together for a while before we got married. We first lived in a rented downstairs flat in Birriga Rd., Bellevue Hill.
Dawn and I decided to tie the knot because I had just become an academic and the wives of academics were at that time exempt from paying course fees if they wanted to do a degree. It was a registry office wedding on 9.2.1973.
Around the time we married, we bought together and subsequently lived in a small home unit at 1/27 Castlefield St, Bondi. We had a tabby cat there called "Purrfur".
I remember Dawn once asking me why it was that children always smile at me. "Do they?", was my response. I was unaware of it. I eventually figured out why, however. It was because I was smiling at them! I have always liked children.
Dawn also pointed out to me something else I did not know about myself -- that I changed my accent and way of speaking according to whom I am talking to. Among my University friends, I speak in an Educated Australian way but when talking to more working-class people such as petrol pump attendants (remember them?) I speak in a more Broad Australian way.
Dawn was 18 months younger than me, so was another wartime baby. She was another of the many redheads in my life and was when I met her a science teacher at "Ascham" -- a private girl's school at Edgecliff (in Sydney). She was about 5'7", had blue eyes, and was really lively.
Before I met her she used to ride motorbikes so she had a tomboy element in her. I had a 200cc Yamaha two-stroke motor-bike (plus my Mazda 1300) when I met her and we later bought a light trail bike which we both rode.
Her mother was Scottish-born and Dawn had some attachment to things Scots -- something we shared because of the Scottish traditions in my mother's family. Dawn had a brother, Trevor, who was a policeman.
The Scottish tradition of keeping things "secret" was alive and well in Dawn's case. Marriage breakups were traditionally seen as shameful in Scottish circles so no-one was supposed to know about Dawn's real father or Dawn's own earlier marriages.
Dawn and I were in a way too alike in that we were both very dominant so the marriage broke up after a year. I kept seeing her off and on after the breakup, however, as she is great fun to be with.
When I later married Joy Petrie, Joy and I used to eat out all the time and Dawn was the one who most frequently joined us at these dinners. Pretty pally for an ex-wife! It shows that Dawn and Joy got on very well but it also shows what fun company Dawn and I were for one-another. Not that we ever really saw eye to eye. She always thought I was a bit outrageous, in fact. She was however flexible enough to find that interesting and amusing.
In her later years she still had conventionally Leftist opinions -- such as a belief in global warming
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E.&O.E.
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