Biography, Event, Politics, Women's History

DAD’S EULOGY: Adrian Leonard Aldrick – We all knew him as Len or Dad or Dar

All the family helped around the property on Terrigal Road, in the orchard which supplemented the family income and in the vegetable garden or milking cows. Some would often recall having to bring the cows in for milking and in the winter when the frost was crackling under their bare feet, they would stand in the fresh cowpats just to keep their feet warm.

Len worked in the bush with his Father for about three years then got a job at a local orchard. A few months after the war ended, and aged about 19, Len and his mate decided to look for work further afield and ended up at Wee Waa in the North West of the State working on a property during the wheat season. Len also sought work in the Riverina. Our family would return some years later to live at that property outside Wee Waa called “Brushy Park”. By now he had met Neryl and came to live at Carlingford and they were married in 1947. Len worked in a sawmill at Parramatta then at HMV Homebush and EMI, pressing records. The record collection began to grow. Then it was back to Terrigal Road where Len and Neryl built a small house and he began cutting and carting logs for a local sawmill. By then they had two very young daughters, Phyllis and Maureen, and Len would come home from work and they would both get stuck into finishing the house working well into the nights.

Biography, Politics, Source, Women's History

Taking Control Now – Part 1

Conscious of coming from a society of many nationalities in all colours and shapes, I was constantly reminded I was different. Some friends would say, in winter, when everyone was wearing stockings, gloves and beret: ‘Gee, you wouldn’t know that you were brown from behind.’ Constantly telling me that I was not quite one of them, they seemed preoccupied with colour. I reacted violently.

By the end of first term I had bashed up everyone bashable. Everybody else ran away. I came home with my school books and ripped right through them all with my biro, screaming, ranting and raving and demanding to go home. My foster father asked if I would like to try another school. No, but I didn’t want to return to the violence of Retta Dixon Homes. My foster father encouraged me. I went to Greystanes. Half the teachers were Jews, including the principal. The other half were white Australians. I got on with all the Jews, and with very few of the others.I still fought and argued with teachers but began to settle down.