last's words: Time with the family

Politicians who leave office involuntarily often say they are departing to spend more time with their family. I know whereof they speak. After 1965 as my professional life got increasingly crowded with research and teaching and cluttered with out of town meetings, I resented the way my work was eroding leisure evening hours and weekend days I wanted to share with Wendy and our children. Looking back on it however, I believe I managed the balance between work and family life well, if more by happenstance than careful planning.

The balancing act began imperceptibly and without thought on my part or Wendy’s. In early 1960 we drove our Holden station wagon from Adelaide to Sydney where I did my first year of public health training. We traveled leisurely, staying overnight with friends Jan and Alan Fry on their farm near Bordertown, then at motels along our route. We repeated the process on the return journey to Adelaide at the end of the academic year in November. Those two road trips, each of 3 or 4 days, thrust us all together at close quarters, Wendy and I on the front seat, Rebecca and David in the back.

Near Canberra en route between Sydney
and Adelaide, 1960

Rebecca supervising Alan Fry and his son John

Those were happy times, the whole family at close quarters for several days, two adults, two tiny tots and Helen our dachshund bitch. Wendy and I were aware of the stress on our two toddlers and bribed them shamelessly with frequent doses of candy and ice-cream. At weekends after we reached Sydney we explored the ocean surfing beaches and the spectacular harbour. Rebecca and David loved to guddle in the sand, so we spent many leisure hours at the ocean beaches, some on the crowded harbour beaches. I’d have been bored if I hadn’t got so much vicarious pleasure from watching our children digging in the sand during those all-together family times.

In 1961 we all traveled to England where I had a 12-month visiting scholar position in the MRC Social Medicine Research Unit in London. As almost everyone did until the late 1960s we traveled by ship; air travel was prohibitively expensive in those days. We chose to travel on a cargo ship carrying 12 passengers, rather than a regular passenger liner. It was an inspired choice. Wendy and I had a marvelous time, meals at the captain’s table with a cabin steward minding the kids while we ate. The cabin steward was a rather plump young woman and one day David, who was teething, bit her arm. She carried tooth marks for a fortnight and we were too poor to tip her as generously as we ought to have done. In all other respects that sea voyage was a wonderful experience and helped to bond our family.

Wendy and Rebecca stride past the leaning tower

Wendy and Rebecca beside the Arno
and the Ponte Vecchio, 1962

The return journey to Adelaide in 1962 further strengthened the family bonds with the added bonus of interesting ports of call. We boarded our ship in Rotterdam and took on more cargo at Antwerp, Marseille, Genoa, Livorno (near Pisa and Florence with time to visit both) and the Turkish port of Iskanderum, at the North-East corner of the Mediterranean. All were interesting, child-friendly ports, and we had plenty of time to explore them.

Michelangelo's David

R and D on a Marseille sidewalk, 1962

At sea I began the much loved custom of reading to the kids from Winnie the Pooh, Wind in the Willows, Charlotte’s Web and The Magic Pudding. (When we ran out of kids’ books in the Indian Ocean, I made up the story I began to write down for the first time 52 years later in 2014).

Our 3 kids on deck, Brisbane

Climbing to the upper deck, 1964

In January-February 1964 we had another long sea voyage, from Sydney to Brisbane, across the Pacific through the Panama Canal to Kingston, Jamaica, Vera Cruz, Mexico, then up the eastern seaboard of the USA. I signed on as ship's surgeon and got a free passage with greatly reduced fares for the family - and luxury accommodation in a spacious air-conditioned cabin. There were three kids now, the youngest, Jonathan, six months old and very fragile, born with a life threatening congenital heart defect. He wasn’t given much chance of surviving but reconstructive heart surgery a few years later was spectacularly successful. Nearly 50 years later he is still going strong. I’ve described that sea voyage in detail elsewhere. We were en route to Burlington, Vermont where I’d been invited to become assistant professor of epidemiology and community medicine at the medical college of the University of Vermont. We bought a Volkswagen van to get about with space for all the paraphernalia small children need, and in my time off we explored the North-East corner of the USA rather thoroughly. That was more family bonding time.

A year later a choice between two invitations didn’t challenge us: should I take the family to live in the ancient city of Edinburgh, Scotland, or to Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, 50 miles from Washington DC, with a salary twice as high? In Baltimore we’d have to live at least an hour’s commute from my office, probably more. Long working hours, frequent evening meetings and a lot of travel to distant research sites would reduce family time drastically. Besides that, we were out of sync with American values and customs like the use of guns to solve problems.

Jonathan beside our VW camper at Loch Lomond, 1967

In Edinburgh we bought another VW bus, this one equipped as a camper. In fact we bought two, because the first one didn’t accommodate all of us when we camped. We traded it in for one with a lift-up roof, which provided space for Rebecca and David to sleep above us in bunks, and delicate little Jonathan slept at the back on the flat area above the engine. Boomer, our Labrador, slept on the floor below the queen-size bed for Wendy and me, adding fragrance to the air with his uniquely pungent doggy farts.

What times we had in that VW camper van! We got to know very well the ancient city of Edinburgh and its environs. We visited Edinburgh Castle more times than I can count and never tired of it. At weekends we went several times to Loch Lomond and on to the west coast, gazing out from the Argyle hills to the islands in and near the Firth of Clyde. Our kids loved pottering about in the ruins of mediaeval castles, Dirleton on the Firth of Forth, Tantallan on the North Sea coast near the lovely little fishing village of Dunbar, and the grim bottle dungeon beside the castle at St Andrews. A bottle dungeon is so called because it is shaped like a bottle, a narrow neck at ground level and underground below it, slimy inward sloping walls no miscreant could possibly climb, opening out to a level space at the bottom, large enough to hold perhaps a dozen or twenty criminals who remained there until they died. Bottle dungeons appealed to David’s macabre mind; but he never told us whom it was he’d like to incarcerate.

Wendy and kids at Dirleton Castle, 1968

We had some truly wonderful weekend excursions in our VW camper van. We had a few disasters too. There was the weekend it never stopped raining, a soft, but infinitely penetrating rain that soaked anyone foolish enough to venture out of shelter for even a minute or so – as all of us had to from time to time to inspect the toilets some distance away. It was the season of midges too. Midges are tiny flying insects that particularly troubled Wendy because they got behind her glasses to feast on the moisture in the corners of her eyes. The kids were miserable and grizzly. Boomer tried to drive the midges away by emitting pungent farts even more poisonous than usual. As we drove away over the pass called Rest and Be Thankful at the end of that weekend fiasco, all of us smelling like wet dogs, Wendy and I resolved that next summer we’d cross the sea to the continent of Europe, away from all the rain and the midges, to lands of warm sunshine, Mediterranean beaches, bountiful fruits, tasty cheeses and wines fit for the gods.

Wendy about to prepare lunch,
Austrian Tyrol, 1967

Swiss Alps from Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse

We had European VW camping holidays in 1967 and 1969, two near-perfect experiences, holidays replete with memories enough for several lifetimes. We took much the same route for both: south from Edinburgh on the A1/M1 to Harwich, car ferry to ‘S Gravenhaage (“Hook of Holland”) and along the Rhine to south Germany, the Black Forest, then along the autobahn through Bavaria to the Austrian Tyrol, over precipitous passes, Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse, Furkapass, St Bernard’s Pass, down into northern Italy, eastward to Venezia, on a further 30 Km beyond Venice to the wide sandy beach at Iesolo. This was a perfect beach for small children with calm warm seas to adults’ hip level 15-20 meters from the shore, like an enormous paddle pool. We camped everywhere at the very well set up European camp grounds. We stayed 7-10 days at the Iesolo camp, eating fresh fruit, spicy barbecued chicken from the camp store, bread and gorgonzola which David loved as much as I do, though fortunately he didn’t acquire a taste for the wine that Wendy and I consumed by the flask. In 1969 we went on from Iesolo to camp by the Arno at Florence, re-introduced Rebecca and David to Piazza della Signore, the statues in the loggia, Michelangelo’s David outside the Palazzo, and the delicious food of Tuscany. We went to Sienna which the kids enjoyed more than Florence because there were no crowds, and San Giminiano with its towers, and Poggibonsi because the name captivated the kids and because it’s whence comes the best chianti. We took 4-5 days to reach Italy from Holland, and a week to get back via Switzerland, camping usually in places noted for their beauty, artistic and cultural treasures, historical significance, or all of these qualities. We visited Mad King Ludwig’s castle at Neueschwanstein, some of the castles along the spectacular fortified stretch of the Rhine, had a brief cruise on a Rhine steamer, visited Venice and had a ride in a gondola. Wendy and I stored memories to last a lifetime, knowing by the time of the 1969 holiday that we would soon be leaving Edinburgh for Ottawa, uncertain whether we’d ever have another chance to see these wonderful places.

Dining al fresco, Florence, 1969

Jonathan at our camp in Iesolo

David in the sea at Iesolo

In a gondola, Venice, 1969

Those European camping holidays were uniformly happy times, although not 100% happy 100% of the time. Wendy’s feet are marred by unsuccessful bunion surgery when she was a teenager. For the first 25 or so years of our married life I spent many hours waiting for her in shoe shops where she tried in vain to find elegant shoes to fit. In Venice she insisted against all my protestations in buying a costly pair of fashionable sandals. A few days later she complained that they pinched her toes: she couldn’t wear them any more. I made an ill-considered sarcastic remark, whereupon she erupted like a volcano and thus began the worst quarrel ever in our 55 years together. The kids who observed it all were terrified that the parents they loved were breaking up forever. It blew over like a passing summer storm after an hour. Wendy and I forgot it and moved on, but months later a remark of Rebecca’s reminded us how impressionable children can be, how easy it is for them to become emotionally disturbed by seeing and hearing their parents fight. I knew this well of course from scrappy memories of the fights in my parents’ doomed marriage. Wendy and I were blessed by a harmonious union in which that tumultuous dispute on our last day in Iesolo was a rare blemish. We soon forgot it, buried it under innumerable happy and even hilarious memories, some captured in photos illustrating this memoir fragment.

Here are a few fragments of happier memory:

On a one-lane track in the west of Scotland we came over a hummock to be confronted by shaggy highland cattle, one of them barely 2 meters away on the track glaring us down, its long prehistoric horns aimed menacingly at us. We couldn’t advance until it got out of our way, which it took interminable time to do.

Immobilized in a traffic jam on the autostrada near Milan, David was overcome by an irresistible urge to void his bowels. We had a miniature potty for Jonathan so David was obliged to perch precariously upon this. Somehow in the jerks of frequent stops and starts he managed to do what he had to do without spilling anything, despite filling the tiny potty almost to the rim.

Driving desperately to reach Harwich for the early morning ferry, we couldn’t find the campground where we’d planned to stay the night before embarking. Darkness descended. We found an open space that appeared to be common land, and tucked in for the night, R and D above us, J behind us atop the engine. We were awakened at dawn by heavy trucks grinding their gears as they tried to pass our camper van to enter the landfill site where we’d partially blocked the entrance.

Camped next to us at Loch Lomond on that infamous wet weekend were a young couple who arrived on a motor bike and set up a tiny pup tent with commendable efficiency. All we saw of them after that was a hand and arm that emerged from the tent to flip the steak or sausage they grilled on a small spirit stove. The tent was too small for them to stand up but Wendy and I thought they looked randy enough not to be interested in standing up anyway. They probably enjoyed their weekend more than we enjoyed ours.

On the autobahn outside Cologne we wanted to find a quieter road. Wendy consulted our excellent road map and directed me to an exit. We found ourselves to be not on a road but on a wide pathway in a municipal park with law-abiding Germans pushing babies in strollers, gazing disapprovingly at these barbaric Britishers who couldn’t tell a road from a pedestrian path.

We were camped in Bavaria during the first moon landing; near our VW camper bus was a German caravan with all the latest bells and whistles, including a TV. It was a small screen and black and white, with commentary in German that I translated as best I could for Wendy and our kids - and it turned out, for dozens of others in the rather large crowd that gathered to see this spectacle. We watched for well over an hour, quite late in the evening, keeping the kids up long past their regular bed time. It was a lovely, warm, velvety summer night with a full moon. It gave all of us memories to last a lifetime.

More photos to finish off --