60 in 60 #18    Sally

I am reflecting on the last 60 years, and writing 60 blog posts in 60 days. 30 about people and 30 about events, places, experiences and entities.

 

Warren and Sally

I am an opportunist by nature. I love a bargain. I love op shops and garage sales and I’m a hawk-eye if there’s a hard rubbish collection in the neighbourhood. I also love camping. 

A strange combination of characteristics with which to introduce this chapter perhaps, but allow me to explain. 

I did my last two years of high school at Carine SHS in the northern suburbs of Perth and I can say without equivocation that they were the best two years of my school life. Carine was my fifth high school and I had never made good friends or properly fitted in before I went to Carine. Connecting with people, being accepted and having good friends made all the difference.

 

I was a good English student (I later won the English and Public Speaking prizes at the end of year 12) and because of this I was nominated to go on a Creative Writing and Drama camp for good English students from schools around the state. I jumped at the chance. The camp was held at St Catherine’s College at UWA during the school holidays. About fifty Yr 10-12 students gathered from schools all over Western Australia and we spent a wonderful week doing creative stuff, writing stories, plays and poetry, going to plays and performances, playing games  and hanging out. 

One of the campers was a girl called Sally who lived at Coomberdale and went to Central Midlands High School in Moora. We hit it off and decided to stay in touch after the camp. This all happened in 1979, long before the internet or mobile phones so we wrote letters. 

 

As it happened, Sally was getting braces and this meant regular trips to the dentist in Midland on a Saturday morning. On these occasions I would go out to Midland and meet up with after her appointments. I guess her Mum went shopping while we hung out and talked for an hour or two before she returned home. As our friendship grew I said I’d like to come up to the family farm to visit her and so, one weekend I set off hitch-hiking to Moora, about 170km from Perth. I think her parents were a little surprised at how I got there but they made me welcome and Sally and I had a great weekend. 

I did this a couple of times, however the second trip was not quite as successful. I’ll come to the reason for that in a moment. By then I had my licence so we borrowed one of the farm utes and drove to the coast for a swim, somewhere near Cervantes I think. On the way back Sally was peeling an orange. Being a believer in organic littering I suggested she throw the peel out the window. Unfortunately Sal didn’t look as she threw it out and showered an unsuspecting farmer standing at a gate with a handful of orange peel. 

 

Back at the farm we took the beach buggy her Dad Ian had made (out of an old VW Beetle I think) out for a drive around the paddocks. I found a large dip and discovered if I hit it at enough speed we could get airborne as we raced up the other side. Needless to say this was great fun, until a particularly heavy landing resulted in the beach buggy suddenly not responding. I couldn’t get it out of second gear in fact so I suspect I had damaged the gearbox. I had certainly broken something! We returned the buggy to the shed and hoped it wouldn’t cause too much trouble!  It did! Sally’s Dad was not impressed and I headed home with my tail between my legs.

Thankfully it didn’t curtail our friendship which grew even closer the following year when Sal moved to Perth to attend WAIT (West Australian Institute of Technology) at Bentley (now rebadged as Curtin University) to study teaching. 

She lived at Rotary House, a dormitory accommodation building just off campus and my visits were much easier and occurred more often. It was while studying at WAIT that Sally met an engineering student named Warren, the man she married a few years later. To clarify, my friendship with Sal was always platonic and I’m glad for that. I had a few girlfriends throughout my adolescence and invariably, and inevitably, those relationships were short-lived and final. My friendship with Sally on the other hand has been going for over forty years and I cherish it as one of the closest and most significant in my life. 

 

I can’t explain why we are such good friends. We aren’t particularly alike and don’t have a lot in common (she’s not the slightest bit interested in football for instance) but we have always gotten along really well. We both loved going to the movies and I remember the day we went to see The China Syndrome. Sal had told me she had to go somewhere after the film so time was a little tight. Late in the film there was a scene with a clock on the wall and I nudged Sal and said, “Look at the time, we’ve got to go”. She jumped up in a mini panic before realising it was in the movie not real life. 

 

During my time living in London our letter writing increased and I always looked forward to hearing from her about events back in WA. When she graduated Sally taught English at Merredin for a couple of years before moving back to Perth.

Once we both got married, her to Warren and me to Carolyn, we remained friends and became close as couples and young adults. 

I had the honour of MCing their wedding and Warren even wore my suit for the occasion. 

As MC I took the opportunity of the special event to seek to heal a long-standing rift. One of my duties was to propose a toast to the parents of the bride and groom so before the toast to Sal’s parents I made a public apology and sought her Dad’s forgiveness for breaking the beach buggy all those years before. He graciously forgave me and I felt a weight lifted off me but the best part was when more than one of the guests, family friends and neighbours from local farms, came and spoke to me afterwards and said, “So you’re the one who busted the beach buggy!”. My reputation had preceded me! I was glad I’d confessed and apologised, and more importantly, been forgiven. 

 

Sally’s teaching career blossomed and the appreciation and love she received, and continues to receive, from students, parents and colleagues is testament to the time, effort and sheer hard work she puts into her job. Sally loves the kids she teaches and has a huge heart of compassion for them.

For a period of six years in the early 90s I directed RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Award) seminars, an annual leadership training program for young adults and one year I was rapt to have Sally on the team as one of my facilitators. Around this time I began working as a school chaplain and on more than one occasion I called on Sal’s help with some program I was running. She was with me the day we took a group of year 9 students bridge swinging and had the police come and ask us what we were doing following a call from a passing motorist that there were kids bungee jumping off the bridge on Leach Hwy. I assured them we were only swinging, not bungee jumping and we carried on! If you’re not sure what bridge swinging is, check out this video on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu6PAYMCX3Y

Sally is a lot more cautious (sensible?) than I am but she bravely jumped, er, swung, off the bridge for a huge adrenalin rush. When I was heavily involved in youthwork and chaplaincy I was always running camps or programs of one sort or another. I remember talking with Sal one day and the subject of workaholism came up. I said “I’m not a workaholic”. She replied. “Of course you’re a workaholic Marcus, you just don’t think it’s work”.

The old red phone booth I swapped with Sally for a dentist's chair! It is still in pieces in their backyard awaiting reassembly! Come on Warren!!

 

When we were raising a young family we would sometimes drop in on Sally and Warren on our way home from church. I remember Warren saying one day as we were leaving, “Thanks for bringing the contraceptives (children) for a visit!”. Despite that they eventually they did have a child, a son Callum, who has grown up and followed in his Dad’s footstep as an engineer. 

When we were living in Busselton, and in later years now that we’ve moved back to Victoria, my visits to Perth always included a stay at Chatteau d’Taffrail (Sally and Warren’s place in Willetton). Nowadays Sal and I talk about teaching while Warren and I go swap meeting on Sunday mornings. I look for footy badges while he looks for antique fishing reels. We’ve enjoyed the couple of times they’ve been over to Melbourne including going to the ANZAC Day footy at the MCG to watch Warren’s Magpies play Essendon.

On one of their trips to Melbourne. 

I mentioned opportunism at the start. If I hadn’t taken the opportunity to go to that inter-school camp way back in 1979 I would never have met Sally and would have missed out on knowing and loving one of my dearest friends.