BOM = Book of Me - is one of those things I had been wanting to do but never really got around to it...tell you what though I am loving it!!! I spent most of Friday arvo/night going through a trunk of photo's with lots of memories (lol I was skinny once!!) and then yesterday dragged out my 3 big boxes of memories. It is sooo good to remember all those little details. This weeks topic is Where I have lived - well me - I have lived in quite a few places!!! Still waiting on some photo's from dad on England
now I am sure blogger will mess up the order they are in but here is the journalling that goes with it!
I first lived in a house in Dianella but not long after I was born we moved to 143 Lawley St in Yokine.
This house was decorated very 70’s style!! Think shag pile carpets, damask wallpaper, browns and mustards. It had a huge backyard with a Jacaranda tree with a tyre swing in it (the swing I jumped out of and broke my collarbone when about 2-3yrs old). We also had a chook pen in the same corner – heaps of grass out the back and I remember helping mum and dad mulch the roses out the front! School was just down the road and I used to walk over the bridge crossing on Wanneroo Rd and then it was just behind the shops. I got caught once spending my lunch money after school buying lollies oops!
Not long after I turned 7 we moved to Borneo. We lived initially in Seria G10/11. All the houses were simply named a number in lots of about 12-20 houses then the next lot etc! Our first house in Brunei was long and skinny! Every room had air-con and Shell supplied all the basic furniture as well. The middle of the house was the lounge room just behind it the kitchen with a corridor going from one end of the house with the kids rooms to the other end where the master bedroom. We could pick our own paint for the walls and mine was a bright happy pink!!! We had an amah – a maid that cleaned the house and lived in the quarters at the back of the house. Her name was Jamila and she was fired as she used her quarters to solicit men. Next door lived the Durston’s who also arrived from Perth. We used to play volleyball and badminton with the net between our two houses.
A couple of years later we moved up in the scheme of houses to a new estate – G5 / 3. These were huge cedar wood houses built on stilts and only 100metres or so from the jungle – we were able to watch the monkeys and orang-utans play at the jungle edge. We also had to watch out for snakes. When we were leaving Brunei and selling all the plants etc, a French lady who just arrived in Brunei found a 12 foot python in one of our egg jars in the garage. The snake people came and caught it – it was sleepy as it had just caught dinner from under the house
Whilst living in Brunei we used to go to the Panaga Club a lot – it was a social club for the employees of Shell. It had heaps of tennis courts, badminton, swimming pool x 2, golf course, oval for hockey etc, sailing club (which divided its time between the Panaga Club and the KBYC), restaurant (which Mum and dad took me to for my 10th birthday – it was a fancy/expensive one), change rooms, bars, takeaway food etc – everything we bought we would sign “chits” for and it was added to our account.
Panaga School was for the Shell employee’s children and we had both English and Dutch streams. At one stage the school had so many children that 2 classes (mine and another) did the year in a house next door and we would walk over some bridges to have recess etc – we always went home for lunch and then back to school in the afternoon.
During our time in Brunei Dad worked a fair bit in England and at one stage went to live with him in Bath. We stayed in two places – Bath - where we had piano lessons with Mrs Sullivan, watched Punch and Judy shows from the grassed area for pantomime, the cobblestone roads with basket after basket of flowers lining the streets, to the book store I loved, to living on a farm with Biggles the dog (near Box I think)! I loved the flowers in England and pressed a lot of them – we didn’t have flowers like that in Brunei!
My schooling ran out towards the end of 1985. I did Distance Education with the Education Department of WA. I stayed on at Panaga School and one of my favourite teachers Miss Mulholland overlooked my lessons with Distance Education. It was this reason Dad took another job for Shell in Holland. We moved there after having Christmas in Perth in 1985. We went from 40degree heat to minus – We hadn’t had a winter since 1981 so it was sooooo different for us. We initially stayed at the Europa Hotel in Schveningen and a couple of months later moved to our 4 storey unit in Leidschendam. It was situated just outside The Hague and between all 3 schools we kids went to. All the houses in Holland are tall and skinny due to lack of space. Everyone rode their bikes though – they even had traffic lights at the traffic lights just for bikes!! I used to ride to school in fine weather – about 12kms – there weren’t any hills in Holland so it was an easy ride in winter we could also ice-skate the river (aka De Vliet) in front of our house when it froze over.
At the end of 1987 we moved back to Perth so I could finish my schooling here in WA. We moved back into a house mum and dad had bought in Scarborough a few years before – 8 Lovett St (which I moved into when I left home to live with my fiancé Gary). After house hunting for a month or so we moved into Karrinyup in March. I went to Scarborough Senior High School and started in Year 9. I lived here until I moved out to live with my husband – then fiancé – where we moved back into the Scarborough house and rented it from mum and dad in 1994 – Grand final day – Eagles vs. Geelong!!!
Kaiser Memo board - class for March :)
Have a paper bag class this morning so need to get the girls organised - Shelby stayed last night so it is pancakes for brekkie today!!! After todays class I come home to collect Gary who has a session with Tom swimming with the sharks at AQUA!!
