THE TERRIBLE TEENS 1957

This book is the sequel to "Freshly Baked Rolls with Lashings of Butter". Where I wrote about starting a new life in Australia between 1949 and 1956.

 In 1956 my brother had left home. He was 19.  He went to Papua/New Guinea to work as a patrol officer. His job invovled making contact with, and bringing law and order (European style) to, the primitive natives in the jungle and the mountains. Unfortunately, he never wrote about the adventures he had there before he passed away in 2009.

My Mum and Dad worked hard to pay off the mortgage, save for holidays and educate me. Mum was a psychiatric nurse at Reception House, Darlinghurst, Sydney and Dad was a telephone technician for the PMG.

I went to a co-ed high school and I loved PE and Sport very much. I did swimming. athletics, archery, fencing, gymnastics and hockey at school.

On Saturdays I played competition tennis. Schoolwork got in the way of all this fun.

 Our friends, Ida, John and Jenny had moved to Mudgee, a country town west of Sydney. One weekend we went to visit them. This was the first time we had been over the Blue Mountains. Actually, Mum had been before because she often did trips to accompany mental patients to sanatoriums in country towns.

When Mum was lucky enough not to be working on the weekend we would go for drives to explore Sydney. We found lovely places for picnics in the surrounding bushland. One of our favourite places was Woronora River. We would park the car then hike upstream to a quiet swimming hole

Jeanette, Kerrie and me.