1991

Trenna’s Diary Summaries From Her iPad (with photos)

Intro and extra clarifications by Greg, the rest by Tren

As I’ve said previously … In Trenna’s iPad she has written summaries of each year. As you will see from what she has written she has gleaned the information retrospectively from a wide range of sources.
As I reproduce them on this site I’ll take the opportunity to clarify and expand on some of the stories. Trenna wrote these summaries (and there are many of them) to help her and I recall our many experiences. It was probably another preparation she was making to tell her story, or knowing her, making it easier for me to tell her story.

Introduction

It looks like Tren created this document on Saturday, 18 October 2014. She last altered it on Wednesday, 23 December 2015.

Introduction

As 1991 dawned we were just starting to enjoy our renovated house, with a new, modern kitchen, new bedroom, an up-market bathroom and best of all an inside toilet! We had been married a bit over a year…

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1991

REFERENCE SOURCES

Our meal calendar
Our memories
Photos from Family + friends.
Greg’s work diary’s
My personal diary
My gardening diary
Dates we purchased items
Medical visit & procedure dates

JANUARY 91

Thur 10/1 – Meeting with builder Nevis Brooks.
GM in 2023: This was an early meeting before I went to work. It was more or less a hand over meeting for our new renovation. We had lived in the property throughout the extensive building works. I will be writing another post about how that went.

Tue 15/1 – P my pal dies age 16.
GM in 2023: Prickles had been born on Trenna’s bed in South Perth in 1974. Trenna told me that her housemate and friend, Helen, had a mongrel kelpie named Zabby. Zabby wasn’t sterilised and the inevitable happened.

Tren and Hel came home one night from an evening dancing and partying and Trenna almost didn’t notice on her multi-coloured bedspread a litter of beige and black puppies that had been born right there, on the bed.

She told me that Prickles was the smallest and cutest of the lot and she decided to keep her. Trenna still had Prickles when the two of us got together, and Prickles lived out the rest of her days in Kensington.

Jan 91 – Lib & Brett’s 10th b’day our place, new renos.
GM in 2023: A niece and nephew.

Jan 91 – Bridging Maths for Business Curtin.
GM in 2023: When Trenna had resigned from HBF in 1990 she had made the decision to go back to university. If you have been following her story you will know that she had started a Psychology degree at the University of Western Australia (UWA) but had quickly withdrawn due to time and financial pressures.
So in 1991 Tren decided to enrol in a Bachelor of Business at the nearby Curtin University (where I worked). However, as a prerequisite she had to complete a bridging maths unit “Maths for Business”. She studied it that January, disliked it a lot but successfully completed the exam and was admitted to the degree course.

FEBRUARY 91

First semester Curtin – June BBus Management Principles.
GM in 2023: Trenna was studying the degree part-time and the first unit was Management Principles. As it turns out, Roy, who is married to my sister Debra also chose that year to start a Business degree.
Roy and Tren bonded over the joint experience, but whereas Roy went on to become a successful accountant, Trenna discovered that Business was not an area she wanted to study. She completed the unit but decided to change degrees.

Fri 15/2 – 6pm Paul Trinidad Exhibition.
GM in 2023: Paul today is a professional artist and art academic. I met him at school, and although we weren’t friends then we stayed in touch through mutual friends. I don’t recall where this particular exhibition was, I have been to a few of his, but I am pretty sure that Tren and I were both delighted when we saw that some of his prints had images of our friend Eggs’ dog, Basil. Paul and I have become closer mates in recent years, and Trenna was very fond of him.

Sun 17/2 – Mum’s b’day @ Kev’s, Attadale home with self made black pool including an island in middle.
GM in 2023: Tren of course is referring to my Mum. My eldest brother Kev is one of those guys that can turn his hand to most things. Around this time he was in the swimming pool installation business. He had built a pool in his back yard which was different to any we had ever seen.

MAY 91

Date deleted by GM: – Landi Bradshaw born.
GM in 2023: Landi is the daughter of Sue and Neil, Trenna’s (and my) friends. These days Landi has a great reputation as a photographer in the state’s far North-West. Her website is worth a look. It’s HERE. Landi’s mum, Sue was an important part of our Rolling Stones experience. That story is HERE.

JUNE 91

Sat 8/6 – Morning tea at Becky’s Mt Hawthorn rental.
GM in 2023: Becky was another niece. I don’t recall the morning tea.

Tue 18/6 – 12.15 Tren Exam Curtin.
GM in 2023: This was for the unit Management Principles 151. Her end of semester result was 68%.

Fri 28/6 – 29/6 – Mandurah AITEA State Conference.
GM in 2023: As was the plan when Trenna retired from the paid work force she became very involved in supporting my career. I in turn was becoming involved with the Australasian Institute of Tertiary Education Administration. She came to their conference in the nearby, seaside town of Mandurah.
I think this was the time when she accompanied me to the swanky Conference Dinner, and she sat next to my boss, Adolph. She found the whole experience very tedious (not necessarily Adolph’s fault) and I think from then on she vowed to support me, but not if it meant going to conference dinners.

JULY 91

First & Second Semester Curtin Anthropology & Sociology.
GM in 2023: After her Bachelor of Business experience Trenna decided she had to change courses, so she chose the Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences – I had completed the same course about 10 years earlier. This suited her better, but it still wasn’t quite right.
We both found it interesting that her tutor in Sociology had been one of my undergraduate class mates more than a decade earlier.
At the end of Semester 2 Trenna’s results were 63% for Anthropology 112, and 70% for Sociology 112. At some point after the end of year she decided not to continue with her degree at Curtin, but in later years went back to UWA and had quite a bit more success.

2/7 – 5/7 – Greg Melbourne work, Curtin.
GM in 2023: Trenna is right, I even have the Ansett Airlines flight numbers in my Diary, and I know that I stayed at a delightful boutique hotel, “The Banks”. But what I was doing there, I have no idea!

Tue 9/7 – Loaned our art to Curtin for exhibition in the Eric Underwood Gallery.
GM in 2023: This was an interesting experience. I knew the Art Curator at Curtin University, Paul Thompson, and he would run regular exhibitions of either the university’s own collection, or visiting artists, or occasionally graduating students.
However, in 1991, Paul had the idea to delve into the private collections of staff of the university and have an exhibition of those works. He included from our “collection” one by Mike Starkie, that I have spoken of HERE, and another by our friend and Curtin graduate Heather Hesterman.
We got quite a kick out of seeing two of our works on display in a gallery.

Thur 25/7 – $5 pp Curtin mob quiz night.
GM in 2023: Quiz Nights were big then. I don’t remember this one.

Sat 27/7 – How to Host a Murder dinner @ Col & Chris’s.
GM in 2023: How to Host a Murder nights were pretty big too. This one was at our friend Colin and Chris’ place, where Trenna and I had first got together. Each person attending dinner is allocated a character well before the night, to ensure you could get a suitable costume together, and to learn your role.
Trenna and I went to a number of op shops to get just the right costume for her aristocratic role.
It was a fun night.

AUGUST 91

Date deleted by GM: – Twins, Alexander & Mitchell born to CD & Linda Bahn.
GM in 2023: Two friends of Trenna’s from HBF.

Wed 7/8 – Sun 11/8 – Greg AITEA National Conference, Darwin.
GM in 2023: Trena was studying, and we didn’t have any spare money, so Trenna stayed at home whilst I went to Darwin for the first time. I know I stayed in the Sheraton Hotel and that Adolph was there too, but I don’t remember much about the conference.
The importance of this trip however is that it was held in August, which is one of the four or so good-weather months in Darwin. So a few years later when a job came up at the university there, I had quite a good impression of what Darwin’s climate was like. I was wrong!

SEPTEMBER 91

GM in 2023: Wed 11/9. Trenna’s birthday. We went to Kings Park.

Sun 15/9 – Barb & My b’day our house.
GM in 2023: Trenna and her sister have birthdays only a few days apart so they would often get together to celebrate both anniversaries.

Mon 30/9 – Fri 11/10 – Cairns, Daintree, Cape Tribulation, Great Barrier Reef Cheap Hol Compass Airlines.
GM in 2023: Another slice of Australian history here.
Trenna and I couldn’t afford a honeymoon (other than a free camping trip), so we deferred it indefinitely. Fortunately we didn’t have to wait too long. The two airline domestic travel duopoly was rudely interrupted by new, cut-price carrier- Compass Airlines.
Their competitors, Qantas and Ansett, immediately cut their prices and delved into their bag of dirty tricks in an effort to make Compass go broke. It worked, they only operated for a year.
However, in that time we were able to make use of the competition to get dramatically cut-price tickets, on Ansett flying to Cairns in Far North Queensland. A sensational destination where we had a great holiday. One we remembered fondly for the rest of our time together.
We snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef, hired a car and went further North, took the train to Kuranda, and did a day tour to lots of other local sights.

OCTOBER 91

4th – 7th Rotto with the Perry Berry’s.
GM in 2023: My desire to get things right in this website has delivered a bit of a dilemma for me. Looking at my work diary I was definitely on leave from work on this October week. However, the photos of the trip have been labelled by Tren as being around Australia Day in January. Remembering that this was a decade and a half before we got our first digital camera, Tren’s dating of scanned photos could be wrong. Further, my work diary has absolutely nothing on the dates 26 – 29 January – no appointments is very strange and suggests I wasn’t at work and that would be consistent with an Australia Day holiday at Rotto!!

NOVEMBER 91

Sun 17/11 – 4.30pm Someone’s Wedding.
GM in 2023: Again my work diary confirms a wedding on that day, but doesn’t say whose. I’m pretty sure this was Neil Purdy and Karen’s wedding. Neil worked with me at the Curtin Uni Student Guild.
I know Trenna remembered it. After the wedding ceremony we returned home with another work colleague and her husband. I made a pot of tea, but they had a different type of pot. They smoked a couple of joints on our front porch. I didn’t have any because I was driving but I’m sure I got some of the effect.
At the wedding reception later Trenna was urging me to get up and dance, as so many others were. We held each other close in a slow dance…and then I fell asleep in her arms, dancing! She wasn’t impressed and often, light-heartedly, reminded me of it.

DECEMBER 91

Thur 5/12 – Sat 7/12 – Greg work trip to Melbourne.
GM in 2023: Again I can confirm I went on a trip, but not why or what I did??

Thur 19/12 – Ann Layman’s for dinner.
GM in 2023: I think this was a Bachelors’ Dinner, I have mentioned them elsewhere on this site. I seem to recall it was a lamb roast meal.

Wed 25/12 – Xmas B & A’s, I have long hair.
GM in 2023: We had Christmas lunch at one of my siblings homes and dinner at the home of Trenna’s sister Barb and her husband Allen. I think she is mentioning the long hair as when she was writing these notes in 2014 or 2015 she was trying to work out when she had her long hair cut short. She later figured out it was Tuesday, 12 October 1993.

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