Recorded 21 June 2018
GM: This recording talks a lot about Trenna’s time at Girl’s Friendly Society (GFS), where she moved after Craig House closed down. The year was 1973, which was the only year in that period of her life that she kept a diary. Later, in 2018, Trenna with my assistance transcribed that diary and it is worth reading in relation to this recording. One point Trenna was surprised to find was that she started business college, and living at GFS earlier than she recalls here.
I’ll release the 1973 Diary soon.
A Note From Greg Before We Start
This is the final of the 24 “Kitchen Tape” recordings made in 2018. If you have read them all, thank you very much, I appreciate it.
I wanted a word before we start to let you know that there is still more material that neatly intersects the stories Trenna has told in these recordings.
I will be continuing to add stories, snippets and information that cover Trenna’s life in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, so please check back regularly. There is plenty of stories about the rest of her life too.
I’ll also take this opportunity to reiterate that when we did these recordings in 2018 we didn’t have a clear view on how we would use them, and we certainly didn’t have a clear view on how long Trenna would be around to work on them.
I think we were both thinking that this was just the start of what would probably be a book. We were just getting Trenna’s stories recorded as a starting point.
Future stages of that project would have been to eliminate repetition, re-order it, and to check many of the details with other sources. Looking through Trenna’s iPad there are several pages of other notes she has made which would have been used in those later stages.
But of course, it never came to that.
Once Trenna had passed away I knew I wanted to do something with the recordings. I transcribed them and found I had about 90,000 words of material – easily enough for a book.
However by then I had realised what a wealth of other material I could call on. Enough for a 2 or 3 volume biography!! Clearly a bit over the top. (OK, I could edit I guess!)
So that, dear reader, is why the stories aren’t necessarily chronological, why some stories are retold, and why I usually didn’t interrupt during the recordings.
As I write this in late July 2022 I have already published on this site about 152,000 words on my favourite topic, and I’ve written about another 50,000 words in stories I’ve started but not finished.
At this stage I can see the output continuing for a minimum of another year, so do please keep coming back, enjoying the content, commenting, sharing it with others, and getting to know Trenna.
Thanks again
Greg
The 24th Recording – I Think I’m Going to be Sick …!!
GM: We’re continuing our discussions with Trenna Mahney. The date today is Thursday the 21st of June 2018.
Tren, after we had the discussion yesterday we looked through your 1973 diary and we found, for example, that you first started at Key Personnel on the 15th of January 1973, and that you were still living with the Andersons from over the Christmas break.
Then also we found out a bit more about the very first day that you went to GFS. Tren, could you tell us a bit more about that era?
THM: Yeah. Well. It’s a surprise to me because I just assumed that I would have started Key Personnel a little later in the year. Perhaps after the school holidays.
But anyway, Nancy had given me a diary for Christmas, and it was a very business-like diary. It didn’t appeal to me.
I’d never kept diaries and I really didn’t know what to do with them. But I decided I would give it a go and I started to write in the diary.
I wrote absolutely barely anything in it of any use, not very descriptive. I just basically said what time I got up and the very little stuff I did, and that I went to bed.
But I did notice that during that time there was toing and froing to the shops to buy personal items for myself. It seemed that I had to buy a toiletry bag and various little personal items for myself.
The Problems With Shaving
Quite often I’d find little shrubberies of hair
It seems that buying a razor proved very hard for me to figure out what to do. I think it was several times before I actually found what it was that was my problem, and partly, initially what it was was that I was buying men’s razors, which for some unknown reason are different to women’s razors.
I know that eventually, and I think it was as early as being at GFS, but I found a brand of razor that I still use to this very day. The point was that me being so skinny when I raised my arms, most women, I noticed, had flat underarms, but mine is an indentation.
I have these indents on either side so you can only get a razor into a very small hole. I would forever be slicing the sides of my underarms with the razor or peeling off skin, and it was horrible.
I finally got a good razor. It was an expensive one, and the blades were really expensive, and I found that I had to do half of my arm. I learnt how to do half of one side of my underarm, so that I could get that bit, and then do the other half, so that I got a flat part to do.
Then I had to feel it, and then I had to go the opposite way which was not how most girls did it. They could just go one, two, three and that would be it. Me? It took several attempts at doing it.
Quite often I’d find little shrubberies of hair where I couldn’t quite get the damn razor to.
It wasn’t so bad on my legs. I only ever shaved the tops of my legs once, and it was so prickly and disgusting I thought “I don’t care”. From then on I only shaved from the tops of my knees down to my ankles ever.
I was quite lucky, Barb had quite dark hair on her arms and on her legs but my hair was quite blonde and I don’t think it was very easy to see. Of course, if I was very hairy you would see it, but I don’t think it was ever very hairy, so I was lucky that I only had to shave the bottom of my legs.
I learnt later on that I would have to start to learn how to shave my pubic hair but that can wait for another day all together because that was the most dreadful thing I had to do with a razor blade. [GM: Alas, we never got to that story, and I don’t think Trenna ever related it to me.]
A Traumatic Day
Anyway, I noticed [from the diary] that I was picking up little items along the way to prepare me for going to live at GFS. As it turned out Uncle Frank and the others came with me on the day that I went to GFS.
That happened to be the Monday holiday of the Australia Day long weekend. In those days for Australia Day we didn’t have a holiday on the actual day, you had a long weekend, so it never really, well rarely was it on the actual date of Australia Day.
It was celebrated on the Monday and that’s the day I went to GFS for the first time.
I Feel Sick!
What I discovered from the diary is that we arrived there and we were kept waiting for an hour. Now I don’t know what was up. I haven’t thought about it, but I think it might have been just because there were a number of things.
Mrs Cole wasn’t available. Mrs Cole was The Matron, but we called her by her name. Maybe she was having her shower or whatever. There also was an office and I think there was a woman who worked in the office.
I don’t really think Mrs Cole did anything. She just sort of moseyed around and basically got accommodation in a very nice area. I don’t think we ever got to see her room.
We also might have had to wait because there were other girls arriving on that same day and they were having to be booked in.
Whilst I was there and waiting I had earlier on in the day felt a bit sick. I had become sicker and sicker in a nauseous way, until I got to the point where I got so sick that Uncle Frank walked through what was the television room, next to the main office – which I think sometimes used to be locked off so people from the outside couldn’t go through that door and get into GFS – but it obviously was open, and we walked through there.
I was getting in a panic because I was heaving.
Then we came to another door. It led onto a back courtyard where there was a patch of grass surrounded by a garden of flowers, and to the left, against the wall was a tap attached to the wall, with a big round concrete circle drain.
GM: A gully trap.
THM: What were they called?
GM: I think they were called a gully trap.
THM: Yes…they were always around in those days, not so much now. The drain surround was made out of concrete and it had this metal grate, sort of thing that you could lift up and clear out.
A bit like sort of what was in a sink but on a larger scale. I remember only just making it in time to that.
I don’t know if I was meant to, but that’s where I just did the biggest throw up ever. I vomited big time.
I don’t know if I had to clean it up, but I probably did.
I know that that would have been because I was quite terrified.
When I was about that age, for about 7 years, every year around the same time it would be that Craig House would be shutting down for the end of year. I would come down with a severe case of tonsillitis. No matter where it was that I was going.
I knew where I was going because I mainly always went to the Andersons. I liked to spend Christmas at the Andersons, especially when we went down to Meelup, but I think I was just quite scared that I was going to be left on my own again.
I always seemed to get left on my own, and this is what was happening this time. I was going to a place without knowing anybody.
The Andersons, I didn’t know whether I would ever see them again after having supposedly rejected their offer of adoption.
I had hoped that I would go and live with Barb or Nance and just live with them, and get a job or go to business college from their place.
I thought that I would go onto Swanleigh, with all the other kids. Which would have made me really happy because at least I would have been with quite a few of the kids there. Helen went there, and Peta went there. Sally Crossing didn’t, but some of the boys did too. Wayne, I think Ross Lander went there as well.
I’m not really sure who ended up where because some kids ended up at private boarding schools because they went to private schools anyway. They didn’t go to Kent Street High.
Like the Crossings, they went to, or at least the younger ones went to, I think St Marys. The Crossing boys went to a private school too, I don’t know what that was.
Anyway, at GFS I was very sick, and Mrs Cole came and introduced herself. We got to go and have a look at my room.
She said it was the best room. I don’t know that it was. I think I was being told that to try and help me settle down because I was so sick and I probably looked terrified.
I was such a thin little kid and I certainly wasn’t a mature looking 15 year old wearing my glasses, and I would have been shy. I think it was just said that it was the best room to make me feel better.
It was the first room on the second floor of the main old building. There was another building at the back, which was like a block of flats. I think I might have talked about this before.
So I was in the first room and I was there by myself. It was a two-bed room, and the reason that it was considered the best is that it was right on Adelaide Terrace, but my door faced the bathroom.
I’m pretty sure there were three showers, and you would be able to tell when a shower was free because there was always, knowing what girls are like, a rush for the showers.
Unlike most places that I had stayed before, and that I stayed after, I didn’t share the shower with any of the girls. We all showered independently of one another.
There were a lot of girls with a lot of long hair so the showers were in peak demand. I think there were three showers and three wash basins but the toilet was downstairs, outside but undercover.
Well, under the cover of the walkway. If it was windy you got wet. The toilet was sort of an outside toilet, but next to the laundry. There was only one toilet there, but there was one toilet in the other building but the girls who didn’t live in that building weren’t allowed to use that toilet anyway.
We seemed to manage somehow.
So, looking at the diary, I started there a lot earlier than I thought I had. The Andersons left me there and I think I went to business college almost straight away. I think I might have been starting the next day or something. What happened on that first night…
GM: I’m in fact, looking at the diary you had already started business college.
THM: Yes, it was just a regular day, Tuesday was just a regular day. That’s right, I had forgotten that. I had started business college a couple of weeks earlier.
I didn’t remember that at all, that I started before I went to GFS. Maybe that was to help me not to have too much of a shock all at once by myself.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure that evening after I had been dropped off I met a couple of the other girls who had arrived.
One of them was Debbie McCarthy. She reminded me a bit of Sue Anderson. She was a taller girl than me, long brownie blonde hair, fairly straight, and she had a good body shape. She had nice boobs.
She was big boned but she wasn’t fat at all. She had come from the country, and so had Lynette, and maybe another girl called Judy. Lynette was quite daggy, a weedy little girl, blonde haired girl, a bit goofy. She came from Carnamah.
Looking Around With New Friends
Debbie’s parents were there for a while and they said they were going to take Debbie for a walk around the city and they invited us to come along with them. I think they were wealthy farmers.
Debbie was a Catholic and they were happy, that’s right, they were happy because we lived near the Catholic cathedral. Although GFS was run by the Anglican church it wasn’t church-related really, it was just an Anglican church girls boarding place.
We walked around the city and we walked through various arcades. We went to the Parmelia Arcade according to my little diary. I don’t even remember what that was, but thinking back on that I’m supposing that they had a room at the Parmelia [hotel], and there was a Parmelia arcade running along the bottom of the Parmelia.
Or as you crossed the road to what later on became Cloisters Square there was another arcade that led through to the next street and that could have been called the Parmelia arcade then, but I’m not sure.
I sort of think there was the Cloister Square, then there was an arcade.
When I remember going into the city, either to go to GFS, or when I worked with Aunty Jan when she worked at Milligans, which was a bar and grill in Milligan Street, we would cut through this little arcade that went further across the road.
It wasn’t very big and it wasn’t very salubrious. It had, like, sewing shops and stuff like that in it. It was much further along, up near Cloisters Arcade, but it went from Hay Street through to Murray Street. It wasn’t large and that’s where I would walk to go to either Milligans or to Key Personnel.
That could have been called Parmelia. That could have been Parmelia because there were also apartments around there but it’s going back a long time.
Nevertheless we ended up going further up along the Terrace and we had a look at Forrest House which was a very grand federation style home of Governor Forrest or something – John or Alexander Forrest? I don’t really remember, I just remember the outside of the building, but it was important for them to see it, so I think, you know, they were of that world where they were a bit grandiose.
[GM: I started to research Forrest House and I realised it was demolished in 1981, and then reconstructed (and turned into a bar) in 1986! Perth does some funny things with it’s heritage buildings.]
There was slightly more of the Barracks Arch then, but it had the beginning of being taken down so just the arch remained. That had all changed when the Mitchell Freeway went through there.
Anyway, we spent the first evening going around the city. They were nice enough people. I think they bought us some dinner somewhere. I don’t remember the name of the place.
But that was my first night at GFS, and then gradually, other girls came along, some I remember arriving, some I don’t. They were just suddenly there and friends.
I guess the more I read my diary the more I will know, but I do know that the big events of that era was the starting of the television show Number 96, but I think I’ve been through this.
I’m sure I’ll repeat heaps of things.
Sighting Andersons
I know that it was very soon after moving in there that Uncle Frank died very suddenly, which was very tragic. I did not learn really much about it until many years later, when I became more friendly with Margaret Anderson.
She hadn’t known anything about the proposal to adopt me. As it turned out it was probably not a good idea considering that by May, Uncle Frank would have been gone and that Auntie Jan would have had to look after me.
I don’t know if this was by choice or because it had to be the case, Ian Anderson went to work for the R&I Bank. Although he may have finished school … I should find out more about that.
The reason I knew that, was that when Helen and I later on, in 1975 lived together and we went to a branch of the R&I Bank and we were staggered to see Ian Anderson serving in the tellers box.
I was so embarrassed and I didn’t want to go up to him. Clearly he would have seen me. It would have been one of those dreadful things that I did, where I pretended not to see him.
I said to Helen “I’ve got to get out of here.” I remember to this day wanting to confess to him that I saw him, but I had already had another experience with the Andersons.
I had stayed a day with Sally Crossing at her Legatee’s place, who lived in Applecross, which was on the other side of Canning Highway to the Andersons. It was a bit posher than Ardross, although Ardross was pretty posh too.
We had stayed at Mr Campbell’s, her legatee, and he had to go to work. We could sort of do things that we wanted to, but we weren’t allowed to cross Canning Highway.
Well, all the shops were on the other side of Canning Highway and I don’t think him telling us was going to make Sally obey his order knowing that he would be away for the day. I remember she wanted to go and see the Andersons.
Now, I thought she wanted to go and see where the Andersons lived, but since then I have learned that she did spend some time at the Andersons.
So those poor Anderson kids never got a weekend off!
When I got my bright red overalls made by Mrs Anderson, which were made when I was still at Craig House. I remember that I wore them to the end of year … when at school we didn’t have a ball, we had something very groovy at the end of the year.
It was called C.O.R. COR which stood for Carry on Regardless. It was really groovy, and it was being held at the South Perth Civic Centre hall.
A band which was popular at the time in Perth called Haystack we’re going to be playing. All of us kids could wear all groovy jeans and funky stuff that we liked. We didn’t have to dress in ballgowns or anything.
We all sat on the floor like it was like a commune sort of thing. And the posters, I had partly something to do with the design of, and you know, it because it had that groovy, you know writing.
We thought Carry on Regardless was a pretty cool thing to call it. Haystack were up on a higher stage and we all sat on the ground like hippies did. There were no chairs.
And we danced at the front of the band, so we didn’t dance like ballroom dancing around the centre, we just danced to all the modern songs, because they were doing cover versions of all the songs. We thought that was pretty good.
I know I wore my red overalls to that and I know I looked really groovy. So, I had them there. Sally reminded me that Mrs Anderson had made her a brown pair, and I had completely forgotten that.
But it would have taken her only a weekend to do it. It meant that Sally stayed at the Andersons.
And Sally did stay there. I found out later that a lot of other kids from Craig House stayed there, like the Hollis twins, and some other girls. I don’t remember that at all so they might have been on the weekends where I got to stay with Barbara and Alan, or Nancy and Jim.
So the Andersons would still have kids even when I didn’t go there. So those poor Anderson kids never got a weekend off! They would have had all sorts of kids.
I saw a photo in 2005 that was taken down at Meelup years ago and I was there and so was Robert. I have absolutely no memory of Robert Hollis and me being with the Andersons together at any stage at all.
So it’s interesting what you remember and what you don’t remember.
So, back with Sally, on that day we were walking up the street past the Andersons. Sue Anderson had obviously been in the kitchen where she had looked out the window and we were on the other side of the road, near Dot’s house. [GM: Dot was the Anderson’s friend and neighbour from across the road. I got to meet her a couple of times in later life.]
We were walking along and Sue came out to say hello. She’d got all the way up the path and Sally said “run!” And we just ran and we ran and we ran and we ran, and Sue was really upset. She was angry and upset with me.
I asked Sally why we had to run. Sally had said it because we had crossed the highway and Sally didn’t want to get into trouble. Of course, she never did because Mr Campbell never found out, and I didn’t want to dob her in, and so like an idiot I just said I didn’t see her [Sue].
I should have just said “we were staying over the road at Mr Campbell’s and we promised not to go over the highway, and when we saw you, Sally panicked and we ran, and I didn’t want to.”
Anyway, never mind, it was one of those stupid things that you do when you’re 14 or 15 years old.
And that’s where I’ll leave it for now. Buggered if I know where I’m up to because I jump all over the place.
GM: You’re doing a great job Tren.
THM: Yeah. OK!
[GM: This ended up being the last recording we did in the series. That wasn’t a deliberate decision. Each of them was taking quite a lot out of Trenna, and I suspect the fact that I wasn’t immediately transcribing them, and that we didn’t have a particular structure to the order that stories were told led to it just dropping off.
In the next few months Trenna mentioned once or twice that we hadn’t done a recording for a while, and I made it clear that I was happy to do them with her, but they just never eventuated again.]
[GM: Finally, for this post… a special shout out to Gordon from Mingor.net. He has an excellent website full of photos of Perth and the South West of Western Australia.]