Recorded 14 June 2018
More On GFS
GM: Today is Thursday the 14th of June, 2018. Trenna Mahney is telling us of her memories. I reckon we ought to talk a little bit more about your time at Girls’ Friendly Society, in Adelaide Terrace in Perth.
THM: Just to place it a bit better… I remember that it’s at 122 Adelaide Terrace. And across the road a little bit was the Sheraton Hotel. [GM: Now the Pan Pacific Hotel]
Immediately opposite us was a block of flats. A small block of flats. But it just had a little brick wall raised about two feet off the paving, and there was a red public telephone box there. That was frequented by us girls, like all the time, because as I said, it was hard to get a phone call in there. So we would quite often be sitting over on that wall talking about stuff.
The girls arrived at different stages and I don’t really remember who came when, except the country girls, who usually were the more daggy girls, like Lynette and Judy, arrived first. [GM: Special Note from Greg: Lynette and Judy, if you ever read this, I’m sorry Trenna thought you were “daggy” when you first arrived. I know she did enjoy hanging out with you.]
The Grand Tour of Perth
We had walked around the streets with her parents at night to look at the “big city” – they were quite goofy. Anyway, there was a group of girls who I don’t really recall, that one day I decided that a good way for them to know the city was probably to go for a bit of a walk.
I was going to be like a tour guide and we would walk along the city, Westward up to Parliament House and Legacy Lookout, because I had talked about Legacy. And also to King’s Park.
Some of them had only driven through with relatives at some stage when they visited Perth. So we took the day off.
I’m pretty sure it might have been me thinking I looked pretty cool. I have some photos from that day. Some of them I have of the other girls and Rose is in it, and so is Nerria.
Nerria was gay. I don’t think we would have called her that is those days but we did know that she preferred women, and she definitely had a butch appearance. She was a lovely girl and we got along very well together.
Rose was there and I presume Lynette and other girls like that.
Anyway, we meandered our way through the city with me pointing out what buildings were where. I remember stopping and having a photo taken outside a newly constructed modern office building, which I think was the SGIO.
It was in Hay Street and had a water feature with a large stone out the front. It was considered to be very trendy and there was a lot of glass.
When I see that building now, when I’m looking at the photos, because that building doesn’t exist anymore, I look at it and think it was a very simple nondescript building. Yet, back then I had stopped, thinking it was “Wow”, look at this new flash building going on.
We just went along. I don’t remember the shops we stopped at. We just walked along Hay Street mainly. We may have gone down to the [St Georges] Terrace but the Terrace was always very windy, so we did go along Hay Street.
The traffic went different ways then, and in that time you could get better access to the Barracks Arch. We went up there.
I don’t know what access you can get to that now, but anyway I remember we read the information that was up there. About that it was the site of the Barracks but that’s all that was left. The Arch looked pretty silly because it was just stuck on the side of the freeway and probably very few people went to it. [GM: It still looks a bit silly. Even though Trenna and I were both young when most of the barracks were demolished we remembered the controversy it caused. This is the Wikipedia version.]
So we did some posing there, and I’m sure I was doing posing because I was wearing new clothing I had probably bought from the Basement or The Underground, whatever it was called, [GM: I think it may have been called the Dungeon Market] but the coolest of shops that you went to – underground, which was on the corner of Hay and Williams Streets.
Dungeon Market
Later on menswear shop Walsh’s was there, and there were shops before that, but it was a larger area and it was really cool, because you could buy things like musk which was very in fashion at the time. There were little brown bottles of musk scent, and the hippie girls would wear them.
I bought a fabulous poster print from there which I had for years. It was the largest print of Mick Jagger I could find. I think it was when he was doing the tribute to Brian but he’s just got a mauve singlet on and light coloured pants and he’s got slightly long hair. I used to look at that for years because I had it still when I went to South Perth with Helen.
I don’t know that it lasted leaving that area. I don’t know what became of it when I went to Buxton Street, but it hung proudly over the grand mantelpiece when we lived in South Perth and I loved it.
I got that there, we got cool records there. There were always different records and you sort of felt cool if you said you got them from there. They had some clothing but their clothing was only cheesecloth clothing, hippie style stuff.
I had the best clothes … I thought I looked pretty good
You could get lots of incense, there were all sorts of incense, and also coloured beads that you would hang from your doors as, sort of instead of having flywire. They would keep the flies out but they’re also cool coloured beads.
We loved going down there. It was just the coolest of places. You could get great jewellery. I got myself a purpley-blue Kaftan sort of top, and I was wearing it and my really flared light blue denim jeans that you had to roll up, because the thing was to let them drag on the ground so that they were a bit frayed.
And you know, if you wanted to you could wear them just with bare feet. We used to make bead sandals with flowers in them and just have the beads go through your toes and around to your heel, but they actually had no bottom to them so you are still wearing no shoes. But that used to be really cool.
GM: Would they be made from raffia? I remember my sisters did that.
THM: Yeah! With raffia. Anyway, we made our way all the way up to Legacy Lookout which was on top of the government office building, Dumas House. I think we had to pay to look out, but if you could prove you were a Legacy Ward you didn’t have to pay. I think I paid even though I did have a little Legacy birthday card.
We went up there and it wasn’t a particularly tall building but it was on the top of a hill, so you looked down the hill over the city and everybody thought that was pretty cool. Then we made our way along to the main attraction [Kings Park].
Not only were there the sights of the city, but there was a beautiful clock which was made out of seasonal flowers. They would be planted early in autumn and they would all come to bloom in Spring.
It was a tourist trap, always trying to get your photo taken in front of the clock which laid on the ground so it was a garden bed, but the clock was a working clock and it was quite large.
There was also the Wishing Well where you could make a wish, and the lookouts but we weren’t really into another lookout at that time of our life. We were just more interested in either the scenery or if there were young good-looking guys around.
I remember it being a really cool day because we did walk over to Parliament House and walked through the gardens and there was a big pond there. I kept on being the one that the girls would ask me, “you pose”, because I had the best clothes, and I sort of knew that they would get me to pose because I thought I looked pretty good.
I had pretty long hair at that stage, which I was so happy about because it has taken me years to grow my hair back from Matron’s dreadful, dreadful short haircuts that we were forced to wear. So it just flowed, long, wavy, natural and I had you know later on a bit Farrah Fawcett-ey but it was natural.
I didn’t cut it. I mean I did, I cut my fringe, I didn’t go to hairdressers or anything like that.
So that was a big day that I do remember, and all the girls talked about it to all the other girls back at GFS when we got home.
I don’t know if I mentioned that at the back of GFS there was a quadrangle, then there was the new block of girls’ rooms. Behind there there was a big grassed area which was predominantly used for hanging your clothes out on the clothes lines which were there, or more often, for sunbaking.
I reckon sunbaking was done at any time there was sun, no matter how cold it was. Me, being from Perth, I knew the weather so I knew I wanted hot weather to sun bake. I know there are photos of me that show me in jeans and long-sleeve shirts. That’s probably because it was bloody cold, but the sun was shining.
Girls would be out there with their trannies and coats and stuff like that which is pretty much what people did on the weekends.
You either went walking around exploring or you just listened to trannies [transitor radios] I’m not sure if people watched telly during the day. I don’t remember telly being on during the day.
I think it was a night time thing. It may have been that’s what was wanted by the management but I’m not sure.
Anyway, more people came along. There were a couple of older girls. Rose was my age, she was lovely, we got along really well. I stated Lynette was particularly goofy and daggy. She liked hanging around me because I was funny. She was from Carnamah which I never knew where it was.
I don’t remember what she was studying, it wasn’t anything to do with me. It might have been that she was doing typing. It definitely wasn’t nursing or anything like that.
So, again, people came and went. We packed a lot of things into a short period of time.
It was like Craig House in that way. You thought you’ve been there for a year doing something but it may well be that it’s only been over the span of a month. And of course, we were still all growing up.
Things did happen however at GFS. I had felt a bit guilty about having left the Anderson’s without saying much of a goodbye, just saying “goodbye”, I was sort of glad to move on.
Mrs Anderson had made me, I do remember one skirt, but I think she also made me another dress, and some flared pants, but I don’t really remember. I do remember that for once I saw someone from Child Welfare and they gave me $50 to specifically buy clothes.
[GM: The door bell interrupts the recording session – I don’t recall who it was. Then resumes…]
So I got $50 to buy some clothing which I was so excited about, but it had to be for going to Key Personnel and potentially to work, so it couldn’t be “way-out” stuff. It had to be skirts and tops, but I did get to choose what those clothes were. So I did get to do that.
But I didn’t ring the Andersons and I started to feel a bit guilty about that.
Number 96
At night time we used to watch telly and in 1973 a new program called Number 96 started. It was really controversial. It was a show that everybody watched. It was a soap opera.
It was on every night I think at 7:30 or 8:30 pm. [GM: Research confirms it was screened at 8:30pm on weeknights] It might have been later at night because it was going to show you things that had never been shown before on Australian television, and that was naked people. I don’t think necessarily they were fully naked people at first, but later that came along.
It was set in a block of apartments at Number 96. Down the bottom of the apartments, as was often the case in those days, there was a small, like a corner shop, a grocery/convenience shop, and you could buy bread and a few vegetables, not a lot, but just a convenience store.
You could get cigarettes and in those days cigarettes weren’t banned in any way. They were promoted, so people smoked a lot on television.
The shop in Number 96 was run by Mr and Mrs Godolfus. The show had all sorts of characters, you know, the nagging busybody, and they had a beautiful woman, Abigail, who became famous because she had huge boobs and was beautiful.
They also had two gay guys who were living together. I don’t know what we called them then, but we didn’t call them gay. I’m pretty sure we didn’t know they were gay at the beginning of the program.
I think that was revealed as the show went along, and that was sort of a shock to the system. Everybody was surprised and that was a really big step forward in Australia growing up.
It was a show that all of us at GFS watched. There were lounge chairs scattered throughout the area, none of them particularly comfortable.
For some reason I feel that I always sat at the very back of the room on what I think was an old chest, but it was padded, and padded up against the wall. So a bit like a banquette, but it was right at the back.
Now, I had bad eyesight but I was still wearing my bifocals so I probably could see all right there. And if I could, it shows how much my eyes must have deteriorated over the years because I certainly wouldn’t want to have missed out on anything on telly.
I also was very good at covering up my blindness and I would rather wear no glasses than glasses if we we’re going somewhere where there were going to be cool people. I would certainly be pretty blind, but I think that might have been learning how to cope with life as a very young child because I didn’t get glasses until I was at school, 6 years old.
Even then they were not specifically made for me, for my eyesight. They were just glasses that were designed to give you better vision. A bit like ones that people can buy today that are slightly magnified.
I think they might have been something like that.
Shocking Discovery
Anyway, getting to this point about not keeping in contact with the Andersons. Bearing in mind I got there [to GFS] in March.
I found that really, really bizarre
I never read newspapers that much. I did read them a bit, but in those days they still were the newspapers that you would get the ink on your hands and I hated the feeling of that dried out ink.
So I would read them, but I much preferred glossy magazines.
Usually with the newspaper I would just read the headlines and skim through and look at whatever. The newspapers were on the table.
Probably eight people could sit comfortably at the table and read newspapers, so it was quite large. You could spread them out and people would just read whatever they wanted to read that was available.
I went over to the newspapers because some of the magazines I wanted were being read by other people, and the newspaper was open at the “Deaths” section, which I had always found really odd.
I knew people my age who read the death notices in the newspaper and I found that really, really bizarre.
One of those was my good friend Julie. She read them from when I first met her. I don’t remember a time when she didn’t. She just always read death notices. Similar to my sister Barb, she also read death notices.
So there it was open on the death notices and I thought “I’ll have a read of the death notices”. And to my shock, and horror, and disbelief, there was one for a man called Frank Anderson who had died suddenly.
Then I started reading and there were all messages of condolence for him. I felt sick and I couldn’t believe it. I was…I was stunned.
There used to be this thing at Craig House where people would say “Trenna’s got a feeling”, and it was one of those things that I was sort of renowned for at Craig House. I would get a feeling about something and sure as eggs it would happen.
So if I ever got a feeling about something, that we would get caught doing something we wouldn’t do it, except on the occasion once when we did which Helen lived to regret.
But it was something like I was spooked into it because I was reading at the time Rosemary’s Baby and it was all that sort of cult, sort of spooky stuff about the devil and stuff like that.
I thought it was so bizarre that I would read, for the first time ever in my life, the death notices and Uncle Frank would be in there. I didn’t know what to do.
I had mixed emotions because I thought he was really a lovely man, but I was also perplexed and hurt that no one had rung me up to say that Uncle Frank had died.
I thought that for sure that meant that I wasn’t part of the Anderson’s life, and I was really hurt. I thought that proves they think that it was me who didn’t want to be adopted.
I was absolutely too scared to ring anybody except to ring Barb. At that stage I don’t think she had a phone. She was living in William Street and I think as most houses they had up to then they had telephone booths we used to go to.
So instead of ringing her I pretty much ran over to her place which was 44 or 144 Charles Street in North Perth. I got over there and I asked if she had seen the paper and that Uncle Frank died, and she hadn’t.
It just so happened she hadn’t got the newspaper that week.
Anyway, we found out that way, and she decided that she would take me to the funeral. I don’t know if Nancy went. I don’t remember who went. I think it was just me and Barb, that’s all I remember.
We went to Karrakatta Cemetery and it was a huge, huge affair. Mainly men because they were all people from his Lodge. There were also people from where he did the Scottish dancing and there were all the Legatees.
It was very formal and it was very religious. I never knew Uncle Frank to be religious, but I didn’t understand it and I couldn’t see the Andersons. Barb was telling me where they were up the front but that Auntie Jan wasn’t there.
I knew there was going to be a private burial, I thought, but I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a burial or a cremation. Cremations weren’t really talked about then.
Barb was very keen on not being seen by anyone, she didn’t want to talk to anyone and as far as I knew there were just all men around me, and we stood almost at the back of the biggest chapel.
It was long and boring because it was all about his roles in certain things and that his family were having a private ceremony and I guess that I just wasn’t invited to that.
Barb had brought Bec [her daughter], because Bec was 2 years old. I think Barb wasn’t working, so I think she was at home all the time. But also Colin lived there so I don’t know if there was any arrangement where she did part-time work. I’ll have to find that out from her.
Anyway, we went to it, and I came home very sad and upset. Sadder than I thought I would be because I sort of felt my Anderson days were over.
Back to the Andersons
Not long after that. But I would say at least a good month after that, I went to visit them. I think I went with one of my sisters, but I’m not sure if it was both of them.
These things, they’re a bit of a blur to me. I would have been quite capable of getting there because it was an easy bus ride.
I remember precisely what I wore. My clothing was very important to me in those times because I wanted them to be clear they were clothes I had bought.
I thought initially that Uncle Frank hadn’t died until 1974 because I thought it might have been that I was working and could afford my clothes, but as it was in 1973. I think I must have bought a pair of pants for wearing to Key Personnel.
“the thing about them is that they were androgynous and that proved to me that I was very cool indeed”
I was wearing a pair of blue Oxford bags and they were the height of fashion. I also had a black t-shirt which was a crossover, it was opened at the front and it crossed over and only did up by tying a bow at the back and pulling the back of the t-shirt below the bow.
And I had bought some beautiful, groovy, cherries, plastic cherries that you wore as a brooch. I remember wearing that with my new shoes which were black patent leather, lace-up, wedge heeled shoes with a slightly maroon-red mark across the top just below the toes, which I think was similar to an era in days gone by in the 20s or 30s or something like that.
But the thing about them is that they were androgynous and that proved to me that I was very cool indeed.
I wore this to the Andersons. Aunty Jan was there and so was Sue. I don’t know if anyone else was there. I remember Aunty Jan was very, very strange.
I didn’t know what grieving was, and no doubt she was grieving, but I had really no understanding of that. I just thought she was really rude and weird.
She gave me a brown paper bag which I didn’t look at immediately. She said “here, this for you”.
She mocked the clothing I was wearing and said “why on earth would you wear something so horrible. Those shoes are just terrible”.
She said I looked ridiculous and that perhaps I would find a better dress in there [pointing to the bag]. She was rude.
Sue was there and I do remember Sue was going to go on what I thought was a trip to Singapore. I think that Margaret (Anderson) in recent years like this year, 2018, or last year, told me it was somewhere else in the South-East Asian area, but I thought it was Singapore.
She was going to go on a holiday and she had said something to me – like I think I had actually been the one to say it and it was a bit rude – and I think it was because I wanted to change the subject. I did say “oh, are you going to buy me a present?”
Now, I might be wrong in that it might have been because I remember her answer, which was “well if you’re a good girl you might get a present”. But I think that’s a strange thing for her to say unless I had said something like “are you going to get me a present? ”.
I could imagine she would say “well, if you’re going to be a good girl”. She still thought of me as a kid, which I didn’t like.
When I left it was just as if they just said goodbye, and I didn’t feel a need to see them again.
When I looked inside the bag I had been given there was a light pink dress. A dress that we loved at the Anderson’s, from their dress-up box because it was beautifully ornamental and beautifully sewn and stitched dress from a bygone era.
You would wear these clothes that had Pearl buttons, which may not be real pearls but they looked like pearls that were done up by a loop of material. There would be hundreds of them that would go down your back.
There was one that was a pale green that was beautiful and all had an under frock and was covered in lace. It was exquisite.
I remember when we went to Darwin in the mid-nineties, I bought a particular dress because it reminded me of that dress, but it had no buttons or anything, but it was green, a yuckier green, and it had lace over the top and it reminded me of that dress.
It came to be known by Greg and I as the distressed dress because it got ruined on the way to Darwin.
But anyway, this dress was something of another era. It was pink, it had lace, and it had the net petticoats under it which I presume are the petty’s that my mum used to talk about a lot when she used to write to Aunty Carmel that made dresses stick out.
And there I was at 15, in 1973 there was no chance in this world that I would wear anything like that, and the thing was if Aunty Jean was in her right mind she would know that to be the case.
Also in there was a book I had been asking about. It was a book – one of my last Agatha Christie books that I had got that Christmas. It was a modern one called Endless Night and it had gone missing and I knew it was at the Anderson’s.
Aunty Jean kept on saying “no, it’s not here”. I had got to a point where I said “I know it’s there, because I had it there and I haven’t been anywhere else”.
She got very angry with me saying “are you calling her a liar?” She told me “I’m certainly not a liar and it’s very rude of you”. She also told me I was becoming the sort of girl that had very bad manners.
I was really angry at her because I knew she had it, and sure enough it was in the bag. And yes, she may have been telling the truth and she didn’t know where it was.
Maybe one of the boys had it and was reading it and didn’t want anyone to know they were reading what would have been considered a girl’s book. I don’t know.
But I did go and see her one more time, but that was definitely with the rest of my family. I felt that she was too strange, and there was something peculiar about it, and that it was the end of our time together.
I never did get a present from Sue. I never saw them again.
I think I saw Mrs Anderson once in Boans [department store] as I was coming down the escalators but by the time I got there she was gone. She was with a group of women and it was more her voice and laughter. I recognised the voice.
I also quite frequently saw Gary, Margaret’s husband. We were quite openly friendly to each other and it was because we worked in the city near each other.
We would just see each other on the footpath and say “hi, how ya going?”, and just continue walking. We didn’t stop. There was no animosity or anything like that.
Although I haven’t got further down the track it just sort of reminds me how much things changed in my life in that time.
[GM: In later years Trenna and I re-established a connection with the Andersons, including Mrs Anderson, mainly through contact with Margaret and Garry. Trenna very much enjoyed and welcomed that reconnection.
How that reconnection occurred is a story in itself and covered in The Menu Diaries No 8, here.]
To go directly to the next Kitchen Tape, No. 23, click here.