During my years in Sydney I had kept in touch with my old friend Alex Barnes. He had married one of my ex-girlfriends (Joyce Hooper) -- both now deceased -- so there was in fact something of a double reason for that.
Knowing Joyce and Alex did however prove to be very valuable indeed. I looked them up very soon after I arrived back in Brisbane from Sydney in 1983 and Joyce shortly thereafter invited me to dinner at their place. It was there that I met Jenny. Joyce had in fact arranged the dinner for us to meet. Jenny was an old friend of Joyce's.
So I met Jenny a week or two after I arrived in Brisbane. It was the same night Bob Hawke won his first election (5th. March, 1983). Joyce saw me as something of a "catch" and had primed Jenny up to win me.
When I arrived at the Barnes residence and was introduced to Jenny, the first thing I said to her was "Stand up and let me see how tall you are". In other words, I knew the sort of setup it was and was quite frank that I was evaluating the prospects too.
I drove Jenny home from Sandgate that night and arranged to see her again when I dropped her off. We "dated" after that quite frequently but I was by the time we met also seeing the little red-headed Marie T. Marie and I went to bed the night we met, which was around a week after I arrived back in Brisbane. Anyway, I told Jenny fairly soon that I was also seeing Marie and she seemed initially to accept that as no problem. It didn't take her long to brood on it however and she then in effect told me to choose her or Marie. I chose her and broke it off with Marie but still for a time kept some interest in other women.
I think it was while I was living at Milton that I once took Jenny out for breakfast -- after a night together, of course. Jenny had never been taken out to breakfast before so that was a great hit.
About Jenny
The reason I chose Jenny rather than Marie was mainly twofold: Seeing Jenny in jeans and seeing her do ironing for her flatmate, Kym. I have been a flatmate and observed flatmates on many occasions and recognized immediately how unusually kind and generous Jenny was to do that ironing.
Jenny has of course all sorts of other good attributes (such as intelligence, a good knowledge of the world and some liking for classical music) but so did Marie and various other women I might have pursued. It is however relevant that Jenny was pretty aspirational in looks at age 31. Ask most men what their ideal woman would look like and they would say something like: "A busty blonde with long legs". That would be a pretty good description of Jenny's looks at that time. I also liked the fact that she was relatively tall -- 5'8".
Jenny was born in Melbourne to Lindsay Albert Dene Lucas and Lena nee Cairns. She was an only child. Her parents moved to Brisbane when Jenny was aged about 5 because Lena was having difficulties with bronchitis in the cold Melbourne climate.
A photo of Jen when she was 15. Not terribly clear but it will have to do
Jenny had married Ken in her early 20s. They met in Brisbane but also lived together in England for a year or two -- where they married. They travelled back to Australia overland -- which was a very mind-broadening experience for Jenny. The marriage had however broken up by the time I met her and she was living in a flat at Sapphire St., Holland Park, with her friend, Kym Carter.
By that time she also had a quite active social life well underway so to see much of her I had to do things like pick her up after pottery classes. Pottery classes! Not being at all arty, that rather gave me the heebie jeebies.
Jenny's Autobiography
At one stage Jenny began writing her autobiography but did not get far with it. I give below what little she did write at that time:
"I, Jennifer Ann LUCAS was born on 27th May 1952. My parents owned a delicatessen in Melbourne when I was born. They lived upstairs and the shop was below. My father used to cook rabbits for sale. They were very popular. He first used to cook them in the pressure cooker then he deep fried them, and sold them as roasted rabbits.
My earliest recollection of my childhood is of my parents playing a game called mahjong with some friends, and me sitting on my father`s knee "helping Dad to win", with a crocheted blanket over me. I am told that I was about 2 years old.
The blanket was made by my grandmother, Helen Cairns. She used to make lots of them and give them away to nursing homes. She liked to keep busy, and always liked to be doing something. She enjoyed going shopping even if it was only window shopping. She often used to go with my Aunty Peg.
I remember my father as being a very big man. He was a heavy drinker and a big eater. He always seemed to have second helpings of everything. In later life he developed diabetes and was forced to stay on a strict diet for his health. He lost a lot of weight for a while. Dad had black wavy hair, was clean shaven and was 6 foot 1 inch tall.
Auchenflower
I still had the travel bug at the time I met Jenny so I did not settle down with her straight away . I had several trips away for a while, to Britain and to Townsville, mainly to escape winter.
Anyway, I gradually settled down with Jenny. She and her little red port moved in with me when I got back from Townsville and rented a flat at Birdwood Rd, Auchenflower. The flat was built in underneath an old Queenslander and there was a swimming pool in the backyard. Jenny was still working during the day for Ken at that time and, as I recollect, still kept up her flat at Sapphire St. Most nights she was with me, however.
One amusing episode there was when I decided that I would like Ton Katsu for dinner. I therefore looked up Charmaine Solomon's cookbook for the ingredients, went out and bought them and told Jenny when she got home that we were having Ton Katsu for dinner. She had never even heard of it before but rose to the occasion with her usual culinary competence. I took a lot of photos of Jenny when I was living in that flat. The first flush of romance, I suppose you could call it.
As the Sydney summer came on in early December, I left that flat to go down to Sydney again. I have always enjoyed Sydney and I still had a lot of friends and contacts there at that stage. I would probably never have left Sydney if the climate had suited me better. So I rented a unit at Bronte. I invited Jenny to come down and share Christmas Day with me there.
When I again went back to Brisbane with the onset of the Sydney cold weather, I lived in a room at the "Avon" guesthouse in Gregory Tce and Jenny continued on at her flat at Sapphire St. We still saw one-another all the time, however. I think it might have been then that we also did a trip up to Cairns to introduce Jenny to the area and to my mother. When we got back to Brisbane I took yet another room at the "Avon".
Overseas in 1984
New York. Anyway, my next and final overseas trip soon came up -- in 1984. I was away for five months -- partly spent in New York and partly spent in London. I remember the whole trip cost me $14,000: Rather too much in retrospect.
I first spent the first month living in an old hotel just off Broadway on the upper West side of New York city. Boy, it was really summer there at the time! The hotel had no air-conditioning so I bought a small 110v electric fan which years later I gave to Timmy. After about a month I flew up to the Political Psychology conference in Toronto. It was intellectually a very incestuous affair with pervasive Leftist and psychoanalytic assumptions. No wonder it was the last one I attended!
Back in Australia
When I got back from England and the USA I took a flat at Greenslopes -- again the lower part of an old Queenslander. This time Jenny gave up her flat to move in with me full-time. We stayed there for a while but with the onset of the Sydney summer, Jenny gave up working for Ken and we moved together down to Sydney. In Sydney we lived in my unit at 1/31 Elizabeth Bay Rd.
It was while we were there that Jenny catered for a Burns night in a vacant house at Glebe belonging to John Henningham. We had Haggis, "Dunlop" cheese etc. It was quite a feat for Jenny to cater for about 25 with the limited cooking utensils etc we had in Sydney at that time but the evening was a great success. Plutarch Gerolymatos, Boozy Suzy and a lot of the Mensans were there.
My main activity in Sydney at that time was selling off various Sydney properties I owned plus giving a few lectures at Uni NSW. Jenny loved living in the heart of Kings Cross while we were there and spent a bit of time exploring Sydney while I was at Uni etc. She discovered a little Vietnamese restaurant in the Haymarket that did Sate Pho so she loved that and went there a few times for lunch. Jenny likes Pho and Kim Chi almost as much as a Vietnamese or a Korean would.
I have an idea that the restaurant Jenny found might in fact have been the "New Hope" Vietnamese restaurant. I was always moved to tears by the very name whenever I walked past it. It started up shortly after Vietnamese boat people had started coming to Australia and that people had been through so much to find "new hope" in Australia was just somehow very moving to me. I felt so sorry for what they had suffered and so glad that they had found new hope. Just asking for hope seemed to be such a small ask. It was a very small and humble restaurant and has since been demolished.
We also bought my Jade green Ford Laser hatchback (for $7,000!) in Sydney at that time so eventually returned to Brisbane in two cars. I was in the Laser and Jenny drove the Gemini.
21 Queen Bess St.
When we got back to Brisbane I lived in a rooming house in Spring Hill (since demolished) and Jenny stayed at Ken's place (23 Camlet St, Mt Gravatt) while we looked for a place to buy as a home. We both liked old Queenslanders so that was what we mainly looked at. What we found was 21 Queen Bess St., Woolloongabba. It was an absolute slum at the time we first saw it but was basically sound so I bought and did it up with the assistance of Joe Grubb and other tradesmen he recommended.
It was rather beautiful when I finished with it -- long open verandahs with white iron-lace railings etc. It had six bedrooms and an extra-large dining room that became something of a family room. I think Jenny ended up with 12 power-points in her kitchen and also had a walk-in pantry!
It was at 21 Queen Bess St that Jenny first went on the IVF programme and conceived Joey at first try. It was largely Jenny's idea as I had long given up any thought that I could have children (I had previous expert medical advice to say I couldn't) but she was determined and thus achieved the best thing she ever did, in my view.
Paul, Suzy and Vonnie
From the beginning, Jenny's chidren by her previous marriage formed an important part of our relationship. Only a few weeks after I first met Jenny, she introduced me to them. I called at 23 Camlet St., Mt Gravatt to pick them up. When I arrived in my Gemini wagon, Jenny came out with three tiny kids bobbing along behind her -- rather like a ship towing rowboats. Paul, Suzy and Vonnie got into the back seat of the Gemini and sat there in total silence as I drove along -- quieter than they have ever been since. Paul must have been about six and the twins four.
Shortly after Jenny and I moved into Queen Bess St., all three came to live with us. So from that time on I saw quite a lot of the kids and made some contribution to bringing them up.
One amusing episode with Suzy was up in Cairns in 1987: Suzy had come up to Cairns with Jenny so was left in my care while Jenny was in hospital having Joey. Within hours of Jenny getting out of hospital, Ken, Maureen and family arrived to stay with us and see the baby.
While Ken, Maureen and everyone were sitting there talking, Jenny asked Suzy what it had been like with John looking after her. Suzy replied "John was a bully". This was greeted with a rather stunned silence by all concerned. The stereotypical evil step-parent no doubt occurred to all minds. Jenny then asked, however, "How was John a bully?". Suzy replied: "Because he wouldn't buy me a cream bun". She looked pretty puzzled at the gales of laughter this evoked. The episode does however tend to show two things: 1). How misleading the testimony of children could be; 2). The importance of cream buns. Suzy was 9 at the time.
I put in a roofed swimming pool at Queen Bess St. with the idea that fair-skinned people such as Susan and myself could swim without getting sunburned. The roof did however tend to make the pool rather cold and even a rudimentary solar-heating system that I installed did little to alleviate that. In the hot weather, however, the twins used to spend hours in the pool and even I used to get in around once a day.
It was also at Queen Bess St that we got a dog -- a female Bull-terrier named "Pepper". She was a rather weird dog but we enjoyed her greatly anyway. She functioned reasonably well as a watchdog in that she was a pretty good barker but if anyone had come in she would probably have only licked them to death. Bull-terriers look so mean, however, that nobody was likely to risk it. She had an unusually good coat for a bull-terrier -- mostly glossy black with splashes of white.
We had one or two barbecues and parties at 21 Queen Bess St but not a lot -- Though both Jenny and I and Ken and Maureen had our wedding receptions there.
Jenny and I were married on 30th. November 1985 at Ann St Presbyterian church -- my old church. The last of the major renovations (laying the verandah boards) at Queen Bess St were finished at 4pm that day and we were married at 5pm. Close!
A small note about a small point: I recognize the glass that I was drinking whisky out of. It is one of a sort that I use to this day: A large substantial tumbler. I have 10 of them.
The twins were there
The story of Jenny and me continues to this day in the year 2020 but here I just wanted to recall the complexities of our getting together. Jenny had a lot to put up with from my peripatetic nature in those early days. She is one of those heroic women who continue to support difficult men. Below you see us having Christmas dinner together in the year 2020 -- with our son Joe
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