Scholar Valerie A. Brown, now 95, remembers her move from Queensland to Canberra with her young family in the 1950s.
With my son Matthew to look after at the beginning of my fourth decade, I was mostly at home, no longer able to be a free spirit, while my husband Rob had expanded his horizons as a qualified journalist.
We had hardly settled down in our new house with our three-month-old baby when Rob came home with amazing news. His way of breaking the news was to ask, as I washed the dishes, "Would you like to live in Canberra?" Without turning around, I answered, "Last place on earth I want to live." His response was, "We're going on Friday."
We negotiated the terms of our marriage once again. Rob had been offered the job of heading up The Courier Mail's political bureau in Canberra. We both knew it was the job of a lifetime so Rob went to Canberra that Friday, and a month later we were all on our way.
Once there, I found that our situation was a mixed blessing. We lived in a charming heritage house with a two-acre garden on a tree-lined street. There was a nearby child-minding centre where I could leave Matthew while I did my shopping, and Rob's bureau was going swimmingly. On the other hand, I was left in a large house with a new baby, frost in winter, no heating except wood fires, no friends, no experience in child-rearing, and no access to grandparents. Matthew was allergic to the local milk, and we knew no doctor. Rob's job occupied him for virtually 24 hours a day, as parliament sat all night. On the more positive side, I was deliriously happy with the baby and the garden. I found political gossip fascinating. The city provided plenty of playgrounds, and there was good theatre.
His new high-profile job led Rob to use his middle name, Wallace, as the first name of his byline. Robin Brown sounded too common for people to remember. I had called him Rob for 15 years, so it was too late for me to change. Rob he is for me still.
I made a group of friends where we could talk about our children for hours on end. As an antidote, a sub-group set up a book club with a more ambitious program. Today, these clubs are everywhere, often for the same reason. Our discussions kept our professional selves alive through the ups and downs of having children and we helped each other through our respective crises. We are still friends 50 years later.
Rob, Matthew and I had been in Canberra for three years when we had another big surprise. After eight years of failed childbearing, I was pregnant. My doctor suggested that if I really wanted to keep this baby, I should try complete bed rest for the first three months. I did, and it worked. In the meantime, we found a wonderful nun to look after Matthew, and I could talk to him from my bed. We were in luck for another reason. This was at the time when the drug stilbestrol was being prescribed for threatened miscarriage, and thalidomide for acute morning sickness. In spite of my miscarriages and severe morning sickness, my doctor did not prescribe either drug. He'd had an early warning that some of the daughters of those who took stilbestrol developed uterine cancer at about the age of 18, and that some of those who took thalidomide bore babies with no arms or legs. I am forever grateful my doctor didn't take that risk.
Robina was born after a difficult labour. Robina, who became Bina, was born bright yellow from jaundice and one eye that didn't move. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. In the small community that was then Canberra, there was wide interest in her birth. They knew it had been long awaited. I discovered I wasn't short of friends - I had to be moved to a larger room to fit in all the flowers.
I rejoined my consumer-advocate friends from the previous decade. One of our projects was to prepare a community-education program on the pill, a brand-new means of contraception. No one then guessed that the contraceptive pill would alter women's lives as much as it did. As soon as the news filtered through, women started making choices. For the first time, women could look to their own future. Women and men could choose the time for childbirth and plan their lives accordingly. However, even after its invention, the pill was not readily available. Opposition came from all directions: doctors would only prescribe it to married women; companies supplying the pill were prohibited from advertising it; several religions declared its use a sin; and attempts to publicise it were prosecuted for indecency. Arguments as to whether life begins at conception or birth raged in every part of society.
In 1964, our consumer rights group decided to produce a booklet containing information, illustrations, and an article about the impact of the pill on a woman's life. To get the booklet published, we had to survive censorship and charges of indecency. Most booksellers would not touch it, so we needed to find a way to distribute it and managed to do so by supplying copies in a brown paper bag to the few news agencies and booksellers who were willing to take it, and even then only under the shelf. When I was asked to talk about the booklet on national television, I was eight months pregnant. I must have looked like an advertisement for 'If you don't take the pill, this is what will happen to you.'
The birth of our next child, A.J, was so easy that I wanted to do it lots more times; however, Rob thought three children were enough. It was winter when A.J. was born. He and I were transferred by trolley from the hospital to a motel-type ward, with snow falling on our faces. Maybe that is why he became such a keen skier!
As well as our time with the children, Rob and I had a fun time of our own. Canberra was a small town with a big profile. Only 60,000 people lived there (it's almost 500,000 now.) It was the seat of government, the residence of senior public servants, and the home of the Australian National University. That is still in Canberra's profile, and it still punches above its weight. Part of Rob's job was to entertain diplomats, ministers of the Crown, and senior academics who were influential in the politics of the time. We made friends from among all those groups, and went to their parties. That was why we had been given a charming house to live in and an entertainment budget. However, going to fascinating parties was one thing; returning the lavish hospitality was quite another.
Rob's newspaper provided the house, and it was up to me to manage the entertainment. We responded with what we could afford, giving small dinner parties with interesting guests. I loved it; at last, here was something I had been reared to do. There are lots of colourful stories from those dinner parties. There was the time we had invited some senior bureaucrats when, halfway through dinner, two of them jumped up and started yelling at each other. They had discovered that one was blocking a major project of the other. The other guests asked, "Why did you invite them together? Everyone knows about that."
Communication in the public service had its secrets.
