Jean – Gisborne / Byron Bay, Australia
“I left school early. Back in our day there wasn’t any career advice officer at all, that could sort of inform you about different things.
If you had nursing it represented blood and guts; you didn’t know about being a dietician or a radiographer. Teaching; there wasn’t a lot of money around in that time to, pursue different things that you would have gone into when you come from a little country town, and pennies are tight in the house when you grow up after the war.
So, to my 11 year old self I would say, just stay focussed, work hard at school, and keep pushing forward, and enquire about what career paths you could have.
I grew up in downtown Gisborne in the 1950s, and we all went to school with bare feet because the alternative for shoes was something that your mother got at a jumble sale. I wish Doc Martens had been in then, because I would have been in vogue, but everyone had patent leather shoes. We didn’t have that, and yeah we had a good life out on our bikes riding about – gone all day – made our own fun – into the beach, and jumping into the rivers and all that type of thing – swinging off the willow trees.
And movies had featured a big part, because naturally we didn’t have televisions, so from the age of six I went to the movies every week, and you had to take yourself around, even at that young age, because nobody did it for you. You just got motivated and – and went in and did it.
Your neighbour program is quite a good thing to have. I know that I’ve got friends in Australia – they’ve knocked on the doors of their local neighbours and invited them all in for morning tea, just to get to know the people in your street, and from that you get to know their extended families and, start looking out for one another, and offer assistance where you can.”
