Our Life in Pictures
- Page Updated: Monday, March 14, 2005 -
The following galleries are a photographic
record of our lives together since 1986 when
we first moved in together around mid-April
of that year at Shirley's house at 1154 Victoria
Road, West Ryde NSW in Sydney's western suburbs.
She was teaching at Granville T.A.F.E. (Technical
and Further Education) College in School
of Humanities and the subjects included Modern
& Ancient Histories and English. I was
working as a 'Requisitions Clerk' at Reader's
Digest in Surry Hills (Sydney) at the time
and had been since October 1983.
I had moved from Northbridge on Sydney's
North Shore, where I'd been living with an
old friend, Brett Butler and his mother Colleen
in their front room since very early 1982
(mainly sleeping on a small mattress on the
floor), to Balmain in mid-December 1983.
Initially staying at the home of friends
Gayle Kennedy and Paul 'Moriarty' Wollaston
looking after their dog 'Alfred' while they
went to visit Gayle's family at Hay in south-western
New South Wales and then later attending
the Australian Jazz Convention in Forbes.
I first met Shirley early in the new year
when I was sitting in with Rod Lawlis' jazz
band at the Callan Park Hotel in Rozelle
and she had come along to review the band
for the Jazz Action Society newsletter. She
heard me singing and decided to interview
me. As with most people, she managed to misspell
my family name - something she really gets
pissed off with people doing nowadays.
It wasn't 'til Christmas Day 1985 when I
made an extremely rude proposition to her
as she was about to board the bus for the
Australian Jazz Convention, which was being
held in Ballarat VIC that year, that we even
l;ooked like getting together. But on the
afternoon of January 4th, 1986 BEACHHEAD were doing a one-off gig
at Dick's Hotel in Balmain and she turned
up out of the blue.
When we finished playing and it had started
raining I offered her a lift to the Vanity
Fair Hotel after I'd dropped Maree Steinway
and her piano home in Paddington and she
accepted. On the way, I told her that I was
working with the Manly Jazz All Stars at
the Midsummer Jazz Concert in the Domain
next day and had a couple of backstage passes
if she'd like to go.
Once again she accepted and I collected her
from West Ryde next day and we drove back
to Balmain where I left my car which was
well and truly out of rego and we, along
with Terri McCormack and Brendan Lynch caught
a taxi to the Domain.
We stayed together that night and started
getting serious enough about each other by
the end of February that either she would
come and spend the weekends with me in Balmain,
or I would go to West Ryde and stay.
The 'BEACHHEAD' Wedding: December 20th, 1986