‘Drop ten, turn and Face.’ Quilty’s Football Yarns 12 Australia

‘Drop ten, turn and Face.’ Quilty’s Football Yarns 12 

Australia

Leaving London to move to Sydney was the biggest decision of our married lives, we never regretted it for a minute.

Immigrant stories are many. Ours, while not spectacular certainly has a few constants and reoccurring themes within it. It also seems to echo much of the received knowledge of what migrants do when they arrive in a new place. Perhaps the most regular theme  is our association with Berowra and in particular the area around the old La Mancha Caravan Park. It is often said that  migrants tend to settle very close the original place where they arrive in the country. In our case the point is very relevant because we now live just 200 metres, as the crow flies, from the very first place we started out in Australia twenty eight years ago!

I was allowed and qualified to teach in Australia but had to find the work myself. The economy, like that in the UK was actually still in recession with the jobs market very slow. For a few weeks I supplemented our income working for John at weekends in his catering business, ‘Cassidy’s Catering Company”. 

What John, Terrie’s brother suggested was that rather than rent a house when we arrived, it would be more sensible to take a twelve week contract on a local caravan park while we got an idea of what and where we wanted to  settle. This would help us avoid locking ourselves in for a year somewhere we might not like. At the time there were three main options in terms of caravan parks. One up in Ryde which was the closest to urban Sydney, a second up on Mona Vale Road, relatively close to the northern beaches and a third up in the north at Berowra which was surrounded by bush. As it turned out John chose the third option for us and we started off at La Mancha Caravan Park, just as you come along the Pacific Highway and enter Berowra. This choice made by John unwittingly shaped our future life and direction in Australia. Largely because I'm sure that urban Ryde would have been closest in lifestyle to central London where we came from, while Mona Vale would have directed us down the 'beach lifestyle' route.  Berowra, surrounded, by bush was much more like living in the 'country' to us Londoners.

The night we arrived in Australia I still remember being driven by John up along the dark Pacific Highway along the sweeping road that eventually enters Berowra....La Mancha is immediately at the top of the hill on the left. The sizeable site actually being at one of the highest points in Sydney perched, surrounded by and overlooking large tracts of bushland. When we arrived on the evening of 18th March 1992 we were met and shown by the site owners to a small cabin with a double bed, a set of bunk beds and a small kitchen / dining area. I also clearly remember that evening standing with Terrie looking out over the Berowra valley with houses below and an unfamiliar star filled sky. Immediate thoughts were. 'what have we done?' Here we were, in an unknown place with two young children and we had no jobs! With Cassie just 18 months and Danny 3 we settled very quickly into our small chalet.

The site did have a small store but we tended to walk down along the highway to the Shell petrol garage because it had a wider range of supplies. Fatefully it was in this place that in the first week since our arrival I saw a small note displayed advertising 'Over 30's football players wanted'....come to Berowra Oval.....Well it is certainly true that finding familiar things / activities helps people settle in new places and this was an opportunity to do just that. It is true to say our time in Australia was shaped in many ways by going to the oval that night and meeting up with other prospective Over 30's footballers. In the event I met three Englishmen, Colin Strang and brothers John and Jimmy Everitt. These guys remain some of our closest friends even now in 2020! For me it was a sport connection but also important for Terrie in making initial friends in Berowra and later securing several of her first jobs. There she was stuck on the caravan park with two youngsters on what emerged as one of the wettest months Sydney had seen in years. Colin's wife Bernie is part of a large Dublin family of which six of the brothers and sisters lived in the area. In that first week Bernie invited Terrie and the kids on a barbeque with other Berowra people including another Englishman Paul Squires. Paul was to give Terrie her first job. This external relief of meeting other families was great for an immigrant couple with few Australian contacts. Eight percent of Berowra residents are originally from Britain /Ireland and we fell right into the ex-pat network in the town. 

La Mancha was a safe place to start our immigrant life but although I had been accepted as a High School teacher the actual work had to be found by myself. In the first few days I took the scatter gun approach to job applications...not really knowing where the schools were in NSW just sending out as many CV's as possible. I even phoned Education Office’s in Western Australia and the ACT but they just told me I was better off in NSW. In addition I went in person to schools in Sydney to hand in resumes. One in particular was to play a large part later in my life. It was a Catholic school in Chatswood which had the seemingly strange name of St PLUS! At the time I just thought it was some particular Australian Saints name....not realising I had misread it from the actual St Pius X (where I have now worked for 23 years!) Waiting for approval for State schools actually took me many months. We would have starved waiting! Fortunately I'd  previously worked in Catholic schools and they sorted out my paperwork in just three hours!

Initially, it was my task each morning to go down to the solitary Caravan park call box to phone some local schools to seek casual work on a day to day basis. I'm not sure why, but a particular Deputy out at Mater Maria College Warriewood must have taken pity on me. One rainy day at 8.00am he said to me "How quickly can you get here?" I plucked 30 minutes from somewhere in my head and promised to be there in no time. Well Warriewood is at least 45 minutes from Berowra and I drove (what turned out to be a very iffy Mazda) in driving rain to get there. The School Deputy, Andy Martin was a gruff northerner who must have somehow recognised desperation in my voice. He brought me in to help minimize a potential disaster at Mater Maria....it was the day of their School fete, many staff were away and it was pelting with rain. Andy placed me in charge of 30 odd year 12 students and just asked me to keep them out of trouble as the rainy day threatened to descend into soggy farce.

I worked there for three months before eventually securing a seven month contract at Our Lady of Mercy College, Epping. As a new immigrant you are certainly very aware, if not actually desperate, for the need to work. While doing casual days before my contract at Epping I got the chance to interview for a job at a Primary School in Merrylands. No, I’m not Primary trained but in times of recession I certainly wanted to secure a job. As things turned out they seemed willing to hire me teaching predominantly PE to the juniors at the school. It was between myself and one other person. Then just as  I left the interview they told me that a high point of my week would be at the School Assembly on a Friday morning, leading the dance called the ‘Fitness Hustle’ for 400 students! Not really knowing what to say, I nodded and said I would await their call the next day. My wife Terrie was amazed that I had put myself in such a position. Knowing how uncoordinated I was in all things requiring rhythm!

Next day I returned for another casual day at Our Lady of Mercy College, Epping. Then one of those key life moments occurred. The Head Mistress, Jan Gallan and another teacher approached me. The conversation went like this.

“Mr Quilty, we had something we wanted to ask you but were unsure. Would you be open to taking on a seven month contract here at the college? I hope you don’t mind us asking?”

For what seemed like a minute I stood there stunned. Then a feeling of overwhelming relief swept over me and I launched forward to hug them both.

“You have just saved my life, you have just saved my life!’

Later on I went on to explain what I had almost agreed to out at Merrylands, I think they understood. At recess I was able to make a phone call of regret to the Primary School.

As is the way, like with this job at Epping, my next job also came about in a random way. One day near the end of 1992 someone brought in a tiny advert from the Sydney Morning Herald. Clearly a guardian angel was looking out for me because this role teaching Business Economics and PD Health was seemingly made for me. I phoned the advertised number and the person who answered, Robyn Meadows, must have felt sorry for me and my English accent. She quickly told me that I would be one of just four people interviewed the coming day and that there had been over 100 applicants! Robyn explained that I would be seeing two people. Michael Carr the Headmaster, and John Decourcy the Deputy. She even primed me for interview saying. “Michael who runs the College Rugby League side will be very interested in your football coaching ability. John, on the other hand will just ask you some offbeat educational theory questions, good luck with that!” As things turned out, that was exactly the way the interview went. My major contribution to the interview being that “With this mix of subjects whoever you get will be a bit of a compromise”. That got me the job to start end January 1993.