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Miscellaneous personal anecdotes

1980s
Friends
Interests
Memories
Nostalgia
Thoughts and wishes
Trivia

A variety of notes about myself: likes, memories, personal trivia and so on. Some of these are a bit outdated, though it’s hard to decide whether to update them or leave them for personal history reasons.

1980s

Most of my teenage years encompassed the 1980s, and I do now feel much nostalgia for that time in history, though I was not always happy. I still had most of my future ahead of me and there was still hope I could achieve something with my life.

I feel much fondness now for the popular culture of that decade. Though I lived in Australia, much of it was American-influenced (music, movies, books).

Some media strongly evoke nostalgia, such as books I read back then, or movies. One movie is, oddly, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – it is something to do with the almost dreamlike suburbia setting which seems timeless, but still reminiscent of the 1980s, when the movie was made (1982). Another movie is the original Star Wars trilogy; they have a particular atmosphere of their time that subsequent sequels never captured.

I had a collection of the long-running Sweet Valley High book series about twin teenage girls in a sunny California town – these as a teenager and their lives (and looks) were like an unobtainable dream for me (plain and brown-haired with glasses). Who can forget the description of the twins in the first chapter of the first book:

Both girls had the same shoulder-length, sun- streaked blond hair, the same sparkling blue- green eyes, the same perfect skin. Even the tiny dimple in Elizabeth’s left cheek was duplicated in her younger sister’s – younger by four minutes. Both girls were five feet six on the button and generously blessed with spectacular, all-American good looks. Both wore exactly the same size clothes, but they refused to dress alike, except for the exquisite identical lavalieres they wore on gold chains around their necks. The lavalieres had been presents from their parents on their sixteenth birthday.

The only way you could tell them apart was by the tiny beauty mark on Elizabeth’s right shoulder. Their friends might notice that Elizabeth wore a watch and that Jessica did not. Time was never a problem for Jessica. She always felt that things didn’t really start until she got there. And if she was late, let ’em wait. Otherwise, there was virtually no way to distinguish between the beautiful Wakefield twins. But beneath the skin, there was a world of difference. A wicked gleam of mischief lurked in the aquamarine depths of Jessica’s eyes, while Elizabeth’s reflected only sincerity.

I listened to the pop music of then in the 1980s – favorite artists and bands included Michael Jackson, Madonna, Duran Duran, A-ha, and so on. I got into pop music and culture in my teens – no surprises there as it is marketed towards that age group – and bought records and cassette tapes at a little independent music store in East Bentleigh, now long gone (not sure when it closed; sometime in the 2000s as the Internet had made them redundant). Michael Jackson’s Thriller was one of the first cassettes I bought, and I listened to favorite tracks repeatedly – I was quite a fan at one stage (and no, I don’t believe the unpleasant allegations against him). I had a small record player and speakers set up on my white dressing table (a gift from Dad, not sure which birthday or Christmas), and a portable cassette player – no iPods then! I remember having a portable cassette player, probably a Sony Walkman or similar.

Hairstyles of that time were big bouffant layered hairdos; mine was a somewhat botched imitation of these (a mullet at one time). Clothing was also layered, with oversized shirts belted over jeans. I was fashion-challenged and never managed to look right.

There was no Internet or computers as we know them now, though personal computers were beginning to make an appearance later in the 1980s. I wonder how different my teenage years might have been had I grown up later with all the ubiquitous social media and Internet access there is now. Back then, the landline telephone was the main method of communication, and I had to visit the local or school library to look up information on various topics. Casually communicating with people from various countries on forums would have seemed like a science fiction fantasy then! I don’t know if I would want to go back to that now as I would be very isolated, but in retrospect, perhaps spending my adolescence without such technology was not so bad.

(Wikipedia: 1980s portal)

Friends

I have managed to have a few friends throughout my life, mainly at school and Sunday School, all female and most of them transient. Since I left work I have become increasingly reclusive and have no one my own age who is a close friend whom I see regularly.

Kilvington

I attended Kilvington for all my school years (Prep/Year 1 in 1976 to part of Year 12, up to May 1988). These are girls whose brief friendships remain in my memory. I was not a part of any group; I was on the outside and ostracized at times, particularly in my last few years as adolescence messed me up physically and psychologically, and I became notably “wierd.” Depression affected me increasingly from around Year 9 (1985) onwards.

At times I miss those days anyway, of having girlfriends to go out with and gossip with, and having no concerns outside of homework. I have no female friends my age now.

Quick note on years:

Year 5: 1981
Year 6: 1982
Year 7: 1983
Year 8: 1984
Year 9: 1985
Year 10: 1986
Year 11: 1987
Year 12: 1988

Gina Edwards

She was in Michele’s year group (2 years behind me), but I somehow became friends with her for a while – 1985 or so. She came with us on one of our yearly holidays to Inverloch. Her mother was divorced and Gina was somewhat troubled. Michele and I also went on holiday with her and her mother one year down at Merricks, near the beach. We had quite a lot of freedom to roam around there, which was great fun.

Robyn Kaye

I was friends with her in Year 5 (1981) or 6 (1982). She was inclined to delinquency and left Kilvington later on (last year was Year 9/1985). She lived at 26 Wilmoth Avenue, Murrumbeena, 3163 – not too far from Kilvington; she could ride a bicycle there. I stayed at her home occasionally. There was a park across the road and we went there. I remember painting a picture of a sportscar and giving it to her, or to her brother.

Samantha Lowrie

I was friends with her in Year 7 (1983). She only attended Kilvington for that year. I don’t know why we became so; just, as with other friendships, one of those things that happened. I went to her house for sleepovers a few times, though I felt too embarrassed to reciprocate. She was tall, thin and had light brown-blonde hair and blue eyes. I rather miss her still as we got along quite well.

Her parents had a big house in one of the outer suburbs; I can’t remember where (Vermont? Glen Waverley? Out to the south-east anyway, I think). There might have been a parkland reserve nearby. They had a silver Jeep or similar at one stage. I am not sure if she had siblings. I went to a roller skating rink with her.

Karen Princehorn

She arrived in Year 8 (1984).

Nicole Tombs

She arrived in Year 7 (1983).

Stella Tzimoulis

Friends with her in Year 7 (1983) for a short while. She was Greek. I don’t know how the friendship happened as the Greek-heritage girls usually grouped together. It only lasted for that year; perhaps only some of the year? She wrote in my copy of the school yearbook:

Dear Suzie,

You have been great. Cheered me up in the bad times and also made me mad but that’s what counts in a good friendship. I hope you have the very best holiday and Merry Christmas and a happy new year. I hope to see you next year. Lots of Love Stella XX

Sunday School

Charmaine Hendrikse: A longtime friend whom I met in Sunday School during the 1980s at Bentleigh Baptist Church.

14 Aug 2016 (incomplete)

Interests

I can track my life by the various things in which I have been interested in, and obsessed with.

Childhood/unknown

I remember having an odd obsession with, of all things, street sewer vent pipes! The old (1800s-1900s?) ones that were still around in Elsternwick, Brighton and similar old suburbs. I recall drawing some of them (the pipes with the various shapes of caps at their tops) with chalk on our driveway. This web page shows some Victorian-era ones in England.

1978

I developed an interest in aircraft, perhaps due to my family’s second holiday to England, where we were near Binbrook Airfield and fighter jets came and went overhead.

1980-1983

An obsession with horses emerged; this seems to be a common trend for pre-teen girls. I did a lot of drawings of them and read as many horse-related books as I could.

Memories

Some random memories.

My first memory that I can recall is of lying in my cot in what would later be Michele’s room, and my maternal grandmother and grandfather appearing in the doorway and coming up to me with smiles on their faces.
Miss Harper was an older lady who was a seamstress; she made some dresses for Michele and I, including the pink dresses we wore as bridesmaids to Heather’s wedding, Michele’s Year 12 formal dress (blue) and wedding dress. She lived on Edward Street, off Kooyong Road, near Caulfield Hospital – don’t know the exact address. The narrow street still has most of the little old pre-1930s houses that were quite pleasant and cool inside, as I remember.
There used to be paddocks where horses were kept along Warrigal Road, at the end of South Road. One day in 1980 or 1981 I went for a ride with someone else (a friend whose name I can’t recall) at a small riding center near the corner of Warrigal Road and Kingston Road. At one point the horse I was on broke into a gallop and the feeling of going fast was exhilarating. I remember seeing a horse and female rider going along the backstreets near our home, along Hobart Street – this must have been in the early 1990s. However the fields were progressively sold off for industrial park developments and had disappeared by the late 2000s, sadly.
We used to hear a milkcart and horse trot along Tucker Road in the 1970s, in the early morning hours to deliver milk. I am not sure where the dairy was – in Moorabbin, I think.
My family and I used to go on daytrips up to Ballarat and the surrounding countryside in the 1970s and 1980s, usually on a weekend. We would take Gran sometimes to visit her sister, Aunty Day, who was in a nursing home in Ballarat. We would also visit Dawn Harbour (a daughter of Aunty Day’s) where she lived then in Lal Lal, and she would host lunch for us.
In the early 1970s Michele and I attended a small kindergarten in Bentleigh off Centre Road, on Arthur Street, near the Bentleigh RSL – the kinder is no longer there. It had some large pine trees in front. I remember my class walked to a little pocket park sometimes – down Scotts Street then to the park on Leckie Street. It was the size of a house block.
Michele once wanted to do ballet, so my parents enrolled her at a studio (the National Ballet Studio on Carlisle Street, in St Kilda). However she only lasted one session due to being bullied – one of the girls pushed her! I vaguely remember going there with my parents to take her home and seeing inside the studio. I really wish I had done ballet or gymnastics now, but was not interested in them – or sports generally – back then.
I used to wait for Dad to come home from work, when he was with the Civil Aviation Authority in their Melbourne CBD office on Lonsdale Street. He would usually take the train in and back, from Patterson Station here (1.2 km down Patterson Road from our house). He came home around 4 p.m. or so. I remember running down the footpath outside our house to meet him once, when I was young.
Gran and I were sitting at her kitchen table one day, in the early 1990s I think, and she said to me during a conversation that she believed everyone had a fixed destiny (I can’t recall her exact words) laid out for them. (I tend to feel the opposite, that life is a series of random events.)
While flying on our second family holiday to England in 1978, I recall looking out the cabin window to see a rugged, snow-covered mountain range far below, and the pilot announcing over the intercom that Mount Everest was out there (though it wasn’t visible). We were seated on the left/port side of the passenger jet and were heading towards England. The feeling of seeing those mountains was dreamlike; it is like that in my memory of it.

Nostalgia

As I get older I feel strong nostalgia for my childhood and teenage years (1970s-1980s), though I was not always happy. Compared to my dismal failed attempt at adulthood, though, they now seem blissful. Some media strongly evoke nostalgia, such as books I read back then, or movies. One movie is, oddly, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – it is something to do with the almost dreamlike suburbia setting which seems timeless, but still reminiscent of the 1980s, when the movie was made (1982). Another movie is the original Star Wars trilogy; they have a particular atmosphere of their time that subsequent sequels never captured. Another is the Sweet Valley High book series about twin teenage girls in a California town – I had a collection of these as a teenager and their lives (and looks) were like an unobtainable dream.

Music of course invokes nostalgia; I listened to the pop music of then in the 1980s – favorite artists and bands included Michael Jackson, Madonna, Duran Duran, A-ha, and so on. I got into pop music and culture in my teens – no surprises there as it is marketed towards that age group – and bought records and cassette tapes at a little independent music store in East Bentleigh, now long gone (not sure when it closed; sometime in the 2000s as the Internet had made them redundant). Michael Jackson’s Thriller was one of the first cassettes I bought, and I listened to favorite tracks repeatedly. I had a small record player and speakers set up on my white dressing table (a gift from Dad, not sure which birthday or Christmas), and a portable cassette player – no iPods then! Or Internet as we know it now.

I greatly miss the people in my family who are now deceased; Gran most of all. She was the grandparent whom I saw most and was closest to. Grandpa died in 1982 so I did not have as long to get to know him and was a little shy of him. My paternal grandparents were virtually unknown; I only personally met Granny Kirk three times in my life (the last when I was a sullen teenager and unfortunately not on my best behavior – she did scold me for that during her only visit here in 1983), and never knew Thomas McHale, who died two decades before I was born (1950).

I miss seeing Gran’s relatives; she came from a big family and that gave a feeling of security as there seemed to be so many of them. I miss the daytrips into the country (Ballarat area) to see them.

5:36 PM Saturday, 25 March 2017

Things I wish I had done differently, or wish I could do.

Do-over my life – a fantasy

One of my favorite if rather melancholy daydreams is: what if I could magically live my life over again, with the knowledge I have now?

I would be transported back to the body I had when I was young, essentially my mind of now inside my brain of then, co-habiting with my young consciousness; like two people in the one body. My older self would watch and provide guidance to my younger self, and make different decisions at key points in my life.

Below is a list of what I would watch out for or change.

Physical and mental

Be diligent about cleaning my teeth. Also get all my wisdom teeth when they came through, not just the 2 lower impacted ones.
Wear sunscreen and hats when young – avoid sunburn! I was not careful about that then.
Eyesight – could I have avoided becoming shortsighted at 13? Causes seem partly genetic, partly environmental. The most recent theory is a lack of adequate exposure to sunlight during childhood. I did read a lot and spend a lot of time indoors, so perhaps trying to get a couple of hours outside every day might have prevented me having to wear glasses?
Don’t get an obsession with horses in late childhood; it was a useless diversion.
Take up ballet or gymnastics for a hobby as a child. Not necessarily as a career, but it would have been nice to have that athletic training when young.
Keep my weight low enough to delay puberty as long as possible (I looked awful after adolescence). Exercise daily. Perhaps aim to have developed a milder version of my eating disorder.
Don’t get my hair cut short when I was 13 or so! It was not an attractive look.
Minimize eating sweets, cakes, biscuits, etc.

Family relations

Spend more time with my grandparents. My paternal grandmother lived in England so I could not see her physically (only 3 times in my life), but I could have written to her and communicated more.
Appreciate my maternal grandparents, Gran and Grandpa, more; talk to them about their lives and memories. Spend more time with them. Stay over at Gran’s home more often.
Try not to be so difficult generally in my own family (difficult during adolescence, though).
Try to be closer to my sister.

School

Try to do well. I wouldn’t have had to be a “straight-A” student, but just aim to pass each subject every year. Most importantly, I wish I had finished Year 12 and graduated!
Try not to act so oddly so I would be ostracized by classmates. Try to fit in more and maintain friendships. Participate more in activities so I would have something on my future resumé.

Behavior

Try to be more normal! Avoid the odd interests I had as a teenager (military stuff for example).

Work

The ASTA apprenticeship was not a good idea but a dead-end. I only lasted 2 months. Perhaps I should have aimed for a quiet but secure job in the public service, maybe as a secretary (I could still have done the TAFE secretarial course). Or gone to university to further my artistic skills, though I don’t know what career that might have led to.

Perhaps do some part-time work on Saturdays during my school years and get some pocket money. But I would not apply for a supermarket job after that and get trapped there for 12 wasted years.

Teenage weekend idea: 3-hour shift on Saturday morning doing part-time work. Spend afternoon at gymnastics. Go to Gran’s for regular Saturday roast dinner there. I would stay overnight and into Sunday (and miss church). Alternatively, if I did not do gymnastics, go to Gran’s from work and spend the afternoon and next day there.

Assuming I had graduated from Year 12 (1988), perhaps I could have traveled over to England for a few months in 1989 to see Granny Kirk and other relatives there. ✈

If I were Prime Minister …

Fairness is one of my strong beliefs.

I would:

Greatly increase funding for public healthcare; make it a priority. Abolish the private health insurance subsidy. Ban private insurance from its insidious creep into the public health system.
Introduce a Basic Guaranteed/Unconditional Income, which would replace some welfare payments; all citizens (or those who were not wealthy) would receive a minimum-wage-level income, enough to live on. The income would be taxed at a reasonable level.
Abolish funding for private schools; put that money into the public school system. Make both that and public health world-class.
All citizens would be taxed (no exemptions) but based on their ability to pay.
All contraception to be government-subsidized. Abortion legalized.
No tax exemptions for religious institutions.

My future

I wish I could live as a recluse, in my own little apartment somewhere around my local area, or in a nice part of the inner suburbs. If I won the lottery, this is what I would focus on; setting myself up for the rest of my life and withdrawing from the world to live in my own world. I now have no ambitions of a career, etc.; I do not have the will or energy. I tried earlier in my life and failed, and do not have the heart to try again.

Random thoughts

Sometimes I tire of reason, and long for some magic and mystery.

2:37 PM Thursday, 28 October 2021

Trivia

Some random snippets of personal information in no particular order, added as I think of them.

As a child I occasionally liked to eat paper, slate rock and moss!
My first hazy memory that I can recall is of lying in my cot in what would later be Michele’s room, and my maternal grandmother and grandfather coming up to me with smiles on their faces.
My paternal grandmother gave me my first name (Suzanne), and Mum gave me my second name (Bronwyn).
I delight in disconcerting people.
I have poor circulation in my extremities (hands, feet, etc.) and these can turn as cold as a corpse’s in cold weather! They go purple and pink colors. I think I might have Raynauld’s Syndrome.
I have never been interested in having children! I am generally not interested in all that “relationship stuff”. And this doesn’t bother me.
I had my ears pierced in 1988. (My only piercings, I might add.) I dislike body piercings and permanent tattoos, though – the latter ruin your skin and make it look diseased.
I had blonde tips in my hair from about 1986 (done by my cousin Heather), and I tried having it dyed red in the early 1990s (it came out darker than expected and was a rather odd color for a few months!). I have not colored it since then, though.
I am right-handed.
I generally ignore fashions and fads, and dress for comfort. I am afraid my dress sense has been somewhat lacking throughout my life (I cringe at what I wore in some photos in earlier years!). I like simple and classic-type clothes; I don’t like frilly, fussy outfits, or clothes that reveal too much skin. I don’t have any formal/business-type clothes as I never go anywhere.
I rarely go to the movies and have lost interest in listening to music since around 2004. I have a small TV in my bedroom which I watch each evening (lying in bed), but more often than not fall asleep out of sheer boredom! I am not a fan of any TV series. I tend to watch documentaries and the news, and an occasional TV movie.
I tend to react rather than act. I am very passive.
I don’t usually speak to strangers unless they speak to me first.
I have never worn high heels, but I still have troublesome feet! I find it difficult to find shoes to fit me. My big toes are somewhat bent and misshapen.
I prefer to infer certain things rather than state them directly.
I don’t gesture when I talk.
I have never owned a credit card, and don’t have any desire to! They are far more trouble than they are worth, and people can get into serious debt with them.
Sometimes, when I become engrossed in my thoughts or daydreams, my eyes are open but I literally don’t see anything. Only when I come to awareness do I realize I haven’t been seeing!
I am not particularly interested in festivals (e.g. Christmas) and could live without them.
I really hate answering the telephone or door if I don’t know who is calling.
I have lived with my parents all my life so far, and have never yet lived alone, to date (2025) but would very much like to!
The only activity I like when going shopping is visiting bookstores!
I have never been to a nightclub, and have no desire to!
After I was born, I refused to breastfeed! So Mum had to put me on formula in the hospital, but the particular brand upset me (gave me indigestion), so an aunt suggested she try Carnation Milk (with vitamins added) instead, and I was fine after that.

23 Dec 2006-28 Dec 2015

Wednesday, 15 October 2025 at 2:52:30 pm