Patricia Espin, daughter of Dorothy (23) and Reuben (27), was born in 1946 in Birmingham. She married Paul Chancellor in 1968 in Warley East, Worcestershire. They had two children Jennifer (?) and Julie Suzanne (1972).

Pat sent through some photos of her back garden in Terang

ndeed work with Jenny at the United Birmingham Hospital group. But did not know she knew you until I got your wedding invitation. Enough said about her.  I was their chief techie until 1971 when I moved to work at the Hallam hospital which was much closer to home. Paul preferred me not to have a career and made it difficult to work at the uni.  I then became pregnant with Julie and then Jenny and when they were 10 and 6yrs old we came to Australia.

Paul had a brother in Adelaide and so we hopped off there for 6 years.  Paul had a break from working for 6 months and did a lot to the house we bought.  I got a job at the Adelaide Children’s Hosp. As an EEG technician  It was a very interesting time and I loved the work.  I still have my references for the doctors I worked with and Peter Jeavons from Dudley Road Hosp used to come over and lecture on Paediatric Neurology so they knew my pedigree was good.

Paul got a job with SANTOS the oil and gas company and was fly in fly out to the Moomba Gas fields on the Queensland /South Australian border. So we didn’t see much of him for the next 5 years.  I gave up my job at the hospital because I had to put the children into before and after school care . It meant leaving them at 7-30am and not picking them up until after 6-0pm.  I expected better of coming here and it was a step to far down in what I expected from Australia. So I applied and got a Lab Techs job in a school and at the same time applied for a place at University of Adelaide to train as a teacher.  Because of the permanence/casual rule I lost the job to a lady who had moved into the area from another school. So I took up my place and studied Majors in Chemistry and Biology, a minor in Geology and Education studies. In 1988 I started teaching in Western Australia.

Meanwhile Paul had taken a contract in the North West of Western Australia as chief Electrical Engineer on the Domestic Gas Project. What a change.  The Pilbara is an amazing place. Very much  a mans place. Drink hard womanise hard and work hard.  12hour shifts including Saturday Morning they only got Saturday afternoon of to play Australian Rules footy.  I was fascinated by the geology and the international collection of oil and gas workers wives. The geology was incredible and I joined the naturalist group which went out into the desert and fixed things. Broken bridges, footpath, protected sacred sites and identified flora and fauna most of which I had never seen before.  It was at this time that I called an end to our marriage. After 20 years of betrayal and ill treatment of the children and animals I took a job teaching in Perth and by the end of 1988 had bought a little 4 bed/2bath house and the children and I moved in xmas 1988.

My first teaching post had been in Roebourne in the Pilbara at an aboriginal school and it was great.  The children were lovely and I enjoyed my time there.  Next was a school that was mainly Serbian and at the height of the yugoslavian conflict.  That was where I took a gun off a young student and then was nearly shot by an idiot of a teacher.  The bullet hit the bookcase where I was standing and I felt the wind  in my ear. We  had the first of the Mujahadin children from Afghanistan and I saw some very interesting but macabre photos taken during the war against the Russians.  I was offered a post at TAFE and went to teach adults and post school children and trained lab technicans for schools hospitals and industry.  That was one of the most interesting parts of my working career and the students were great to work with. I became State examiner in Chemistry together with another and we remained great friends until I moved over to Victoria.

In Western Australia it was the policy to send teachers for a 2 year period to the country to staff he schools in the remote areas of WA.  They could be sent to an aboriginal school which was a thousand kilometres from a shop.  This needed a special way of implementing the curriculum by working with the aboriginal elders and aids.  Teachers who did not take this approach didn’t last long.  I was lucky as I got sent to York an old settlement town only 100KMs from Perth which was just becoming touristy and I did my 2 years there. By this time of course Jenny was at TAFE [Technical and Further Education] and Julie was at Uni. so I was free to go up country.  After a year I sold my house in Perth and bought an old railway workers cottage. Next to the rail line which carried long wheat trains down to the docks to Freemantle.  The first nIght I thought they were coming through the front door but soon got used to them.  I stayed in that house until 2004.  I took up dancing and quilting and had chickens and a small vegies garden (winter only).

At the end of 2 years I came to England and got a job at the Lincoln School of Science and Technology . This was one of the best teaching years I had and in hindsight I should have taken the job they offered me and stayed I would have saved myself a lot of heartache and stress but hindsight is a wonderful thing.  Even now I am torn between staying here and coming back.  I went back to dancing and was teaching at a great school about 30 miles away and stayed there for about 8 years It was at this time I took up dancing again and met and married Ray.  Once again fate gave me a bum steer and within 5 days of us marrying he had a burst bowel with a primary and secondary tumour.  Bowel Cancer. So we commenced on a round of operations courses of chemo therapy  and after 4 years with the weather getting hotter and very strict water rationing we decided we should move to  Victoria.  We had 6 years together.

Jenny lived nearby and we bought a cottage in the village of Terang.  This has weather very much like Devon and Cornwall with cold (no Snow) wet winters and warm dry summers but with frequent summer showers.  Lovely.  We do have snow here in the snowy mountains in June/August and it is a favourite holiday destination for many Australians.  Where I live is close to the Great Ocean road and a great temperate rainforest called the Ottways.  The landscape here is craters and Lakes and you might see some evidence of that in the calender I am sending you.  If you look up Corangamite shire Victoria you will be able to see more.  This is Dairy country with rich green fields and big herds of jersey cows together with freisans . Aboriginals still tell stories of the fire mountains and the old calderas are so deep no one has got to the bottom of some of them yet. The soil is black volcanic dust and rich in minerals but our water is not as abundant as it was when I first came here so I hope we will be able to last a few more years.

As you know I bottle fruits and tomatoes from the garden and have enough left from last year to keep me through this year.  Except for tomatoes.  My crop was only ½ what it was last year so I can cope with this.  I have 3 cats and 3 chickens and a ¼ acre block.  Nowadays people would rather have no garden and buy their food but I still like to pick a warm apricot and tomatoes and bite into the flesh and taste the sun in my mouth. There is more but this is awfully long. I am now on NBN wireless broadband and hopefuly shouldn’t have too much trouble with mail any more.  Lots of love to you both Pat