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ANNE RICHARDS

1954-

By Judy Ferguson

 

Anne was born in Broken Hill, NSW, on 7th November 1954 at the Broken Hill and District Hospital, the second child of Laurel and Allen Richards.

Her mother was one of seven children who were all born in Broken Hill. She worked as an office assistant before her marriage but had to leave work on marriage as that was the union rule in Broken Hill at the time.

Anne’s mother’s family had connections with the Gawler area. The family had originally come from England during the 19th Century. Her great-great grandparents went to Victoria Creek (later named Williamstown) near Gawler and lived in a house that is now under the Barossa Reservoir.

The Richards family had originally migrated from Cornwall to Moonta in South Australia in the 19th Century and later moved to Broken Hill where they owned a dairy and milk run. 

Her father, one of four children, was also born at Broken Hill. After finishing primary school he attended a junior technical school and later a technical trade school where he studied carpentry and joinery. 

Anne’s parents were married in Broken Hill on 3rd April 1944 at the Methodist Manse.

Anne’s parents had bought two blocks side by side in Iodide Street where her father built a weatherboard house with a corrugated iron roof. The house was ‘ready cut’ and cost about £1000. It was shipped from Sydney by rail. It was built on a hill and so it became a 2 tiered block with fruit trees – mulberry, lemon, orange and apricot. There were also roses and other flowers – her mother was a keen gardener.

Anne began school at Morgan Street Primary School when she was five years old. It was considered an elite school with a middle-class clientele. She cried and wanted to go home. The Headmistress rang her mother who came to the school and eventually convinced Anne that she should stay.

Anne went from 1B to 1A because she was bright and she loved school. She had been like an only child because her brother was so much older than her so she enjoyed the new found friendships she made there. While at Morgan Street the school expanded its campus to a site on a block further up the road and years 3-6 went there. Anne remembers playing chasey and basketball on the concrete in the summer. There was no shade and no ‘hat policy’ in those days!

The family often went to Menindee Lakes for long summer holidays and the rows of holiday shacks there were nicknamed – ‘Sunset Strip’. She often got burnt and was told to rub tomato on it! At school she remembers getting one third of a pint of coloured milk – green, pink, yellow. There was no refrigeration at school so they had to drink it before classes began in the morning. They used pen and ink in the older grades, using special ‘reservoir’ red nibs that had a built in reservoir for holding ink so that they could write several pages without having to dip the pen in the inkwell. Anne especially loved the school library and often spent lunch times there so she was allowed to borrow extra books which she devoured overnight. Her favourite author was Enid Blyton. She is not sure how her love of reading began.

In the evenings after school she would visit friends or they would come to her house and she would read after she had gone to bed. There was no TV in Broken Hill until she was 12 years old and then they only had the ABC for a few years. She is still not an avid TV watcher but remains an avid reader. Her father used to take her to the Municipal Library which was a dingy, dark area at the back of the Town Hall where the books were mostly in plain covers. Her dad would park outside and wait for her. This library had a children’s section.

After she graduated from primary school – top of Year 6 - Anne attended Broken Hill High School and went into class 1A, where her English teacher Mr Nash, was shocked by an essay of hers on ‘Solving the population problem’ in which she wrote that ‘anyone over 30 should be sent to the moon.’

Anne had begun to rebel during her fourth year at high school (her mother called her a ‘non-conformist’) and despite doing well, she decided to leave school and get a job as her other 16-year-old friends had done. The school Principal and a teacher pleaded with her parents to make her stay and she won a bursary and went back to school to 5th form.

She saw a library job advertised midway through the year and applied for and won it out of 68 applicants. However, at the end of the year she had second thoughts and went to night school in the following year, studying Ancient and Modern History, English, Maths and Science and she found that doing this by correspondence was difficult. She did eventually matriculate and was accepted into the Riverina College of Advanced Education to study Librarianship.

While studying, Anne continued to work at the Broken Hill Public Library. She remained in this job for seven years.

In 1975 she married John Hirschausen, a motor mechanic she had met when her car broke down. She had been mad about exotic cars from the age of 14, and loved speed and motor racing. However, unlike her love of cars, her marriage only lasted three years. They were divorced in 1978.

Not long after this she met a pilot, John Halliday, who was working for a local doctor who worked with Aboriginal people who lived in towns around Broken Hill. When that work finished, John took up a flying position at Karratha in Western Australia. He asked Anne to join him there and she did so.

At the end of 1978 Anne and John moved to Port Hedland where they worked for Transwest Air Charter mostly doing coastal surveillance – John was the pilot and Anne was one of two observers.

After four months they decided to come to Adelaide. At this time Anne applied for a job at the University of Melbourne library. They moved to Melbourne and John got a job flying for a company which was based at Essendon Airport. She traveled to work by tram from St Kilda . It was a long day and she did this for a year before going part time so that she could concentrate more on her study.

They returned to Adelaide during 1980 when John became Adelaide manager for Brisbane-based Codd Air. This charter company flew workers to the Cooper Basin/Moomba area for companies like Richter Drilling and OD&E. Anne’s job involved finding pilots to fly on a casual basis to these areas and she also looked after the accounts.

On 14th February 1981 Anne and John were married at Edmund Wright House in King William Street, Adelaide. They decided to buy a house at Salisbury Heights and in 1983 she left Codd Air and they set up their own company which they named Southern Cross Airlines. They got contracts to fly oil workers to the Cooper Basin and formed a partnership with another pilot, and moved their office from their home to Parafield Airport in 1985.

During all this time (1978-1984) Anne continued to study and graduated in 1984. She was employed as Assistant Branch Librarian at Salisbury Public Library in 1984 but was still assisting with their company. When John went to Canberra, Anne joined him in six months and they bought a house in Macarthur, a suburb of Canberra. Anne gained work as a contract librarian at the Department of Health and Community Services at Woden. and was there for fifteen months. During this time she was pregnant with her first child. She then went to Health Insurance and ran their library for a contract period of three months before going back to work for the family business.

Anne’s baby Daniel, was born on 9th November 1989. This was in the middle of an Australia wide pilots’ strike and Anne and John’s company was involved in ferrying politicians all over the country and so were consequently very, very busy and making a tidy profit! Daniel was one of the last babies born at the Canberra Hospital before it was closed down.

When the baby was about eighteen months old Anne was offered a six month contract cleaning up a database for the Alcohol and Drugs Foundation of Australia. At this time she was involved in a playgroup in which the mothers looked after each other’s children. She was still doing their business’ office work at home. When Daniel was 22 months old she became pregnant again but continued to work in the business but things were getting harder and costs were rising and by 1992 it was no longer tenable.

On 7th April 1992 her daughter Chelsea was born. Anne and John ended their aviation business and went into earthmoving, clearing the forest floor after trees were cut down.

They left Canberra in 1997 and went to Gisborne in Victoria. John was again working in aviation but in a ground-based job with another person on costings, tenders for a consortia (a number of companies) to tender to buy Melbourne Airport. They didn’t win it so he went back to driving a truck and they moved to Mount Eliza after nine months where Anne went into an art gallery venture at Mornington. It was not profitable and ended up being more of a hobby than a business.

In April 1999 they decided to return to South Australia and bought a house at Lewiston. Anne secured casual work at the Gawler Public Library in October 1999. She had kept in contact with Lyn Jones who she worked with at the Salisbury Library. In 1999 Lyn was working at the Gawler library and she told Anne that there might be a casual vacancy there. Anne sent in her resume and in a few days they rang her to ask her to work. She remained a casual there from 1999 to 2002.

Meantime the children were attending the Gawler River Campus of Trinity College in 2001. The campus didn’t have a library and needed someone to take library books from the central Trinity Library to Gawler River. This was a voluntary job that Anne did for 3 days a week for a couple of years for a modest honorarium – changing books over, talking to teachers and answering queries. She formed a friendship with the Trinity Librarian and the experience Anne gained in the school library helped her successfully apply for the contract position of Youth Services Librarian at Gawler Public Library.

She did this job for twelve months after which time she was appointed to the permanent position of Reference and Research Librarian. After school, her children had to catch a bus from the Gawler River campus into Gawler to the library so that they could then go home with Anne to Lewiston.

In 2006 the Lewiston house was sold and Anne, John and the children moved into a rented place at Evanston Park. At this time John was working in his own truck business. John then got work in Melbourne and left the family. This was a very stressful time for them as Anne and the children needed to find new accommodation. With just three days to spare before the lease expired, Anne was able to secure a home in Nineteenth Street. She has been there ever since. Anne and John were divorced in 2007. 

Part of Anne’s job at Gawler Library involves working in the area of local history. In 2006 she commenced a Graduate Diploma in Local, Family and Applied History and continued to study through two moves, separation and divorce while still remaining in full-time work. She graduated from the University of New England in 2008. Anne has attended a weekly dance class for the past five years and also a gym on a regular basis for the past two years. This awakened an interest in the science of fitness and Anne is now studying for a Certificate III and IV in fitness.

Chelsea, 18, graduated from Trinity College in 2009. Her career plan is to join the Police Force. Daniel, 20, is completing a course in Outdoor Recreation and lives with his father.

Anne is a member of the Significant Women of Gawler Project and retains her love of fast cars. In her time she has owned two Porsches, two BMWs and a turbo-charged Mitsubishi Starion. Go Anne!!!!

 

Anne Richards

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Contents

  1. FLORA THERESA ESTHER HARKNESS
     
  2. ISOBEL HARRIET FATCHEN 
     
  3. MURIEL ESTELLE MAZZAROL
     
  4. ELLEN KATHERINE SYMES
     
  5. BEATRIX E McCONNELL
     
  6. WINIFRED ROSE SPRINGBETT
     
  7. CONSTANCE LILIAN DAWKINS
     
  8. PHYLLIS MAY HOCKEY
     
  9. MARY DAWN EASTICK
     
  10. PHYLLIS BROOKS
     
  11. JOYCE PROWSE
     
  12. HELEN CALLANDER
     
  13. DIANNE FIELD
     
  14. JOY LIENERT
     
  15. RHONDA INWOOD
     
  16. CHRISTINE WHALES
     
  17. TOWARDS RECONCILIATION
     
  18. MINNIE BARRAND
     
  19. PAT HARBISON
     
  20. JUDY FERGUSON
     
  21. SANDRA LOWERY
     
  22. ITALIAN WOMEN
     
  23. KAREN CARMODY
     
  24. ANNE RICHARDS
     
  25. WINSOME CLARICE NICOLA
     
  26. NAOMI ARNOLD-RESHKE
     
  27. HELEN ELIZABETH HENNESSY
     
  28. JILL TALBOT
     
  29. PATRICIA DENT

     

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