Chapter 12 - Settling in to life in Yarrawonga

We came up to Yarrawonga for Christmas 1999 and stayed in the house for the first time. We invited Gary and Anne Freeman and their family to a open house party and were glad that we made the decision to move to Yarrawonga.  The move from Chirnside Park to Yarrawonga took place in several stages and by the time for settlement arrived all our belongings had been transferred to our new home. 

To celebrate the new millennium we invited Gary, Anne and family and Shirley and her husband to a combined Christmas and New Years Party. 

                                                           Sparklers in the front garden

Fellowship in the lounge at 1 River Road, Yarrawonga

It took a while to settle into the new house, but once all the furniture from Melbourne had arrived it did not take long to get used to life in Yarrawonga.

As the weather in Yarrawonga was much hotter than Melbourne, we decided to install an “Endless Spa Pool” beside the family room and this was done very successfully and integrated with the house. It basically was a lap pool with a jet at one end that created a strong current that you swam against, but also doubled as a spa. This pool was very welcome by our family whenever they visited. 

I joined the Golf Club and having met Mal Hastie, who the Secretary of the State Superannuation Board of Victoria when I worked there, in Yarrawonga, I played a regular game of golf with the “Nine Holers” on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 7.00am. 

We made regular trips back to Melbourne and stayed in touch with Christopher who had bought a house in Ferntree Gully, Robert and Rina who were renting in Thornbury and Phillip who was living in Bayswater.

We visited Jacqueline in Sydney when she was living in Bronte and enjoyed a few days there and returned to Yarrawonga. We drove to Sydney as having a car at our disposal was very convenient. We visited Ruth’s brother Roger and sister-in-law Anne at their house in Manly and also had dinner with my good friend Ralph Woutersz and his wife Elizabeth. Joining us for dinner were our other friends David Maynard and his wife.

We also visited Christopher at his house in Ferntree Gully and made preparations to renovate the rear part of the house by putting in a new kitchen removing a wall at the rear to form a large living room.

The other journey was to visit Clinton and Caroline at their property in Charlton, which we did on more than one occasion during the year.

On one of our visits to Sri Lanka, while we were staying at the Grand Hotel in Nuwara Eliya during a visit to Sri Lanka we were introduced to Rev: Vasanta Wettasinha and his English wife who ran a school for children named “Koinonia Junior School”. They were looking for sponsors to support their school and we agreed to help them. To make the school uniforms, they also hired a taylor who lived with his mother on a tea estate and worked from home. They wanted us to see whether we could provide this person and others like him who could sew on a manual sewing machine.

 

 When we returned to Australia, I spoke to several old Thomians about whether they could get second hand manual sewing machines. We decided to form a non-profit association in honour of a College master and named it the “Brooke D’Silva Foundation Inc”.   Ralph D”Silva , Brooke’s nephew agreed to support us financially  to cover the cost of transport of the crates to Sri Lanka.

Brooke D’Silva Foundation Inc

(Inc.Reg. No. A0043869D)

COMMITTEE OF MANAGEMENT

 PRESIDENT                          Ed Rowlands.                    

VICE PRESIDENT                Selva Kanagasabai          

SECRETARY                        Arasu Saravanamuttu                                                   

TREASURER                       John Rodie                         

COMMITTEE                       Ralph D’Silva                    

      Mike Siebel        

                                             Peter Schoorman                 

We managed to find 4 sewing machines which we forwarded to Sri Lanka to be distributed to people in the Nuwara Eliya District. Others followed.

When Jacqueline and I visited Sri Lanka we were keen to visit Nuwara Eliya and see the progress that had been made with the distribution of the sewing machines. We were taken to a tea estate by Rev: Wettasinha and introduced to the taylor and his mother and watched him sew a school blazer. There was another family who also used the sewing machines.