Liz Crossley
🎖️ A Word from Liz Crossley
📖 My Life in Many Words
In Gympie, in December 1941, a girl was born to Myrtle and Alfred Jordan. My mother's grandparents had emigrated to Maryborough, settling in Imbil in 1865. My father's parents came separately to Australia — Walter in 1911 and Lottie in 1912. They married, lived in Coorparoo, Brisbane, until 1916, then bought a dairy farm in Tandur, outside Gympie. In 1945 my brother came along, and not long after, my parents separated. As possession was nine-tenths of the law, we stayed living with my dad's family. I started school in a one-room schoolhouse — one desk per class.
Three years after the separation the custody hearing was held, and the court decided we were to live with our mother, so off to Brisbane we went. At first we hated it — not having the freedom to roam the countryside, going to school barefoot, and the many restrictions townsfolk have to adhere to. But as children do, we soon adapted. We lived in a flat under my grandparents' house in Doomben. Being so close to the racecourse, we would park cars in the yard for pocket money — without fail spending some on the pastie and peas from the pie truck. My mother had been seeing someone, but as my dad wouldn't give her a divorce, she had to wait seven years for one to be granted. She then married Pat, who became my stepfather. You hear all sorts of stories about step-parents, but I was extremely lucky — he was every bit a father to us. Here I finished my schooling, which was Year 8 Scholarship; at that time a secondary education wasn't needed to become a nurse. I had two years to fill before I was old enough to start prelim training, which I spent working at Golden Circle.
🪖 The Army Years
After turning 17 I moved into the nurses' quarters at the Brisbane General, as it was known in those days. This began a whole new life for me. My parents were quite strict — apart from a movie on Saturday nights and an evening of social tennis, I didn't get to socialise much — and all of a sudden I was in charge of my own life. I had just completed my second year of nursing when I decided I'd like to join the Army. My mother came with me, signed the papers, and within a week I was sworn in and on my way to WRAAC School at Georges Heights in Sydney, where all the basic training courses for women were held.
When travelling to schools, courses and postings we went by train. If you travelled alone you went first class with a sleeper; if there were more of you, it was second class and sitting up. The trip from Brisbane to Melbourne was a nightmare — overnight sitting up to Sydney, a stopover until five in the afternoon, then overnight to Melbourne again. After basic training I was posted to 1 Camp Hospital at Yeronga, Brisbane, then went on my Nursing Orderly Class 3 course at Healesville, Victoria — a beautiful old lodge with a swimming pool and numerous army huts, where all the medical courses were held. It was a mixed course — only four of us girls and about twenty boys. It was a fun time.
I spent just shy of six years in the Service, attaining the rank of Sergeant, with postings to 1 and 2 Camp Hospitals, 7 Dental Unit, 2 Military Hospital and 1 RAANC Training Unit. Whilst at the Training Unit, as the Q Sergeant, we went on camp to Greenbank in August, where the temperatures are quite often zero. We set up a 30-bed hospital under tentage to provide medical coverage for the cadets — six weeks freezing, living in a tent, canvas bucket showers and hot-water donkeys. I soon learnt to toughen up, and counted every piece of equipment for return to stores; not one tent peg did we lose.
None of us owned cars in those days, so public transport it was. It wasn't by choice that I took my discharge — at the time, anyone who married had to.
💍 Marriage, Family & New Guinea
Whilst at 2 Military Hospital I had met a lab technician, Allan Crossley. We married before he went to Vietnam in 1966. Our married life began with me living back home with my parents — a baby due and a husband not expected home until the following year. On his return our daughter was eight months old, and he had a posting to 1 Military Hospital. We had a flat at Norman Park, where our second daughter was born, then moved to married quarters at Wacol. Eighteen months later our posting was to the Healesville School of Army Health, where I returned to the workforce doing night-duty shifts at a nursing home in the foothills — miserably cold in winter, scraping a hole in the ice to drive home.
Two years on, we moved to Papua New Guinea. We flew from Melbourne dressed for the weather, at 0600 on a typical Melbourne day, and arrived in Port Moresby to a sweltering hot day — the heat radiated off the tarmac, and I had half my gear off before we reached the terminal. Allan was the CSM of the Medical Wing Training Battalion, and we lived at Goldie River. There was no TV; we'd drive 20 kilometres over dirt roads to go to bingo, and the Sergeants' Mess showed movies outside on Saturday nights, where we took the big floor mats and pillows for the kids — keeping an eye out for the ever-present toads. The army bus took the children to school and back, a 20-kilometre trip each way; the little ones were usually asleep when it pulled in. It was very conducive to working, so I took a position as stock controller at New Guinea Motors, the Isuzu dealership — the first female stock controller in PNG.
💛 The Happiest Chapter
When the girls were in high school, Allan's best friend moved to Bundaberg, and Allan would travel up and stay for six weeks at a time. He wanted me to move up there, which was out of the question — my life was in Brisbane and my children were in school. Eventually he only came home on the odd occasion, which told me our marriage was over. He became ill with cancer and died in Bundaberg. By then our oldest daughter had married, had a daughter, divorced and moved back home; we managed to both work until my granddaughter was four, while Nic finished uni. She was living in the family home when I moved to Sydney in 1995.
This began the happiest period of my life. In your mid-fifties you would never expect to meet the love of your life — the man who gave me back my youth. I was no longer just a mother and a nanna, but a cherished partner. Roy had been divorced since the early '80s and was living on North Steyne. I moved in with him and worked as a plumber's mate for two years, until we decided to sell up, store our gear, buy a caravan and start seeing this great land. We had been travelling the east coast when we stopped at Hastings Point, and were having coffee in Pottsville outside a real estate agency. I browsed the window, thought 'interesting' — and the rest is history. We bought a lovely home on a canal and never looked back.
We spent six weeks at Perisher, on the snowline at Sawpit Creek, skiing every second day — Roy was 70 then. We had a beach licence and a little Suzuki so we could fish the beach, spending many a dawn or dusk set up with our chairs, wine and cheese, just taking in the view; the fish were the icing on the cake.
⛳ Later Years
After a few years I asked Roy if he minded if I went back to work. I took a position with a nursing agency, which led to the Skin Cancer Clinic, where I stayed until they shut up shop — by then I was 68. With time to just play golf, we became members of Ocean Shores Country Club, where I still play to this day. Golf — though I'm afraid that, with the onset of age, my handicap is migrating the wrong way — is now the mainstay of my social life.
In 2009 I was diagnosed with kidney disease and set up for the dialysis I would eventually need. As my function deteriorated, I began dialysis in 2013, lucky enough to do it at home — hooked up to the machine in the evening, off in the morning, functioning normally during the day. I was on the transplant list, and in 2015 I got the call that a kidney was available, so we moved to Brisbane for seven weeks. The transplant was a success and is still functioning normally years on. I will be forever grateful to the wonderful man who donated it — a living donor. After much sleuthing on both our parts we found each other, and remain friends to this day, catching up for lunch on special occasions.
Roy and I both loved to travel. He had been overseas before — Britain, Switzerland, Hong Kong, California and Colorado — and then he had to show me these places. We did Maui, Fiji, Bali, Canada, Mexico, San Francisco, New York and LA, including Disneyland and Universal. We skied all the skifields of Colorado and a few in Canada, and sat atop the Twin Towers waiting while the lights came on over New York. To top it off, my youngest daughter and her husband took us on a six-week trip to England, Scotland and Paris for my 70th birthday. It is now on my bucket list to return and see Ireland and Wales. I actually cried when I stepped off the aircraft — it felt like coming home, for even though I identify as Australian, my roots are firmly embedded in Britain.