The Calthorpe girls enjoy a happy and privileged childhood, much loved by their parents. Theirs is a carefree lifestyle with friends aplenty from school and in neighbouring houses.

Dawn attended Telopea Park School as a primary student. Then she moved to Canberra Church of England Girls Grammar School as the family’s finances improved after the Depression. She was excited to be there, joining her big sister and so many of her friends.

Her room is full of so many precious memories – of favourite books and cherished toys, of collected treasures and fanciful dreams.

Some of her memories are of happy times on holidays, travelling down the Clyde Mountain to stay at a hotel in Narooma. The days were lazy as the men went out to fish and the women retired in the shade of their Japanese parasols, avoiding the hot summer sun. The best part of all was the water, but not perhaps the scratchy woolly togs, the tight rubber head cap or the slippery rubber surf shoes.

I love all my toys and playthings and have kept them forever. I am not sure which I love best. 

My beautiful baby doll, Johnny, was accidentally left out in the sun when we went on holiday.  The heat cracked his face, I still feel awful about it, but I love him all the same, even if he does look a bit scary.   

Another thing I love is dressing up.  See that long couch by the door. It’s an ottoman that we use as a spare bed when visitors come to stay. But it’s more than that. It’s our dressing up box too.  

Inside it smells a bit of mothballs, but that’s only to protect some of my mother’s old gowns and shawls. There are broken beads and baby clothes; Pop’s old brass cornet and a Turk’s tasseled red fez cap. There’s a Japanese paper parasol, some grown up shoes – and at the very bottom some faded photographs that are so worn by age that you can’t see my parents faces any more.