In Celebration: Joy Jobbins (1927–2023)
In Celebration: Joy Jobbins (1927–2023) ~ A life of Service, Work and Community for this Bondi Girl
Bondi local, screenwriter Sheridan Jobbins, shared her mother Joy’s incredible life story with us. Joy died nearly a month ago. Talk about a life well lived.
“Joy Jobbins, daughter to George and Elsie Malcolm, moved to Bondi as an infant in 1932. In her part memoir, part social history book, Shoestring, Joy describes a happy life of fish and chips on a Friday night (a lifelong passion), visiting the Six Ways cinema on O’Brien St and Glenyr Avenue and diving for her tram fare home in the 'deep end' of the Icebergs' pool. Shoestring was published when she was 80, which was the year Leo Sayer sang Fly Me to the Moon to her at her birthday celebration at the Bondi Pavilion.
She was on Bondi Beach on Black Sunday and saw the five freak waves take out the sandbar on a hot summer's day. She was on the boardwalk returning home for Sunday lunch when the waves surged over it, resulting in 250 rescues by 60 lifeguards and five drownings.
During the Great Depression her father was a news cameraman. His photo on top of the camera van at the Cinesound Studios can be found in the Bondi Pavilion. Not everyone was lucky enough then to have job security and transport. Joy remembers seeing evicted families in North Bondi with all their furniture living under the streetlamp for lighting.
George's job as a cameraman saw Joy modelling swimwear on Bondi Beach. The image of Joy from this time is so iconically Australian that it made it onto the opening credits of Stephen Spielberg's TV series The Pacific, and into a series of artworks by Harley Oliver.
The Second World War wasn't good for a girl's education. Everyone in the sixth grade at Bondi Public was thrilled when a handsome soldier walked into the classroom and swept their teacher off her feet. The class cheered as he carried her away - never to be seen again.
Joy left school early to attend Art College. Asked why she didn't stay, she said, ‘My teacher, Mr. Baddam, had a hole in his head from the First World War - a deep impression the size of an egg. You could see a pulse. He told me my self-portrait was a waste of paint - and I finished up in advertising.’
This girl from Bondi eventually became the Advertising Director for the Australian Wool Board during the 1950s and 60s. She arranged the first Australian Fashion Awards and was intricately involved in the early careers of Vogue Publisher Bernie Leser, photographer Helmut Newton, model Maggie Tabberer, raconteur Leo Schofield and others.
After discovering the only information on Australia in the Paris Embassy was a pamphlet called ‘Mastitis in Sheep’ Joy struck out on her own publishing a tourism magazine called Australia for Players and Stayers.
When that fell apart, she did what she always did - pulled up her socks and got a job - first producing the TV show "Family Circle", and later writing for Austrade, and the Wentworth Courier.
In 1995, she began working at the Defence Force Welfare Association, or her 'boys' as she affectionately called them. She only retired last year, aged 94, after what were among the happiest years of her life helping the DFWA get recognition and support for returned servicemen and women.
Joy celebrated her 90th birthday and the launch of her follow up book ‘A life at the Palace: A Necklace of Anecdotes’ in 2017. She followed that one up with ‘The Red Coat’ four years later. At 94.”
A life well lived indeed.
