People of Bondi | Millie Goldman

People of Bondi | Millie Goldman

Melanie met up with Millie for a chat at her house in South Bondi.

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Millie, thank you very much for agreeing to tell us some of your stories.

First of all can we get a little bit of your background? Where is your family from?

We came from Lithuania. Just before the war broke out. Thank goodness we came to Australia, as my parents said over and over again. They really thought this was the lucky country. And even as I grow older, very much so, I can say yes, it is the lucky country. We are so fortunate here. And to my parents it probably was more so. The things that my parents grew up not being allowed to do doesn’t happen here; it’s not the same sort of feeling. To my parents, they just thought this was heaven.

What brought them too Australia?

It’s a little bit of a silly story. My mother was one of 11 children in Lithuania. And my mother’s uncle, whose name was Adolf Fish – everytime I say that name I go aaagh! This man, who you would not look at twice, must have been extremely clever. He came out (although he was not coming to Australia, my understanding is that he met a nice woman on the ship and so continued on to Australia! I have no idea if that’s true or not! Is a good story though isn’t it?) And uncle Adolf Fish, still everytime I say it …  he did well here, I’m not even sure what he did, I was probably too little to take in when we got here. He wrote over to my mother’s mother and said this is a good country, here’s the money or whatever. So my mother’s eldest brother came out, and then the next brother and so it went. So one after another the brothers started coming out. Things were not looking cheery in Europe at the time and of my mother’s brothers and sisters, we were last to leave. Mainly I think because my father was a pharmacist and had a good business so they didn’t seem any reason to leave.

It’s hard for us to imagine what it would be like just to let go of those things.

I don’t even know what it would be like. I heard them speak about it. My father just said, “we’re going tomorrow.” My mother, who talked more than I do even, said, “oh but you can’t leave the chemist shop” and he said, “we’re getting out of here”. They had a good life there in a sense. But things were not getting better. We arrived in Australia, I don’t remember any of it, my brother was older but I don’t know how much he remembers. It was a long boat trip out to Australia. I don’t know if they even realised what Australia was like. A little bit maybe from the brothers and sisters who wrote but a letter doesn’t really give a true sense of what it was like to live here.

So we came out here in 1939 and war broke out pretty soon after that. To my parents’ credit I never heard them say a bad word about Australia. Not that there was anything bad but it was so different to the life they knew. Their English was poor, I continually heard my father say, “why didn’t they teach us English? Why did they teach us French?” My father spoke German, Lithuanian, French and Russian, but no English! But in time, yes he spoke English and Mum too. They spoke with an accent and were very conscious of the fact that they spoke with an accent. Mum took a long time, she had never learned English in Europe, so the languages they spoke were not any use here.

It can make you feel stupid if you don’t feel you’re being understood.

Absolutely. My parents understood me better than they understood my brother. My brother mumbled like the Aussies do mumble. In no time at all, like a lot of children, it wasn’t just us, we were speaking English like we were born here.

My brother was probably fortunate in the sense that he was very much the blonde, blue-eyed, tanned Aussie, and sounded like an Aussie. He learned his English from the boys at school. And when I went to school, it was the same story. I really learned to speak English from my kindergarten teacher. I remember her very well. She was one of those perfectionists who made us speak as if we were all speaking like nice English girls with a bag of lollies. I can remember it is so clearly! She was very big on enunciation.

We went to the local public school.

Was that Rose Bay?

Yes. My father had started a business. He wasn’t able to work as a pharmacist. He started a chemical supply business in the city. He bottled kerosene and metho and things like that. I really don’t remember ever doing without or going hungry. We had, I can’t say an ideal life, but to us children it was good. We ate every day!

I was very fortunate, I did very well at school which was emphasised by my parents, “you have the opportunity here to do it.” In fourth class there was an exam to see who would get into the OC. When I came home and said, “Mum you’ll be really pleased …”. Well I think she rang every single person she knew! She rang her brothers and sisters who I really think didn’t care at all!

I imagine that would’ve been a great thing for the family …

Not really. Because there were 11 of them I think they were all little jealous of each other.

After a few years my father said, “I’m sick of paying rent, I’m going to buy a house” which shocked my mother because she didn’t think we could afford it. And we probably couldn’t. By then Dad had started this chemical business and we moved from Rose Bay to Bondi. We were first living in Murreverie Road, which was a terrible thing to try and spell! And say! Because my brother was at school in Rose Bay they wanted to stay in the area so they didn’t have to move him. And I was due to start school and there was a bus that took us straight there.

So I started at Rose Bay. My brother was supposed to pick me up and bring me home every day. We had a penny in our pocket and we were supposed to take the bus but he told me if we save the penny we could buy an ice block. Was I going to tell my brother “no”? He ruled the roost. But a few times, I have to say, he forgot to pick me up, and he got into big trouble.

A memory that has stayed with me from one of the times my brother forgot to pick me up, was when I knocked on the door at the big boys school and this elderly teacher, (most of the teachers were elderly because the young ones were in the war) Mr Johnson, looked down at me, from what I thought was his lofty height, and said, “yes?” “I’ve come to pick up my brother, I have to take him home.” When I think what he must have thought about this little five year old … and he said, “oh, so you’re going to take him home” and I said, “yes, we have to walk home now”. But my brother had gone. Mr Johnson said, “don’t worry, I’ll walk you home” which teachers wouldn’t do now. And so Mr Johnson walked me home, and it was quite a walk. 

My mother was, of course, furious with my brother, but for my mother, that the teacher had gone to the trouble of taking ‘a little Jewish girl home’ (he didn’t care if I was Calathumpian!) was incredible. My mother had this very strong feeling that anything could happen any day because we were Jewish. And because Mr Johnson had walked me home my mother couldn’t get over it. In Europe the anti-Semitism was already very strong by the time we left but here it wasn’t at all. This was heaven.

That must’ve been a very profound moment for her when you turned up at home with your teacher.

Yes it was. For my father it wasn’t quite like that. By then he was in a business, he had some people working for him. He was working hard so it was very different.

You have another lovely story that must’ve also been very profound for your mother. Something about getting lost on the beach? You were a little five year old having just moved to Bondi. What happened that day down at the beach?

My father thought that Bondi Beach was one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and it is. We used to go on a Sunday morning, that was a special special thing, my father, (who actually gave up work for the day!) brother and I went to the beach. And we would walk along the sand and my father would tell us that when the wave came you had to dive under it and so on. This particular day, I stopped, as little girls maybe do, and jumped up and down on somebody’s sandcastle. They had left! And by the time I looked up I couldn’t see my father or brother. And I thought, “uh oh, what do I do?” I turned around and looked up and I saw Mr Policeman. And so I thought I would go up and ask Mr Policeman. 

When I told my mother she couldn’t believe it. I went up to a policeman? She was horrified. In Europe, as I understand it, you steered clear of the policemen. I walked up to him, I came up to his knees, and I said, “excuse me Mr Policeman,” and I only remember the story because my mother repeated so often, and he said, “yes?” And I said, “my brother and my father are both lost!” He said, “you’re not lost?” And I said, “no, I’m here!” 

The policeman hoisted me onto his shoulders and walked along and in no time my father, who’d been looking for me, came charging up. But to my mother, more than my father, she told the story over and over, this made Australia the best country in the world. I think she thought that no one cared what you were; you could be anything.

See you’ve been in Bondi more or less since the 1940s? How long were you in Murreverie Road for?

A long time. Dad bought the cottage there when he could afford it.

Well there’s another incredible milestone in the settling in process.

Absolutely.

So you’re married to Pete. Was he a Bondi boy?

No, he lived in Rose Bay. His parents came out with his grandparents from Germany. They got out just before the war too. His parents were very different from my parents but other people seeing them together wouldn’t see that they were different. My father-in-law was an absolute dandy. He was into looking just so, but my father went to the other extreme. When we were due to get married my father-in-law was terrified. He had met my father and he said, “are you sure he’s got a suit?” It really bothered him. And Pete kept saying, “yes, I’ve seen him in the suit”. My father really was different, that is the only word I can use. And Pete’s father was very proper, and in a way very Germanic.

And how did they get on?

Socially not. They got on because Pete and I were married and we had children. But they really were very different in so many ways, you can’t just say well all Jewish people are the same.

Were you in Murreverie Road until you got married?

Yes.

Have you been in this place since you got married?

No. Pete was still studying [medicine] and I forget where we moved to first but I do remember that flats were very hard to come by. We ended up in a house in Chester Hill when Pete got a job at Fairfield Hospital. I think Pete and I didn’t look or sound European by then and we just slipped into the way of life there. Pete loved his football and he looked after the football teams. We had these big giants coming in on Saturday mornings to be strapped before they played, which I needed like a hole in head! But still it was all part of it.

Socially it was very different to where I had grown up but the people were lovely. I think they thought that because I was the ‘doctor’s wife’ that I would be different. But I didn’t want to be different, I wanted to fit in.

My parents came out to see us very regularly because by then I had two children, Wendy and Judy, and then David came along and they were not going to miss out on seeing them. My mother was very good at being there, when anything that I was involved with, was on. And that was a big part of my growing up. My brother was playing rugby which they found very difficult to understand. My father wanted him to play soccer, “that’s the nice game!” Sport was not considered a necessity but study, yes, that was a necessity. And a lot of the refugees are still the same. I notice it very much still now when I go to Sydney Boys High to see my grandson play. And yes, there are a lot of Asian boys and their parents don’t want them to play sport! They really don’t understand the necessity of letting them play so they’re part of it. The parents are like my parents. Cycles and cycles!

Where did you come to this house, in South Bondi?

Let me just think. We were in Chester Hill for quite awhile. Then I had young Zel, that caused a bit of an upheaval in the family when we realised he was disabled – he’s not disabled now, he doesn’t shut up! He’s running his own race.… he reluctantly sometimes lets us know what he’s doing. I put that down to the other three children never being ashamed of Zel. He was involved in everything they were doing. A lot of the people who knew us, especially people from Europe, kept telling us that really we should be sending him to places like France or other places away. I think they found it difficult. Zel couldn’t walk, his speech was difficult, he was deaf. And it was very difficult for them to come to terms with that. Pete and I made our minds up very quickly that he was our child and we would do whatever we could. Fortunately Zel was brighter then we realised and he started from when he was about three years old at the Spastic Centre which was at Mosmon at the time.

I bet they don’t call it the spastic centre any more.

It’s called the Cerebral Palsy Alliance.

He maintains he was school captain but the children say he wasn’t! They were never ashamed of him which was lucky. Pete’s parents definitely found it difficult because they came from a very Germanic background where everything was just done correctly. My parents didn’t, for whatever reason. Maybe because I was the mother and the daughter I don’t know. I’ve never gone too deeply into this but I think my other three children got an extra certain-way of looking at all people. In a way, because he was very bright, I think the other three children showed him off.

He now works at the Spastic Centre with computers in the office.

But we moved into this house when the kids were little, in about 1981. And that’s where we’ve been since then and when we move out it’ll be in a box!

Millie, thank you so much for sharing your stories with us.