Pat and Patricia

The story of how Margaret's parents, William Patrick Robinson and Patricia Bowen met, and their life together.

1951

Growing up in Ultimo Pat Robinson’s first boyhood jobs included casual work at the nearby CSR sugar factory and collecting church funds after Sunday mass for the local parish priest (see The Robinsons at Bulwarra Rd).  By age 15 Pat went to work full-time to bring more money into the Robinson household.  He worked for a boot-maker, earning enough to pay the family’s rent on their Bulwarra Rd house.  By the time the Second World War broke out Pat was working at the United Nail and Wire Netting Company, leaving to join the Australian Army in 1942.

Pat later recalled that after being demobbed from the army in 1946 he was uncertain what to do.  Eventually Pat took what he saw as a temporary job at the Sydney City Council first as a sanitary worker, then as a street sweeper.

Two years later he joined the Sydney County Council (the then government-owned electricity provider) working in a variety of positions, from disassembling appliances brought in for repair to reading household electricity meters.

Pat and Patricia Meet

In 1944 the Robinson family had moved to 225 Rainbow St, Randwick from Ultimo.  That’s where, seven years later, Pat met his future wife, Patricia Bowen (born 1921).

Marriage of Pat and Patricia, April 1952

One day in 1951 Pat accompanied his youngest sister, Patricia “Doota”, to the local Randwick tennis club where she played socially on Saturday afternoons.  Pat had never been much into sports, only taking it up during his time in the army, because it was compulsory.  That afternoon he was playing on one court with a group of his sister’s friends.  Patricia was on an adjacent court with a group of her friends.  As people drifted away from each group the remaining friends combined to play together.

Pat and Pat must have fallen for each other quickly as they decided to marry less than a year later, in April 1952.

Children and Work

Initially they lived in the same house as Patricia’s two aunts at 30 Cook St, Randwick, where she had been staying when she met Pat.  Their first daughter, Margaret Louise, was born in 1954 and then Katherine Anne in 1957.

Patricia, with daughter Margaret Louise Robinson at their home at Cook St, Randwick, 1954

Margaret and new sister Katherine, 1957

The family moved from Randwick in 1958 to a war-service home at 20 Dunoon Avenue in the then new suburb of West Pymble.

By 1959 after 11 years at the Sydney County Council Pat became tired of “outside” work and was trying to get an office-based job when his wife, Patricia, suggested that he look at the insurance industry.  Patricia herself had previously worked as a secretary for a senior manager in an insurance company and probably helped Pat with her industry knowledge and contacts.
Pat worked at Colonial Mutual Insurance for four years.  By one of those twists of fate this was a forerunner of the Colonial Group which, 60 years later, purchased Colonial First State Investments. By coincidence Margaret's future husband, Daniel Maurice, himself worked for Colonial First State in the late 1990s.
 
Later Pat moved to Manufacturers Mutual Insurance (MMI).  At MMI Pat again had a variety of roles.  He ended his career as an internal auditor travelling from the head office in O’Connell St. Sydney to review the company’s operations at various branches throughout NSW.

Patricia remained the dynamo of the Robinson family.  As her daughters grew Patricia herself returned to part-time work in the 1960s as a receptionist in a doctor’s surgery at Gordon, near their West Pymble home.  Margaret remembers her mother rushing home from work to put on the evening dinner, in time for the family to sit down at 6pm when Pat arrived.

Later Life

As their girls got older Pat and Patricia discovered cruising.  Pacific cruises were being popularised by the arrival of the Russian CTC line which offered keenly priced mass cruising to Australians for the first time.  Pat and Patricia went on several cruises.  No doubt they were happily looking forward to their life in retirement together.

But the couple’s life was thrown into disarray when Patricia was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 1971.  She underwent painful—and by today’s standards, crude—treatment.  It was unsuccessful and Patricia died in April 1976.

Pat outside his first home at Bateau Bay, 1984

Pat continued work at MMI until his retirement in 1984.  He sold the Dunoon Ave house and moved to the Central Coast, drawn by his love of lawn bowls.

But Pat never really settled.  He returned to live in Sydney in 1986, then moved back to the Central Coast a second time.  He finally returned to Sydney for good in the early 1990s.  Over the next few years he enjoyed his grandchildren and spent time helping out at a Salvos kitchen for needy men.

Pat suffered a stroke at Christmas 1999.  Although he recovered he was no longer robust.  After a second stroke he died in September 2002.

Pat and Patricia are both buried in the Northern Suburbs Cemetery, North Ryde.