Chapter 11 – The Blacksmith’s Daughter by Fay Berry – Vol 2 – Perth WA

In December 1971, Jeff and I and the children drove to Western Australia for a series of studies Jeff was putting on at Stirling. We only took the three older children in the car and sent Helen over by plane in company with David Hurn from Perth Central ecclesia. This meant we could manage driving across the Nullabor more easily than with Helen who was only three at the time. We were really looking forward to staying with Don and Una Strempel at their home at City Beach, Perth. The car we were driving at the time was an old ambulance and Dad had Dad had modified the interior of our car to accommodate three bunk beds. These were set sideways in the car and this allowed for a mattress to be put underneath the bunks so that Jeff and I could take time sleeping while the other drove. We towed our small trailer to carry our luggage. The three children could sleep or play in the bunks above as we drove, and this gave them much more freedom than if they had to sit up in the car. We took our dog Pepi with us which proved to be a disaster.The details of this I have written about previously in Chapters 5 and 8 so will not need to write much more here.

However there was one incident which I have never forgotten. We were attending a lecture at the Stirling eccesia in the Stirling hall in WA and the dais in the Stirling hall was set across the corner of the rectangular room. Don and Una and their children were sitting in the row in front of us and Garnet and Reneira Alchin and Garnet’s mother were also sitting nearby. We all stood up for the first hymn and as we began to sing the first hymn we could hear this terrible screeching noise coming from somewhere in the hall. To our amazement the sound seemed to be coming from the mouth of Allan Harrison who was to give the exhortation. I have honestly never heard such a dreadful noise in my life before. Of course, it was not Alan Harrison’s voice, but Garnet’s Mum, but because of the layout of the hall and the placement of the dais, the sound seemed to emanate from Allan Harrison’s mouth. This we worked out after the meeting. Well, I was overcome with an uncontrollable urge to laugh and so were the Strempels and all of the Berry family, in fact everyone there must have felt like laughing out loud. Don and Una and all their children’s shoulders were heaving with the effort not to laugh and Jeff and I and our children were the same. When the hymn was over all we could do was collapse into our seats exhausted with the effort of NOT laughing out loud.

In February, we received a letter from Joan and Ted Hodge and Joan told me how pleased she had been to get my recent phone call to her per favor of Phillip Russell whose job was to test phone lines at night and agreed with me that if I was prepared to talk to him for half an hour at night, then I could talk to any if my friends around the world for half an hour. Well, I chose to talk to Joan Hodge in Canada whom I had spent time with while she and Ted and children were visiting Australia. She told me how much she longed to see Helen and our little dog Pepi appearing at her front door as she used to do back in Adelaide. She said that when she and Ted and family had arrived home after leaving Australia they found Bruce and Barb Abel still in their home and Barb was in hospital with toxemia. It was several weeks later before Barb arrived home with a 5lb Margo in her arms. In the meantime Ruth and Patty and Ron Abel and later Mary Day were all staying with them in the Hodge’s in their house making it a very full house indeed, beds and confusion everywhere. There were lots of disturbed nights with a howling baby and then Joan’s grandfather died, and in all of this turmoil, they discovered that Ruth and Patty would not be permitted to have work visas, and so it became necessary for Dorothy to take up her old job and go back to work until Xmas so that their large household could be fed. In the end It worked out well because Ruth and Patty more than pulled their weight and they were all very busy organizing two showers and a wedding for her brother, Ron Abel, and Mary Day, her soon to be sister-in-law. However with all their organization, it looked as though these events might end up being “non-events” because first Mary and then Ron came down with a dreadful bout of the flu. In the end both showers and wedding did take place because the main actors drugged themselves up to the eyeballs so they could get through those important events.

In Adelaide, Jeff had been given the job of working on the design and space allocations for various open space classrooms in the Adelaide metropolitan area, and in the course of his work he had met up with a man called Ned Golding who was the headmaster at Cowandilla Primary School. Cowandilla had recently been designated as a demonstration school, and was recognized for its innovative methods of teaching and classroom design. Jeff had spoken to Ned about the problems we were having with integrating Debbie into her class environment at West Beach Primary School. Deb was extremely bright and so always felt that the way she was doing things was “right” and that she needed to instruct other kids on how they “ought” to do things and her fellow students did not appreciate her instruction. Ned suggested we transfer all our children to Cowandilla where the teachers were more able to cope with bright children. In 1972 Deb was 11, Judy 9, Jim 8 Helen 5.

In 1972, we did transfer all our children over to Cowandilla which was just a little further up Burbridge Road, towards the city. Deb was 11 years of Age and in Grade 6, Judy was 9 years of age and in Grade 4, James was 8 and in Grade 2 and Helen 5 years of age was in the Prep class. Debbie was placed in an open space class room with two wonderful teachers, a young Russian man, named Alex Kosihuw and a beautiful young woman named Ms Waganecht. Debbie thrived at Cowandilla with her new teachers, in fact all of the children flourished at Cowandilla. The whole atmosphere in the Kosihuw and Waganecht class, Debbie’s class, was relaxed and, in fact, I would say, joyous! There was lots of singing and dancing – Russian dancing of course, and Alex was so popular in the school that children from other classes used to come to his classroom after school to look at Alex’s experiments and participate in his activities. Alex kept his classroom open for at least an hour extra each day. That year his class put on a play in which Debbie “starred” as “the witch doctor,” and an article and photo even appeared in the local “Messenger” newspaper.

Debbie in Cowandilla School Play – She is the witch doctor.

Jim was particularly fascinated with Alex and was always in Alex’s classroom the minute he could escape from his own classroom. Every year, the school used to celebrate “United Nation’s Day” and each classroom would study one nation for the whole of that year and then they would celebrate “United Nation’s Day” on one glorious day each year. All the children would dress up in the national dress of the country they were studying, and there were parades and events held around the school grounds. In that first year, the country Helen’s class was studying was Australia, and so I dressed Helen up as an aboriginal girl. Her costume simply comprised a pair of underpants and some brown body paint and she wore this “costume” for the entire day. Frankly, I can’t believe I did that, but things must have been different in those days because her costume was perfectly acceptable to all the teachers.

In the Woodville ecclesia, there was a problem that occupied everyone’s minds for some time. A Sister had left her husband and applied for fellowship at the Adelaide Ecclesia. Woodville ecclesia were not happy with her approaching the Adelaide ecclesia for fellowship and wanted her to return to her husband and continue her membership at the Woodville Ecclesia. Numerous letters were exchanged between the two ecclesias and many arranging brethren’s meetings were held over the matter.
Things have changed since that time and I don’t think that a sister in her situation would tolerate such an intrusion into her private life today, but in those days, we used to feel that AB’s had the authority to do so. I also experienced the same intrusion into my affairs when my own marriage broke up so many years ago. My “hindsight” now, after my own expedience, is that Suburban ecclesia’s should have been grateful that Adelaide was prepared to accept the “outcasts” and give them a safe and peaceful haven where they could weather out the storms of life. However, this is how I feel now, whereas I am sure I did not think that way at the time.

In March that year we received a letter from John Barton advising Jeff that he had a talk to give at young folks class at his ecclesia and asking for Jeff’s help with pointers and maybe a chart. He said he had been enthralled by the comparison Dr Thomas made between Cyrus and Jesus Christ and had decided to do a talk on the coming of the King into Babylon consequent upon the drying up of the River Euphrates. His title for his talk was “Yahweh’s anointed and Babylon’s downfall,” and he asked that Jeff do a comparison for him between Christ and Cyrus. He hoped that we could come to Sydney at Easter when Basil McClure was doing his talks on Hezekiah.

In April we received a letter from Daphne Townsend, the sister Jeff and I had stayed with at Redcliffe where Jeff was giving his special effort at Xmas time. She said that they had finally settled the sale of their property “Ocean View” and also “Mirrabrook” had also been sold and they were satisfied with the price they got for that as well. She thanked us for our efforts on their behalf in the “saga” of the sale of their property. She told us that Sue and Eric now have a baby son, Jonathan Eric and Daphne said that she would love to hear from us whenever we could find the time for a few lines.
In June my dad received a letter from my brother Rick saying that it was now two months since he had left Lakemba and that he had found his new ecclesia, Punchbowl, to be an oasis of brotherly love, peace happiness and godliness. He said that he was so sad to have to leave behind so many that he loved. He also told Dad that he had been asked to do an effort at the Enfield ecclesia in Adelaide next February and his preference would be that it be on the rebellion of Korah and the steadfastness of his family. He said that he would deal with the place of the rebellion in the structure of the book of Numbers and its contributions to the lessons the book illustrates; the rebellion itself; the godliness of his seed through Israel’s history, the Psalms of the sons of Korah, illustrating their theme; and exposition of Psa 49 and 87.
In September 1972 there were also a number of letters that passed between HP Mansfield and various committees in NSW about the Jersey City Resolution, the Beverley Hill’s ecclesia and various clauses in the BASF with arguments for and against the various viewpoints. The arguments between HPM and the various protagonists I found to be long and rambling, convoluted and downright incomprehensible. It is no wonder to me at all that they all got themselves in such a muddle over it all. There were also letters to my father from my brother showing that my brother Charles had been involved in a lot of controversy over a number of issues at Lakemba ecclesia and this finally resulted in his transferring his membership to the Punchbowl ecclesia. Thankfully, the years have passed and the controversies that raged in that time have all disappeared into oblivion. “How good it is for brethren to dwell together in harmony.” Once again, in hind-sight, it is my opinion that if everyone had spent their time building up and not pulling down we would all have been better off.
It was a busy year for us at Woodville that year. We received a letter in September from Richard Bracy from Tasmania thanking Jeff for charts that he had prepared for a lecture that Ken Niejalke was giving in Tasmania. In November my dad received a letter from my brother Rick and in it he told dad that Beth’s younger brother Phillip and his wife Ingrid had died in a car accident. It had been a dreadful shock to Beth and the whole family. Rick also said that he had also been having meetings with Ted Spongberg to find out what the issues were and try to address them. He said that Ted believed that it was “absolutely feasible for all to be wholly obedient, absolutely sinless, but unlikely that any will, other than Christ.” This, said Rick, is the very pith of Judaism whose theme is that we needed Christ to free us from past sins, but from there on the strength God gives us in his word is sufficient to make us quite sinless. Necessarily, Ted believed that Christ derived no benefit or advantage in the conquest of sin from his being God’s own begotten son. Ted believes that the development of the perfect righteousness of God in Christ was from influences operating purely from his birth onwards. So then p 101 of Eureka Vol 1 is meaningless when it says “Now, “Theos was the logos,” says John, that is “Deity was the word” and this word became flesh in the manner testified. Was the product therefore not Deity? Did the union of spirit with flesh annihilate that spirit and leave only flesh? Was the holy thing born a mere son of Adam? Or the “fellow” and “equal” of the Deity? Zech 13:7; Jn 5:18; Phil 2:6; The latter, unquestionably. Ted utterly denies this as they also deny “The Law of Moses” p 124, 173, 210, 223, 209, 168, 248 in what it says of the effects of Christ‘s paternity. Rick said that there was a tremendous amount of detail when it took up two meetings and more than 8 hours of time and still more meetings to come.
It was in 1972 that the White Australia policy was officially abandoned by the Commonwealth Government. It was also in 1972 that new toilets were erected at the Easter Camp site at Glenlock, Waikerie!! I guess the second event was not as important as the first.

Around about 1973 I wrote two poems. One I called the “Fairy Boatman,” and the other “My daughter.” The ‘Fairy Boatman’ was a fantasy poem about a little girl who goes down to the river and sees a fairy boat go by with a frog at the till. The frog is hailed by the Queen of the Fairies who asks the frog to take her to the other side of the river. The little girl wants to go with them, but the Fairy Queen tells her is is not possible because she is too big to fit in the boat. I lived so much in a fantasy world when I was a little girl and I always wanted to write stories about my dream world. Even now, I still want to write the stories and maybe I will, one day, though I do not have too much time in which to do so. The other poem I wrote was at a time when our family used to go down by the Torrens River to have lunch after the meetings on a Sunday and one Sunday, Debbie was in one of the peddle boats on the river and I looked at her and thought how beautiful she was and how she was growing up so quickly and so I wrote the poem.

Over in Perth, Fay Hurn, who eventually became our daughter Deb’s Mother-in-law, had just written a Book about the History of the Perth Ecclesia. I knew about the book she had written, but at that time had no idea that she would one day become my daughter Debbie’s mother-in-law when Deb married her son, Brian. In 1973 Jeff and I were attending a work function where the keynote speaker for the night was a Swedish woman called Ingrid Larsson. She was a school teacher from Sweden and her husband, Bo, was an architect. At the end of the evening Jeff and I got talking to them and arranged to meet them for coffee the next week. During this meeting they told us that they had been unable to get work and were severely running out of money. It seems that in Sweden everything is looked after by the State and they were not used to having to do everything for themselves as they had to do in Australia. Ingrid and Bo both had no idea how to go about getting a job in Australia. Jeff helped Ingrid to write a CV and we also gave them food and some money because they were running so low. They liked the independence that was possible in Australia, but could not cope with what that independence required. In the end they decided to go back to Sweden where Bo would retrain to become a doctor. If he did this he would be paid by the Government a pension equivalent to the wage he used to receive as an architect during the whole of his retraining period. This sounded quite amazing to us, but of course, to receive this kind of Government assistance, Swedish people paid high taxes.

I wrote a letter to Sheila Bailey up in Queensland in February 1973, answering a letter she had written to me way back in June of 1964 just after her husband Stan had died. In Sheila’s letter to me she had said that her daughter Judith was working and Lindsay was still at High School. Judith had been baptized and she hoped it would not be long before her son Lindsay would also be baptized. Now some nine years later I wrote to Sheila that I now had another two children, Jim and Helen and was expecting my fifth child in April/May 1973. Jeff was now employed by the State Government in the Department of Further Education where he was working on a Survey for Training in Industry in South Australia. My eldest daughter Debbie had developed into a very bright and attractive girl and had just won a singing contest which entitled her to 2 years’ free singing lessons. Deb was much in demand at her school to help her friends with projects and drawings etc. Judith was active and sports-loving and Jim was now seven years old and the biggest boy in his own year and the year above him at school and is very interested in electronics. Helen was five years old and had just started school. Unlike Jim, she was the tiniest girl in her class. She looked like a three and a half year old but talked like a seven year old. I wrote that I was very happy and proud of my children but would dearly love another little boy to increase the male population in our family because Jeff and Jim were quite outnumbered in the family. I wrote that Jeff was a member of the AB at Woodville and asked her if she was still a member at Petrie Tce. I said I regretted how fragmented our ecclesias had become and that there was such a divisions between our ecclesias which put her ecclesia and my ecclesia “out of fellowship.” Sheila answered my letter on 19th November, 1973 and she wrote that she would be moving house soon and was still working and was busy with ecclesial and family work. Her daughter Judith was married and she and her husband, Gordon, had two children. Lindsay too, was married and had two children. Sheila told me tha it was nearly 13 years since Stan, Sheila’s husband died. Sheila was now attending the Wynnum ecclesia because it is more convenient for her and also Wynnum was in fellowship with Petrie Terrace and she often visited there. She noted that I had said how it saddened me that my ecclesia and Petrie Tce were not in fellowship. She pointed out that both Wynnum and Petrie Terrace would fellowship our ecclesia, but it was our ecclesia that would not fellowship them. She said how sad it made her that we would disfellowship ecclesias so far away from us when we perhaps did not know the reasons behind discussions and decisions made from a place so far away from us. She wrote that she did not believe that the Master would want us to spend our time in pointless and heartbreaking arguments when the Kingdom is so close. “Like you,” wrote Sheila,”I hope that we meet in the kingdom. How blessed we are that God is our judge and not man.” As I read these letter, hers written in 1964 and mine in 1973, I felt so ashamed. Sheila was always so wise. How wrong it was, in hindsight, of the the Adelaide ecclesia’s to interfere in the affairs of ecclesia’s so far away from them. What right did we have to make judgments and “disfellowship” the Petrie Tce Ecclesia, dividing families and causing so much heartbreak. I see this so clearly now that 40 years have passed, but I saw it so differently in those earlier days. Sheila is dead now and she is certainly someone I will want to make peace with when the kingdom comes.

Reg and Beryl Plant whom we had met up in Queensland wrote to us that they had decided to come to live in Adelaide asked if Jeff could help Reg to get work once they got here. Jeff wrote up a CV for Reg and they did come to Adelaide and they did get work. On 31st March 1973 Stephen Johns and Susie Steele got married and Jeff and I attended the wedding. Jeff and I also received a letter from Dwayne and Deanna Tunnell in June after they had returned to Texas. Dwayne wrote that he missed Australia and all the brethren and sisters over here and especially the good study leaders we had such as John Martin and HP Mansfield. He wrote that Texans have always been non conformists and his ecclesia did not even have a constitution but he reported that when he got back in Texas his ecclesia had finally put together a constitution which they now used. He mentioned that he had heard that Ted Spongberg was now out of fellowship. Dwayne said that their children, Sheryl and Sandra were doing well at their school and were happy there.

We received a letter from Chris Crawford in May saying they had been back in Vancouver a week since they left Australia and not enjoying it very much. They had such good memories of Australia and time spent with us and really weren’t enjoying themselves much back in Canada. They were going to have an evening with Bill and Betty Mannell who would be coming to Australia in August. Al was still looking for work and asked for Jeff to let him know if there was anything here in Australia for him. On the 2nd June 1973, Ari Valtenberg sent the AB at Woodville a letter about fellowship complaining that there was a lack of love an unanimity within the ecclesia.

On 27th June 1973 our 4th daughter, Jesia Gail Berry was born. The night before she was born there were charts being painted at our house, and at midnight Jeff finally found time to talk about a name for our new baby-to-be. Jesia Gail Berry it was to be if a girl, or Jonathan Michael, if a boy. On 19th September, 1973 Danielle Ami O’Connor, Charles’ and Beth’s new little girl was born.