Robin's 80th Birthday Speech Part 1: Welcome and property

Thank you David and I would first like to pay my respects to the elders of the Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung people who are the traditional owners of the land on which we now stand.

Thank you everyone for coming and for making this occasion special for me. In particular I must thank those who have come from overseas and interstate. – my daughter Deborah who has come from London, and Nizza and Max Siano who have come from Sydney. I thank also Mim Bergman who made a special trip back from Canberra to be here tonight.

I congratulate Lillian Klein whose 73rd birthday is today and Val Campbell whose 74th birthday will be tomorrow.

Regrettably my son-in- law Wayne, Deborah’s husband, cannot be with us due to work commitments. Since Wayne is not here I can relate the story of his career without making Wayne blush. Wayne started his early career in the Royal Navy and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. What is the significance of that rank you may ask? Well the significance for the family is that during the war my uncle Sidney joined the Navy and he also rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander!

Wayne was in Melbourne on business some months before the wedding and when he came over I seized the opportunity to check out his standard of tennis. I am pleased to say that Wayne performed admirably. Here is a wedding photo of Deborah and Wayne.

Friends, I had hoped to host this event on the property at home in Fairfield, but regrettably that was not to be. So instead I have this video of the property to show you.

My mother had enormous vision in deciding to move here from Caulfield in 1952 because this was an industrial suburb at the time with smoke billowing out of the paper mill and because we were moving in the opposite direction to that of the general movement within the Jewish community. There were occasional comments that Fairfield was in the sticks, but over the years there has been a perceptible difference in the way people speak about this suburb. I will now show you the video.

My mother had many good qualities but she also had some upsetting qualities. At my daughter Deborah's 21st birthday party I was immensely embarrassed to learn the next day that when a male guest came to use the downstairs toilet in the house, if it was for number one only my mother told him to do it behind a tree! So when in later years I became the owner of the property one of the renovations I had done was to build a changing room with all facilities next to the pool.

People often remind me of events held at home in Fairfield in years gone by. And I frequently get admiring comments on the property from tradesmen, delivery persons and taxi drivers. And when an ABC cameraman came last year to record an interview for ABC News 24 he remarked that this was a wonderful spot. You will see the video later. 

In the late 1990s I was on the executive of the Northcote ALP and a few of our meetings were held at the treehouse. After one such meeting, fellow member Annette remarked: “I now have to go back to suburbia!”

Now as you might imagine this property together with the swimming pool, spa and tennis court requires enormous upkeep. And that in turn requires considerable practical skills which I don’t have. So the question I have often pondered on is why my father chose to leave this amazing property to me.

There was one incident of the kittens which Norman related to me in later years. What happened was that Norman discovered some kittens in my cupboard, but when he questioned me about these kittens my response was “I didn’t put them there, I don’t know anything about them, they have got nothing to do with me!” A few years later I was working as a bricklayer’s labourer during the vacation between school and university. My job was to scrape used bricks so they could be used again. At the end of the day I saw the foreman doing some calculations. The foreman then paid me off and said they won’t need me anymore. That night when I told Mum and Pop what had happened, Pop remarked: The foreman obviously calculated that it would be cheaper to buy new bricks than to pay you to scrape used bricks. Pop then burst out into uncontrollable laugher, so much so that my mother got quite worried!

A few days later I got a job as a builder’s labourer. Jobs were easy to come by in those days.

My mother also had concerns that I had blinkers over my eyes. And that appears not to have changed over the years because my daughter Yael on a recent visit told me that I could not see the cockroaches in the cupboard even though they were only 30 centimetres away from me. I am sometimes asked if snakes come onto the property and my reply is that I myself have never seen any snakes on the property or on the adjacent river bank but that others have reported seeing them. What I can however inform people is that in recent years the average number of deaths due to snakebite in Australia is about 2 per year. Compare this with the average number of deaths due to car accidents which is about 1300 per year averaged over the 5 years ending in 2013.

We also have bee hives just south of the swimming pool. The proximity of the property to the flora along the Yarra makes this an ideal place for bees to rebuild their populations which are under threat world wide at this time.

Friends, the property would be impossible for me to run on my own but I was fortunate to inherit the services of Trish and Ginny to do that for me. And here is a photo of Ginny and Trish with their 2 boys Rory and Gus.

In my young adult days I was totally unaware of the notion of 2 women being in a relationship and having children. I was not even aware of the L word. But here you have Trish and Ginny on their own having produced 2 boys. That turns traditional notions of the role of 2 sexes to produce a child on its head, does it not? Here friends is the clear evidence of 2 females being sufficient to produce offspring! Does anyone want to query the evidence here in front of you?

I would now like to introduce you to Charles and Wilma Cameron who lived and looked after the property for 17 years, together with their daughter Emily who grew up here from the age of 15 months.

One of the unfortunate aspects of this property is the heavy underutilisation of the tennis court and swimming pool. Given the health and therapeutic advantages of swimming, especially for those of us in their advanced years with bodily aches and pains, it has always surprised me why more people don’t take the opportunity to get in the pool and swim laps. The pool is 15 yards in length, longer than most backyard pools. When Pop was contemplating the construction of the pool in the early 70s, Jonathan insisted that the pool be long enough so that he would not bump his head when swimming laps!

And with the swimming pool it is amazing the number of excuses I have been given, including pool not clean enough, too much chlorine, too cold, too hot, too many leaves, worries about the ants, and worries about the bees and and I don’t want my hair to get wet! Have people not heard of bathing caps? But my favourite excuse is not having a bathing costume!

My mother and father, when they got to their 80s, would take a dip in the pool in their birthday suits. So it occurred to me that wearing a bathing costume is perhaps not so critical to having a swim. Accordingly I decided at my housewarming party to demonstrate that a bathing costume is actually not essential to having a swim, as you will now see. You may note that I had Maurice, who is a cardiologist, on standby in case anyone had palpitations over getting one’s hair wet.

Friends, a few of my guests who are in their 70s have told me that they don’t want to be reminded that they are approaching 80 and have asked if I have any suggestion as to what can be done to delay the ageing process. My own solution is to engage in fitness activity including tennis which is something I very much enjoy. But there is a problem for me and name of the problem is Wingate.

Here is Michael Wingate.

Because I am by nature a competitive fellow it frustrates me that even when I am playing well it is enormously difficult to win a point against Michael because he is so fast on the court and gets everything back. Now the secret to Michael’s fitness is that he takes part in Israeli folk dancing 5 times a week. I have appealed to Michael that instead of going to Israeli folk dancing 5 times a week that he take up bridge or chess 2 or 3 times a week and reduce the folk dancing accordingly but Michael has responded that he has a partner for each dancing session and doesn’t want to let his partner down.

Michael has his favourite partner here tonight so I shall try and talk to her later.

So those of you like me who have to face the Wingate factor week by week it is a case of no rest for the wicked and here is one example of the fitness training I go through.

Now those of you who are in your 70s and wondering if you need to go through this routine, my answer is that it all depends on whether there is a Wingate in your life. If there is no Wingate in your life then you don’t need to bother.

However I have had to come to the harsh realisation that there is a limit to what I can do about fitness and my best strategy is to make my shots so powerful that the point is over in one or two strokes.