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Dee Gould: her life by Linton Ferguson

I would like to give you a glimpse of Dee’s life, a life well-lived, a good life, as told to me over the last fifty years.

Dee was born in Horsham on Saturday 16th November 1929, only daughter of Hugh Waddell and Eileen Campbell. Dee was named Magdalene Dee Waddell. 

Magdalene was Hugh’s mother’s name. Dee is a river in Scotland. 

Dee recalled being asked at school, 

“What’s your name child?”. Dee answered “Dee”. 

The teacher then said, “Yes but what is your name?”, thinking she was just saying the letter D.

Dee lived with her parents in Horsham for the first four years of her life, in a rented house across the road from her maternal grandparents. Living near grandparents, Dee visited Nanna and Pa Campbell every day. Dee recalls enjoying time with Uncle Jack. She said he was very funny, and she had a lot of fun with him when she was a little girl. 

Hugh, Eileen and Dee moved to Melbourne, initially to a rented house in Glen Iris when Hugh’s job with the Post Office took him to Melbourne. Hugh then bought a house at 40 Patterson Street Coburg for £500, before the church was built next door when Dee was about 7 years old. 

Dee believed she was then sent to Gippsland to live with Aunty Chris and Uncle Peter because her mother was suffering from hydatids and had a hysterectomy and needed time to recover. This was followed by the polio epidemic when many children were sent to the country to live. Chris and Peter’s farm was called “Caranno” and was half-way between Thorpdale South and Mirboo on the edge of the Strzelecki ranges and could be bloody cold.

Life on the farm was a great time for Dee. She loved Chris and Pete and enjoyed the company of her cousin Kevin when he came to stay as well. Chris was a very loving woman with a great sense of humour, and a twinkle in her eye. 

On the farm they had a car, an old Nash with a square top and celluloid windows. One time when travelling to Horsham, Eileen, Chris and Pete were in the front with Kevin and Dee packed in the back seat with the luggage. Smoke appeared from the rear of the car and Eileen opened the door and jumped out without waiting for Pete to stop the car. It was a false alarm; Eileen had a few days in bed to recover when they got to Horsham. Another time Kevin and Dee were in the car travelling along a road during a bushfire and were excited by the tree limbs falling on the road, not realising the danger. 

Dee remembered Pete playing the mouth organ, hymns on Sunday. Kevin was the “Lone Ranger” and Dee was “Tonto” his faithful Indian scout. Dee remembers drinking milky tea on the farm. Kevin had his tea with 2-3 spoons of sugar and would vigorously stir the tea. Pete would say “there’s no need to ring a flaming bell about it”, which Dee found very amusing.

On the farm they milked cows. Dee could milk a cow. Pete had some horses and Chris had some pigs she would raise and sell. Kevin and Dee attended a one-teacher school, uphill from the farm, for a little while before it closed due to low enrolments. 

Dee and Kevin then did school at home by correspondence, getting their lessons over the radio. Dee loved it. Kevin hated it. Dee was on the farm for about three years and remembers when returning to Melbourne not having learnt how to do Long Division. This was the only thing she had trouble with when returning to school when living in Coburg.

After Grade 6 Dee sat the entrance exam for Coburg High School and completed her secondary education. Dee remembered Coburg High School had a courtyard and, as students, they stood on the balcony for assemblies. Quite an experience, Dee used to think it was a huge, interesting building. 

Mrs Allen was a neighbour in a house next to the church further down Patterson Street. She was from New Zealand and had a son Lindsay. Lindsay was like an older brother for Dee, being about nine years older than Dee, and he was into photography. After being on the farm with Chris, Dee would go up to Mrs Allen’s house a lot. She was a very motherly type and used to bake a lot. Dee would help by chopping nuts and things like that. 

While living at 40 Patterson Street Coburg, Dee remembered the time the doctor came to the house and removed her tonsils on the kitchen table. Also, times when she would use Morse code to communicate with her father and walking up to Sydney Road with a big sack to do the shopping. Hugh and family used to take annual family holidays, usually by the water, as Hugh enjoyed looking at ships, in places such as Sorrento and Queenscliff.

Dee left Coburg High School at age 15 and then went to Melbourne Tech for three years doing an Arts Course. She was later employed by a business that made decorative mirrors. She used her artistic skill to create images in wax on the glass, which then went through a series of acid baths to create etched mirrors. After she married Len Gould in 1949, she worked in a kindergarten before Melanie was born in 1950.

Len and Dee lived with Dee’s parents for several years. Mandy was born in 1953, the year they built their first house at 4 Ada Street Preston. They lived there for about 20 years and Gigi was born in 1964. Len and Dee then built their second house in Warrandyte in about 1974 and Dee lived in that house for nearly 50 years before spending the last three years in Lorne, struggling with dementia.

Dee and I got on quite well, having similar senses of humour. 

I recall a time I was washing the dishes and stacking them in the rack while talking to Dee. 

I said, “Just be careful you don’t accidentally pick up the tea towel and dry those dishes”, 

she responded with a wry smile and a twinkle in her eye, “No risk of that!”

Most recently in the Lorne Nursing Home, Dee was reading an article on dementia in The Age newspaper. She really enjoyed reading the paper each day. 

She said to Mandy, “Isn’t that terrible? I hope I never get that!”

Just last week on one of her last good days she was saying, 

“Yes, I am deaf, I don’t want to go blind, and what’s the other thing?”