Ministry in Australia

Granny! É and an excellent time was had by all.

From the day he was married we no longer called Mark by his first name, but Gunter, which is his second name. There had been so many Marks in his year at Hawkesbury College, that everyone began to call him Gunter, and since Anne met him there, he was known by her family only as Gunter. He also preferred it.

In 1981 we were left with just two of our children staying with us. James and Margaret had each their own bedroom. James had finished school at Oak Flats and like his brothers, he wanted to take a year off studies. He chose to go to New Zealand for skiing and continued from there to Tonga and Fiji, which he enjoyed very much.

In 1982 James enrolled at the ANU (Australian National University) for a science course. He moved to live permanently to our caravan in 1985, when my mother came to live with us. At the end of 1986 he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree and worked for a while at a plant nursery at the Belconnen Mall, before getting a job at the plant research department of the ANU.

Soon he wanted to buy a house for himself and persuaded Margaret to go halves with him. Alison and I had invested money for the children in a trust account. It came originally from our parents and from invested earnings and we had told them that it was to be used only for a deposit on a house. We had eventually bought three flats in Sydney. When James and Margaret decided to get their share of the money out, the trust account was dissolved. They bought a very nice house in Clutsam Place, Melba, not far from us. James moved in first, in June 1988, and rented rooms out to some friends from Uni and others. Margaret moved first into the caravan when both our mothers visited us, but later decided to move in with James.

Schooling in Canberra for our Margaret was no problem. At Albion Park Rail she had some experience of open plan schooling, which she could continue at Melba High. She settled in quite well there, but of course, missed her old friends very much. As parents we had not taken enough account of the trauma our children go through after a move.

Margaret was very keen to learn to drive. As soon as she was able to get her learner's permit, I took her around for driving lessons. We started at the new suburb of MacKellar, where the roads were already in place, but hardly any houses, which was an ideal place to start learning. She picked up driving very quickly, and soon she would drive me to my appointments and got a lot of practice that way. I booked her for her driving test on her 17th birthday. She was quite unhappy about that, as it would spoil her birthday, she said. However, she passed the test with flying colours and later said that this was her best birthday present. I was mighty proud of her. From then on she borrowed my Charade many times, but I couldn't help being a little over-anxious. Whenever she didn't return with the car at the time she said she would, I was worried. My

415