My Later Life - As dictated to Maureen in May 2016

Philip’s life – work, family and social involvement

When Philip came out of the Priory he was ‘a lost soul’, who was very lonely because he had to break the friendships made there. He had no employment history and at the age of 27 had to decide what to do to build a new life.  He went to employment agencies, including teaching agencies, and the public service. His first job was as house master at Melbourne Grammar, but he found teaching difficult because he had eye problems following a squash injury.

He left teaching after a year and joined the Department of Labour & National Service. There he met Maureen who had a lot of positive energy and he thought was a lovely person. On her part Maureen recognised that Philip had an exceptional intellect and that he should be promoted rapidly. However his training which led him to go straight to the heart of a problem was not appreciated in the public service.

After Maureen left DLNS to work for Australian Volunteers Abroad as an organiser, Philip used to drop in to her home. He was not dating widely, but one thing which struck him, especially when he met her family, was that she was used to good quality food, something which had not been part of his life up until then.

Recognising that he had energy to input into a political campaign, Maureen involved him in the Immigration Reform Group which at that time still had the focus of abolishing the White Australia Policy.

They married in February 1969. A Dominican friend, Fr Robert Doran married them. Robert ended at working at the prestigious liberal arts Amherst College, Massachusetts, teaching scripture and married a Jewish scholar.

Maureen resigned from her dream job in May 1970 because overseas travel would not have been possible with a baby, and Jocelyn was born on 9 July. Philip said that he was at that time ‘terrified of children’, but nonetheless became a devoted father, and Maureen ensured that every Sunday was devoted to family activities, either by going on excursions or visiting the children’s grandparents.

By then Philip had begun on a long and debilitating campaign to stop Camberwell Council rushing through approval for a developer to build flats in Maverston Street on a bushy block over our back fence. He took out a Supreme Court writ against the Council and spent years campaigning for residents' candidates to displace the vested interests on the council. He was a campaign manager for one of the candidates and stood for council himself.

In May 1972 a second daughter, Lisa, was born, and he doted on his two girls. Philip loved having close physical contact with his children, carrying them in the mai tai sling on weekend bush walks, and helping them build confidence rock scrambling and climbing. He took enormous pleasure in watching them grow physically, emotionally, intellectually and artistically, and develop a sense of family. He shared his passion for language and etymology, and gave them the skills to decipher any new word of Greek or Latin origin. 

Family has been important to him and he has relied on them to support him in his passions. He and Maureen are both extremely proud of their girls.

The family joined the Junior Field Naturalists club, attending meetings and going on excursions and the yearly Junior Field Nats Easter camp. This was a source of great joy and learning and set up a basis for Jocelyn’s eventual studies in Ecological Science alongside Law at ANU. Lisa too grew to have a love and appreciation of nature through the Junior Field Nats activities.

Philip’s health deteriorated throughout the 1970s with frequent migraines. This was partly due to the stress of the Maverston street campaign which left the family mentally, physically and financially exhausted. It was also due to the long term effect of his time in the priory and his unsuitability to public service work. 

He had taken a year’s leave of absence in 1973 to work in his brother Graham’s business, Slide In Doors, which he enjoyed.  When he eventually returned to the public service he found that his former area of labour market research had been reorganised and he had been passed over.

In 1975, as soon as Jocelyn began school and Lisa started preschool, Maureen, who had only had temporary contract work until then, began a Dip. Ed. at Monash Uni. She thought that teaching would give her a way of looking after the children during school holidays, there being few child care centres then.

In 1980 the family moved to Canberra and Philip initially worked at the Bureau of Labour Market Research, then went to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Maureen began teaching at the then Canberra College of TAFE, teaching English to adult migrants.

Philip helped set up the Field Naturalists Association of Canberra in 1981. Based in a town of academics the club took a different emphasis to the Victorian club, but nevertheless continue his interest in nature which was life-long and was the source of many good friendships. One of the memorable family trips with the club was the Bob Weston safari which took a large group camping to southern Queensland and western NSW.

Philip’s interest in nature led him to campaign with Dr Chris Watson to protect Gininderra Creek and he was also involved in the Save our School (Cook Primary) campaign with good friend and neighbour, Kerry Keneally. In the early 1980s he was active in the Residents Rally political movement. Later he also doorknocked for a series of political candidates, including Liberal, Labor, Greens and Democrat candidates (in the latter case his daughter), if they were people he believed had the community's interests at heart.

Philip also helped establish the Friends of Mount Painter (FoMP), for which Lisa created a logo that was used for many years. FoMP campaigned to remove cattle from the summit to support bush regeneration, and staged a public event attended by local politicians to further the campaign, which eventually succeeded to the chagrin of the local farmer. FoMP later morphed into a park care group that removes weeds from the mountain, and the group continues today.

Philip was still unhappy in his work, largely he believed, because of the lasting effect of his years in the priory. He took a package in 1989, aged 51, and joined the AMP Society as an agent/adviser to make sure he had the skills to defend the nest egg his package represented. He completed a graduate diploma in Financial Planning through Deakin University and became an accredited financial planner, working mainly with retiring university staff.

Around 1986 he joined the Personal Computer User Group’s Coffee and Chat group (which Maureen calls ‘the Big Boys computer group’) established in 1984 by Gloria Robbins. He was going to C’n’C meetings until late last year, riding his bike alternate weeks to Belconnen and Weston Creek. During the years 2000-2004 he gave computer help to people in the community who had missed out on computer education, in later years through the government's Digital Divide program. 

During the 1990s he took up teaching again, this time sharing his passion for natural vision improvement through running TAFE courses on the Bates Method. Philip had got rid of his own glasses for myopia back in the 10s while at university, and wanted others to benefit as he had.

In 2006 he set up the U3A Non-Geeks group for those less skilled with computers, where he instituted the "honker" to be sounded whenever anyone got too geeky. This group too is continuing.

Philip also contributed to a number of other community campaigns, such as the Save Our Ridge campaign that tried to stop construction of the Gungahlin Drive Extension.  

His involvement in the Mental Health Carers Network (now Forum) dates from 1997. Maureen had for some years previously sat as a carer representative on the Clinical Practice and Quality Improvement committee and the Clinical Review committee. Philip became a representative on the Risk Management and Strategic Planning committees. They both became disillusioned by the limited value placed on their input by the Health Department/Directorate. Maureen continued on the Consumers and Carers Advisory Board at the National Institute of Mental Health Research based at ANU until Philip's health issues meant she needed to cease her involvement.

Philip’s legacy of mental health reform lives on. Other dedicated and forward-thinking carers are taking up the cause.