Carol’s mother whisked Carol off to the doctor, who prescribed powerful medication to control her condition. The medication, however, made Carol sleepy, and soon she was asleep more often than she was awake.
David found this to be a confusing time. He and Carol should have been excited about their impending marriage, but instead they were dealing with a mental collapse that neither of them understood. David wrestled with his feelings. There was no guarantee that Carol would ever make a full recovery, yet he loved Carol, and he supported her as best he could, even as she deteriorated. Carol began to develop strange phobias and obsessions. She would become mesmerized by trains and had to fight the urge to lunge at them as they hurtled along the tracks. And for some reason the color red had an effect on her, and she would often pass out when she saw a red dress or a red bus. As a result, she could no longer drive or continue her teaching career or do any of the other regular things she enjoyed, like singing in the choir at St. Chad’s or attending youth group. She explained to David that the only thing she could do to get away from the voices and confusing thoughts flooding her mind was to sleep. Sleep became a refuge from her distorted reality.
While David tried to do everything he could to comfort and support Carol, he kept busy with Betta Pancakes and Pikelets. The business was thriving, and he decided to turn the distribution network he had developed for his product into an independent company, which he sold off. He then divided the remainder of the company into three divisions: manufacturing, export, and administering the patent rights to the pikelet-making machine that he and Dudley Crowder had developed. Now instead of having to deliver his pancakes and pikelets to over fifty stores around Auckland each morning, he handed them off to the distribution company, which did the work for him. All David now had to do each morning was get the product he was exporting to Auckland International Airport so that it could be loaded onto the 6:00 am flight to Noumea, the capital of the Pacific island nation of New Caledonia. By nine o’clock his pancakes and pikelets would be on the shelves of Noumea’s supermarkets.
Slowly, over many months, Carol stabilized a little, and with the help of her mother Carol was able to begin making wedding arrangements. David, though, could see that it was not easy for Carol, who was still in a fragile psychological state. Also, the medication Carol took left her tired and disconnected from reality.
Finally the wedding date was set for May 8, 1965, and the invitations were printed and sent out. David made sure that an invitation was sent to Rocky and the Bussaus, the only people outside of his and Carol’s mutual friends he knew to invite to the wedding.
With great effort, all the details for the wedding were finally arranged, and at lunchtime on Saturday, May 8, David pulled on the coat of the new black suit he had bought for the occasion, adjusted his bow tie one last time, and headed to St. Chad’s to be married. As the church filled with the invited guests, David took his place at the altar. Moments later the organ burst to life with the strains of “Here Comes the Bride.” David turned to see Carol enter the church on the arm of her father. To David she looked stunning, dressed in her white lace wedding gown and veil. David knew, however, how stressful this moment was for Carol with all eyes on her and that as a result she was heavily medicated for the occasion.
At the altar David took Carol’s arm from Norm Crowder, and the vicar then led the couple in their marriage vows. Before David knew it, he was rolling back Carol’s veil to kiss his new bride.
For David it was a near perfect day. He was now a married man. But the one disappointment was that the Bussaus had not come to the wedding.
Following the wedding, David and Carol set out for South Island for their honeymoon in the small van David had bought for the trip. They were both relieved to have the pressure of organizing a wedding behind them as they drove to Wellington and then crossed by ferry to Nelson on South Island. They then made their way to Christchurch, Queenstown, and Milford Sound, staying in hotels when they could and sleeping in the back of the van when there were no rooms to be had.
After returning to Auckland, David went back to work at Betta Pancakes and Pikelets, but Carol was still not well enough to return to her teaching career.
As they thought about their future together, one of the things David realized they would have to plan for was a place of their own in which to live. Soon after the wedding he bought several acres of wooded land in Titirangi, one of Auckland’s western suburbs, where he intended to have a house built for him and Carol to live in.
The early months of David and Carol’s life together was dominated mostly by Carol’s continuing illness. The only course of action that her doctor could come up with was to keep her on a heavy dose of drugs. But the drugs made Carol tired and zombie-like. It was a frustrating situation for both her and David. Then one day, as David accompanied Carol to see the doctor, the doctor called David aside for a private conversation.
“Perhaps a complete change might be good for your wife’s condition,” the doctor suggested. “Perhaps being away from all the pressure that may have contributed to her breakdown would be good for her. Perhaps in a different location she would feel more relaxed—more herself.”
The doctor’s suggestion held a lot of perhapses, but David began to seriously consider the advice. Finally he decided to take the doctor’s recommendation. He had an entirely new and different setting in mind for them both—Sydney, Australia.
David sold his Betta Pancakes and Pikelets business for a good price, allowing the new owner to make a down payment and then pay the business off in installments. He then booked passage on the Oriental Queen to Sydney. His plan was to get a job in Sydney and see whether indeed the change of location would help Carol’s condition. If it did, they would eventually return to New Zealand and build the planned house on their land in Titirangi.
In January 1966, he and Carol made their way up the gangway and onto the Oriental Queen. They stood on deck and watched as the vessel made its way out of Auckland Harbor and the city skyline faded from view. The ship sailed up the east coast of North Island and rounded Cape Reinga, New Zealand’s northernmost point, before setting out across the Tasman Sea, the fifteen-hundred-mile stretch of ocean separating Australia and New Zealand. Three days later the Oriental Queen docked in Sydney, and David and Carol checked into a hotel in the Kings Cross area of the city.
Sydney was a bustling city with the same population as New Zealand crammed within its boundaries. David set to work looking for a job. Within days of arriving in the city, David had purchased a bicycle and was getting up at four in the morning to deliver copies of the Sydney Morning Herald to various residences. He also worked as a laborer during the day, and in the evenings he returned to an old craft—restringing tennis racquets. At the beginning of the week he would collect the tennis racquets from sports stores around the city and return with them to the flat he and Carol rented in Rose Bay on the east side of the city. Then in the evenings he would restring them and return them to the sports stores at the end of the week. Some weeks he had up to fifty tennis racquets to restring, which kept him very busy.
Then one day as David scanned the edition of the Sydney Morning Herald he had delivered to homes that morning, he spotted an advertisement in the employment section of the paper that piqued his interest. A local construction firm wanted to hire a foreman, and David decided that he was the man for the job, despite the fact that he had little experience as a carpenter—and none as a foreman. Deep down he knew that given the chance, he could do the job. He was a quick learner, and he was good when it came to organizing and supervising other people.
The next morning David found himself shaking hands with Jack Ginnery, the owner of the company looking to hire a foreman. As the two men talked, something seemed to click between them. David sensed that beneath Jack’s short, rugged exterior was an honest man that he could work with. Before he knew it, David had the job.
That afternoon David headed straight to the library, where he sat and read every book on construction that he could lay his hands on. By the time he showed up to start the new job, David knew, at least technically, as much about construction techniques as the men he was supervising. Once on the job, he learned even more by watching carefully as the men worked. Before long David was working alongside the others, wielding a hammer as if he had been a carpenter all his life. And there wasn’t anything he was not willing to try his hand at. If new plumbing or electrical wiring needed to be installed, David was up for the task. He would work away, figuring out the problems as he encountered them and storing away the solutions to the problems to draw on the next time he did some plumbing or wiring.
As David worked away as foreman at the construction company, he and Jack developed a friendship that transcended the boss-employee relationship. When David confessed to Jack one day that the Anglican church that he and Carol had been attending since arriving in Sydney was dead boring, Jack responded, “Why don’t you come along to the church I attend? It’s pretty active. I think you might like it.”
The following Sunday, David and Carol showed up at Waverly Methodist Mission in the Sydney suburb of Bondi Junction. From the moment they set foot inside the church door, they felt right at home, so much so that they soon became regular attenders at church services. David particularly enjoyed the deep sense of spirituality and the way the church was actively involved in the community. Before long he was driving a bus once a week, transporting elderly people from their homes to the church hall, where older folks, or evergreens, as the church called them, were given a meal and a night’s entertainment. He and Carol also became involved in helping to run the youth group, and Carol felt strong enough to do some teaching in a kindergarten run at a sister church in nearby Paddington.
David was pleased by the turn of events. Not only had they found an active church to be involved in, but also the change of location had perked Carol up, though she continued to take medication to control her condition and struggled with the lethargic feeling it cast over her.
Several months after moving to Sydney from Auckland, David and Carol were out shopping in the Bondi Junction area. As they strolled along, they came upon a couple also out shopping. David could hardly believe it when he recognized them. It was Wocky and his wife, Diane. “I can’t believe it. What are you doing here?” David asked.
“We moved here about six months ago,” Wocky replied. “I got a job with the Australian government designing overseas embassies. What brings you here?”
David told him about coming to Sydney and finding a job as a foreman. Wocky was impressed that David had been able to do that, since David had no prior experience.
The two men had not seen each other since they had parted ways from Sedgley. They talked away, filling in each other on the details of their lives since that time. Wocky had gone on to university from Sedgley and earned a degree in engineering. He had also married Diane, whom he had started dating while still in Masterton. And interestingly, Diane and Carol had the same birthday. The two couples agreed to keep in regular contact with each other now that they were living in Australia.
The on-the-job relationship between David and Jack continued to grow, and before long the two men were partners in the construction company. Several years before, an accountant had swindled Jack out of a lot of money, leaving his construction business teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. As a result, the company could take on only smaller construction jobs because suppliers would not extend credit to Jack, insisting that he pay cash for the supplies he bought from them. David, however, because of his good credit history, established a credit line for the business that allowed them to take on larger, more lucrative building contracts.
