Mary Monica Taylor

Mary Monica Taylor was born on the 10^th of March 1928, the first of the six children of John Gerald Taylor and Pauline (Paul) Rosalima Clarke. They had been married on the 8^th of February 1927.

Mary was born at the Famenoth Private Hospital in Alison Road in Kensington, NSW, near the Randwick racecourse.

The birth was registered as the district of Randwick where the couple were living at the time at 1 Kennedy Street, South Kensington. JG Taylor was one of the management at the City Mutual Life Society, one of Australia’s top six mutual life assurance societies, which had been founded by his uncle, Jeremiah Crowley (who also founded the Mutual Life & Citizens). Pauline had, in her single days, worked as a secretary for her uncle the architect, J. T. McCarthy.

Shortly after the birth, JG was transferred to Brisbane where he was made General Secretary of the City Mutual in Queensland. This role was akin to Managing Director within a mutual life association. The family lived at Hendra on Brisbane’s northside.

The move was only short-lived and then the growing family returned to Sydney moving into 4 Oyama Avenue in Manly. This had been a Californian bungalow style house on the dead-end street, but with excellent harbour views. However, J.T. McCarthy was commissioned to expand it and a second floor was added, the whole internal layout was changed and the style was converted to a form of Spanish Colonial style, with rows of arches on two levels of balconies.

The house was named Mirroobil, after the agricultural property near Moree owned by one of the family’s friends.

JG Taylor was made General Secretary of the City Mutual and the family’s prosperity grew with the employment of a gardener and a maid (at one point the maid being an Aboriginal).

By this time the family had grown to include a sister, Pauline and a brother, John. Mary and Pauline attended the Pahroombin Kindergarten between June and December 1933. This establishment was on the East Esplanade, on the corner of Osborne Rd, in Manly.

After primary school in Manly, Mary went to high school at Loreto Kirribilli. Both her mother and aunts had gone to Loreto Normanhurst as boarders. Mary was followed to Loreto Kirribilli by her sisters Pauline and Beatrice.

Mary’s education was disrupted by the Second World War when the family decamped to Mount Victoria (where they lived in a house called Fearn) in the Blue Mountains to escape the perceived threat in Sydney. To get to Kirribilli she had to take two ferries and Japanese mini-submarines had attacked Sydney harbour and there was an anti-submarine net strung across the harbour.

She attended Mount St Mary's in Katoomba during central part of the war.

With the receding Japanese invasion threat the family moved back to Sydney and Mary graduated from Loreto Kirribilli in 1944.

With her education disrupted by the war and being somewhat of an iconoclast, Mary decided to get a job in a canning factory (much to the horror of her family). After this, despite not having any teaching qualifications, she started work as a teacher at a Catholic primary school in the inner suburban suburb of Glebe.

By the early 1950s, she and her sister Pauline resolved to "emigrate" to Canada with the government there providing £10 tickets to anyone who wanted to move. It seems the move was never a serious emigration but a chance to travel on the cheap. Part of the long Australian tradition of the working holiday abroad. They first went to Vancouver, where Mary worked for nearly a year at the municipal bus authority. During the time there she slipped on the ice and broke her wrist. Welcome to Canadian weather!

She then moved to Toronto where she gained employment working for the company that provided the ferry service out to the small islands in the lake, in front of the city. How she fared in the Toronto winter is not recorded, as she always hated the cold. Eventually Pauline resolved to move on to London and Mary headed back to Australia, travelling across the northern United States before arriving in San Francisco from where she presumably sailed home.

Back in Australia, she found the intensity of the household in Manly too much to stand and decided to move to Melbourne in the mid-1950s. Her uncle and his family lived in Melbourne and the Taylors had various other friends/connections there. She lived in various lodgings but eventually settled in the centre of the city. Her main employment was firstly as a switchboard operator at the Postmaster General's department (PMG) and then as a typist at the travelling x-ray service (testing for TB) of the Victorian Health Department.

For entertainment she used to go out dancing, one of the places being the Masonic Hall at the Paris-end of Collins Street, which stood where the Collins Place complex now stands. There she met a builder from the northern suburbs, Edward Ecclestone, and a relationship developed.

Mary married Edward (Ted) Ecclestone on the 7^th of June 1960 at the Church of Mary Immaculate at Manly. The certificate shows her occupation as typist and her address as 28 Bourke Street Melbourne. There was a honeymoon in Surfers Paradise, then a relatively new resort area in Queensland.

They moved into a new-build house that Ted (and his brothers) had built in the northern suburb of Reservoir.

They eventually had three children.

She always hankered after her life in downtown Melbourne and would go into the city at least once a week over the following decades. She would visit the Athenaeum Library, Myers and Georges. She must have been the only person in Reservoir on Georges' mailing list!

She died on the 18th of April 1997 at the Preston & Northcote Community Hospital in Preston. Her grave is at the Yan Yean cemetery.