LIFE OF DOREEN PHYLLIS BYRNES
**** ANY ADDITIONAL MEMORIES OR INFOMATION ON PLACES MENTIONED WOULD BE WELCOME *****
DOREEN
Doreen was born at Wagga Wagga on 15 January 1916. She was the daughter of Cecil William Steiner and Elsie Mary Steiner (nee Clout).
She died at an ample old age of 91 on 22 February 2007, at Strathdale nursing home in Strathfield where she had lived for years with her husband Mostyn - after each of them had grown unable to continue at the home they established at Turramurra in the 1940s. Unlike Mostyn, who rarely left that nursing home after arriving there, Doreen was able to travel back on frequent short trips, just day trips, to Turramurra and see that her house and garden there was staying just as they’d know it. Her sole hobby had always been gardening and over the years a very large number of species had been acquired and planted at Turramurra. A small iconic reminder of this, in the form of a few selected nice pot plants, also rested on the verandah outside their room at Strathdale. Before having to leave the Turramurra house Doreen had suffered some bad falls there, one particularly severe one putting her into a long convalescence at Lady Davidson Hospital in North Turramurra. After that, extra railings were installed around the Turramurra house and front garden but there still came a time when it was no longer possible for her to live there. Leaving it was a devastating experience for her, and one of the few times she ever said that she just wanted to die. It was followed by a string of moves around adequate yet little-liked nursing homes around Sydney, until Strathdale was reached. This large nursing home has a modern décor style that seemed well attuned to what had always been her particular taste in appearances. She liked strong simple lines, bright colours, lots of glass and all in a way that relatives think might have derived from the modernistic or Art Décor days of the Kings Cinema in the late 1930s with which her father was closely associated. Doreen settled in much better at Strathdale and was before too long joined there by Mostyn, who also had grown unable to care for himself any longer.
Reverting to the opposite end of Doreen’s life there is not a great deal known, or remembered now by others, about her early life in Wagga Wagga. She and/or her parents used to describe Wagga Wagga as being a place where people rode bicycles a lot. And it was said that every evening they’d sit out on their porches (perhaps because of the greater heat inside?) and were prone to spend a lot of time chatting with the neighbours and other passers-by, a quite country style existence. Nothing bad was ever said about Wagga Wagga and a couple of family couple of trips back to there did take place during Doreen’s life but by and by the relations at Wagga Wagga drifted out of contact. The main thing her father used to say about Wagga Wagga was that it was hot and had dust and that the crows used to fly backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes.
Why was Doreen named Doreen? This has sometimes been wondered about but we don't know. Some have wondered was it perhaps after the 'Doreen' in the 'Sentimental Bloke' song that was popular in World War I times? This had appeared as the "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke" published by C.J. Dennis in 1915, just the year before Doreen was christened that name. This was the first of CJ Dennis's "verse novels" and it introduced the Sentimental Bloke, Doreen and Ginger Mick. It is written that within eighteen months of its first publication the book had sold 66,000 copies and Dennis had captured the imagination of a nation (a special pocket edition was published "for the Trenches" too). In this book it was 'Doreen' that the Bloke called his queen, and a family name or nickname of Doreen's mother was queen or Queenie, presumably what Cecil, or others, called her. But any of that is just speculation. The "real" meaning of the name Doreen is obscure and it could have many meanings, whence it is hard to think there was any other reason for choosing it. No other Doreen’s are known in the family. Her middle name is more likely from some earlier relative, e.g. may be after an aunt of that name (see section about the Clout family).
She had one brother, Raymond, who was also born at Wagga Wagga and who died in Sydney many years before she did. Before his death they were in frequent contact and Raymond and his family lived at nearby Croydon Park when Doreen and parents lived at Ashfield. Other close relatives (Mostyn’s sister’s family) lived nearby at Enfield.
Doreen lived a relatively quiet and very domestic life. Home care and shopping occupied a lot of it. It was mostly lived without major mishaps and it largely revolved around home duties of some sort or another. It was likely that way before marriage too, and when she later on had her own home she got more and more interested in plants. She was quite fussy about some things and had to have them ‘just right’ always, and could be very particular in her choices of certain things. On occasion she took so long to decide on exactly what new colour to have for new room painting, and things of that nature, that her indecisiveness or repeated changes of mind (if she saw a better colour) would drive people crazy in a manner of speaking. Along with the garden she enjoyed the birds, and was able to tame some of those and have them feed from her hand. She always had a very kind heart for animals of all sorts.
Although mostly without major mishaps in life there were unavoidable some sad and trying things. Some suicides or other untimely deaths affected some close to her, and there were trying times during breakdowns in Mostyn’s health which happened a number of times in his life, but from which he recovered.
Doreen was thorough and conscientious in whatever she did. Early on she was probably very much her mother’s helper too (which is presumably why when she was quite young her mother once took her with her on some long arduous travelling from Queensland back to Wagga Wagga thence to Sydney -something which is believed to have focussed around her mother’s health condition and to have involved some surgical operation – but for which the details now lost or forgotten). Her mother died before her father and she was likewise her father’s personal helper, as well as working in his picture theatre business for which she was paid, supplementing her own household income. Doreen at no time in her life plunged off anywhere on her own initiative to do her own thing as best we know. Her life was lived as an accompaniment of her parents and then her husband, and she went where they went. Apart from the years that had to be spent in a nursing home environment, as already described, her life falls into four location phases: Wagga Wagga, Cairns, Ashfield, Turramurra. Turramurra is where Mostyn purchased an acre of land and began house building, and the greater part of her life was spent at Turramurra. Wagga Wagga was early childhood times, and Cairns and Ashfield relate to movements associated with her father Cecil’s career, whence a little has to be said about that to show the context.
Cecil was, in one form or another, a showman by inclination, and was early involved in circus and side shows, especially boxing. He probably wasn’t much built to be either a boxer or a performer of any sort. Where he managed to find a niche best was in doing arrangements for the show, especially as an advance bookings agent and in scouting for the for grounds (open lots) where best to put up the big top, etc. Following circus life there came involvement with pictures, presumably at first of the silent movie type. He later settled into what would be a steady and life-long role of picture theatre manager, which is what he retired from. His end in that industry was not a happy one as the industry began collapsing after the arrival of black and white TV. He diversified a little into the business of drive-in construction and operation, or rather the cinema chain he worked for did, but in the end nothing could save the old picture theatres where he had worked and all of them were subsequently closed or demolished. He didn’t complain a great deal about it but everyone realised he couldn’t be enjoying all that. All that came later, and when Doreen was working for him theatre-going was at its peak and they were good times for the family.
The various family relocations Doreen was part of probably all related to Cecil's job moves. Cecil was actually trained as a Coach-Builder and although perhaps apprenticed at that he probably did little actual coach-building. From memory of what he used to say, perhaps embroidered, it was a case that he "ran away" for some reason, to a travelling circus. He traveled to towns all around NSW to do advance publicity and make arrangements in advance of the circus arrival. It is uncertain how he drifted from that into pictures or if he was ever associated with travelling picture shows. His first major job was probably managing a picture theatre owned by the Hogan family in Cairns. The Hogan family also ran the local ambulance service. The family moved to Cairns on account of this opportunity and Doreen had many happy memories of the years spent in Cairns. The theatre there was quite likely an open-air movie theatre where people sat in deck chairs.
Cecil kept a scrapbook related to his activities, which shows a considerable amount of entrepreneurial flair on his part. He was also artistic and did a fair amount of the artwork involved in posters and the like himself. He was meticulous about poster designs and the same attention to detail is shown in the page margin decorations and inkwork bordering, which he did in his personal stamp collection albums. In Cairns the Steiner family likely lived somewhere along the Esplanade, with is now a very busy and highly developed area. However Doreen's memories, much as for Wagga Wagga, seem to have been of a much more laid-back Cairns lifestyle. She attended school there at a local convent school.
The Cairns years were always looked back on very romantically by Doreen although one wonders if the tropical sun there and Doreen's blonde complexion and fair hair were not such a good match, and that it was for the best that they later moved to Sydney.
Various Cairns friendships persisted after the family moved to Sydney. In particular Doreen maintained a long-term friendship with Ellen Whittacker nee Hogan, who herself later moved to Sydney to live. Doreen also long kept in touch with Ellen's son, Dr Viv Whittacker who was a medical researcher.
After Cecil came south to Sydney where he was to have many more years managing various cinemas (Ashfield, Rockdale, Newtown, etc.) Doreen attended secondary school mainly or solely in Newtown. They also lived for a time at San Souci but Ashfield (and later on a nearby Croydon house) became where the family would mainly dwell from then on.
It is very likely that the Kings Theatre in Ashfield was the epitome of Cecil’s career. Although the family as yet has no definite evidence of this it is thought that he was involved throughout on the Kings project, from site acquisition through construction, opening and operation. The family moved into the flat associated with the theatre, above the Kings Milk Bar and even at times when he was managing different theatres elsewhere he remained based there until his retirement. In retirement he bought a house at nearby Croydon and he moved there. Doreen's mother Elsie (Queenie) died well before Cecil did and whilst they were still at the Ashfield flat. Cecil lived another ten years after Elsie. In his later years he maintained that he could not stand the Sydney winters anymore. Always creative he had a good solution to that. He would let the Croydon house for a few months each year and with the proceedings made from doing that he would go and stay at a small guesthouse in Cooktown, in far northern Queensland.
In St. Joseph’s secondary school at Newtown Doreen met Sadie O'Reilly of Stanmore, who was to become a lifelong friend and was one of her bridesmaids. Her sister in law Dorothy who married her brother Raymond was another of those, and Mostyn’s sister Gwendolyn (now deceased) was the other. Unlike Doreen who through necessity lived many years in nursing homes, but mainly at Strathdale, in her later years, Sadie at present lives still in her own home, at Carringbah, as the widowed Mrs Woodward. Sadie remembers that the Steiner family may have lived in Lennox Street in Newtown when Doreen attended St Joseph’s school. Doreen studied mathematics, history, geography etc.
Doreen met and married Mostyn Byrnes after Mostyn came to board with the Steiner family at Ashfield. Mostyn came from Mayfield near Newcastle to a job with the Commonwealth government and Cecil perhaps had registered with some scheme for billeting Commonwealth employees coming to Sydney. It was wartime and such schemes are believed to have existed. In any case it proved an auspicious arrangement.
Sadie got married only a couple of weeks after Doreen, and it is believed that Doreen probably loaned her the same wedding dress for her wedding. During the war getting the material for such a dress was apparently not all that easy. Doreen also related that the dress was soon sold. Somebody who either noticed the wedding or else had been following wedding announcements in the newspapers called upon the family wanting to buy the dress and it was soon enough sold and departed from the family. I think it was said that they also assisted the buying in having it modified to fit the new owner, as the Steiners had a friend in Ashfield who was a dressmaker.
After Sadie’s marriage, she and her husband Claude lived nearby at Summer Hill for a time and often walked to the pictures at Ashfield Kings.
Doreen worked part-time for her father at the Kings Theatre after her marriage and the birth of John. Mostyn bought land at Turramurra and a house was built there. Doreen continued for years working at Ashfield and this meant the family (Byrnes) split their week between Turramurra and Ashfield. The role she mostly performed was cashier in the front tickets sales box. The Ashfield flat was a familiar home away from home for all. Cecil has a little workshop shed in the backyard and his woodworking and other mechanical skills fascinated the young John who was also somewhat mechanically minded and always to visit the grandparents place at Ashfield. Among other things, Cecil completely hand built a small cabin cruiser boat in the backyard there, taking quite a long time to do it but finishing it nonetheless. For the curve of the prow each plank of wood had to be bent and this was achieved manually by steaming the wood over boiling water in a special manner. Finances were tight at the time and Cecil also helped by constructing some nice furniture for the home at Turramurra for Doreen and Mostyn. He also often helped out in other ways in improvements at Turramurra.
The house at Turramurra has curved wall corners and it is believed that it may have been designed by the same architects as did the Kings Cinema design work. In 1937-1939 when the Kings theatres were being built the Art Deco style was peaking in fashionableness. Also in 1937, coincidentally or not (was Cecil involved?) the Ashfield Town Hall was totally remodeled in the same style. Part of Cecil’s work was getting theatre developments up and running and it appears that getting developments approved at local government level, whence art deco’ing the town hall could be looked into as possibly connected. That particular town hall building now, like the Kings Theatre itself in Ashfield has been demolished to make way for other things. The Kings theatre site became an office and shopping block, and the Town Hall was demolished for the present Ashfield Shopping Mall.
Doreen's ancestors - The Clouts
Doreen's ancestors - The Steiners