Dorothy Mclean was only 15 when her mother died. And she believes her father’s death – only months earlier – was the cause. “She died of sheer worry,” Dorothy says. “It was 1935 and she was a second-class citizen – a female – and she couldn’t borrow money. We were living in Maroubra, and my brothers were away serving. One was in Mount Isa and one was in New Guinea.”
Thankfully, Dorothy’s brothers came back to hold down the fort when the siblings were left orphaned. But their war commitments over the years left her vulnerable, and needing to fend for herself.
“I’d been eating boiled eggs and vegetables for dinner, and it got to the point where I needed to find work to be able to keep the house,” she says. “To my relief, there was work up the road at the Sergeants’ Mess. I started work in the big Australian Services Canteen Organisation (ASCO) building, writing invoices for officers’ cigarette and beer orders,” she recalls.
Then one day, when she was invited to the opening of the new HMAS Kuttabul canteen-servicing building in Potts Point, she met a navy man. His wife had died, and they slowly got to know one another before marrying in 1968. They loved taking holidays together, playing golf and gardening, and they lived many happy years together before he passed away at 68 after a heart attack.
Left with questions about how to use her time well, the answers seemed to come to her pretty quickly. One day, the Deputy Governor Bob Sanders formed a group for executive wives of Reserve Bank employees, and Bob’s daughter needed people to make soft coat-hangers for hanging garments long-term in Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum.
So every Thursday, Dorothy headed into what was then the Technological Museum, and worked on making the coat-hangers for displays. Each plastic coat-hanger was surrounded by nylon padding and jersey material, then stitched by hand. Dorothy used to leave home every Thursday at 8.15am, catch the bus to Railway Square, and work a 9am-to-3pm shift where she’d work hard cutting out padding and fabric.
Now aged 98, Dorothy recalls the time when a hip operation made it harder for her to get on the bus with her walking stick. The museum appreciated her so much they started bringing the materials to her, then picking them up when she’d made a dozen.
It was only last year, aged 97, that Dorothy officially retired from her volunteering role due to macular degeneration and frequent falls. She “graduated” with her volunteering certificate after 34 years of service. But she’d forever left her mark on one of Australia’s most famous museums.
