Life Story of Joan Heather Easton

Joan was raised in her parent’s hometown in Toowoomba, at 155 Hume St. From the age of 5, she attended the co-educational Easts Primary School, (now known as Toowoomba East State School) and then from 1935-1938 she was a student at Glennie Anglican Girls School, which she now describes being, “way up the hill.” For the generation into which she was born, Joan was very successful in completing all twelve years of schooling, especially considering that the years she attended made up the majority of Australia’s Great Depression. This success could be attributed to her father’s wealth through a professional career, but the most likely case is that it was Joan’s own achievements that saw her through her education. Hailing from a sporting family, Joan participated competitively in swimming and tennis throughout her childhood, eventually representing Toowoomba in both sports. According to Joan, it was her father who encouraged her to take up swimming, mainly due to how close the Thompson family lived to the local swimming baths. Every morning, Duncan would take Joan across to the baths, where he would be her swimming trainer until it was time to go to school. This routine made up a major part of Joan’s childhood, and is now a vivid memory for her, mainly because the swimming baths were unheated, so it was often very cold during the early morning sessions. Unlike most of her friends, Joan did not ride her bike, take the bus or drive to school. Her grandfather was a keen horse trainer who owned a paddock near Joan’s home, and gifted her a beautiful horse named Bubbles while she was in secondary school. Joan would ride Bubbles to school every day and keep him in a paddock at Glennie before riding him home. Although she never rode Bubbles competitively, she was a good rider and enjoyed going on trips up to Table Top Mountain. Despite her love for riding, Joan often begrudges the fact that owning a horse meant having to herd him in and saddle him up every morning. She now gives some very sound advice: “Never give anybody a horse!” In the afternoons, Joan would go to tennis practice at the Technical College down the road. Rather than practicing on a tennis court, as is the norm today, she would use her racquet to hit a ball against the wall, playing against herself in order to improve. It was only during games against opponents that she would have access to a tennis court. When Joan was not swimming, riding Bubbles, attending school or playing tennis, she was socialising with the many sportsmen and women that had made the acquaintance of her father. Duncan and his socialite wife Dossie, often entertained guests in their home, which provided an avenue for Joan to meet many of society’s influential people.

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