Robert Ferguson
I came to North Sydney with the Roseville contingent and had the same happy love-hate relationship with the school that most of us seem to remember. After the Intermediate I went on to do my last two years at Knox which I found somewhat of a pastoral idyll after the regimented pressure cooker atmosphere of North Sydney. There seemed to be no need for the swaggering cane-wielding behaviour that certain Falcon Street figures appeared to feel necessary to keep a lid on our potentially rebellious nature.
After the Leaving I went on to Sydney University to study dentistry along with John Ball and his nippy little TR4. I did some tutoring at uni and then sailed off for the obligatory stint in the UK ending up in a North Wales village where English was just a rarely heard second language. On my return to Oz I went back to a little part time uni work as well as practising in the city in the old T&G building, a grand old Sydney landmark on the outside but infested with cockroaches on the inside. It was a real art averting the patient’s head from the rather unprofessional sight of a family of cockies scuttling across a tray of sterile instruments. The final cockroach crunch came at the end of 1974 when the building was condemned and I moved to a family practice in Wahroonga where I found great satisfaction and enjoyment until my eventual retirement.
I have led an oft-derided conventional little-white-picket-fence-with-FJ-in-the-drive type of life: work, church, Rotary, Welsh choral singing, classical ukulele (yes, seriously), singing in a little ukulele group the Machete Minstrels, and escape when possible to our little cottage in the mountains. I no longer struggle with the frustration of golf, still write the odd line of poetry, deliver the occasional, even odder, speech, and take far too many photographs. I have published two books of poetry, Bunya 100, contemplative commentaries on modern life, (so a ‘real book’ in bookshops), and Drip Feed, self-published comic verse just for fun.
My only glimmer of fame has been to do an inadvertent de Groot on Lady Hasluck, the G-G's wife, by unwittingly receiving the first standing ovation at the Opera House that had been intended for her. In an otherwise limelight free life I have been dining out on the story since 1973.
Facts and figures: Wife: Cecile, a retired research economist turned disability consultant. Children (as of 2024): Iain, 53, chartered accountant; Don, 52, insurance company exec; Katrina, 49, special ed. teacher; Ilona, 46, occupational therapist; twelve lovely grandchildren.