With glasses or without? With glasses. With glasses? Oh. Can't kid myself, can I? Barbara Hayes. 100 Burwood, New South Wales. Australia. That's where I was born. Trying to formulate a few words of wisdom to give to my young granddaughters. "They've got to learn how to be happy and not worry about the troubles" that people present to you. The thing is to enjoy life, to love people. I can't say I have ever met anyone that I totally disliked. "When you meet someone, don't make a judgment." Everybody is different. Everybody has something good in them. Just give them a chance and they'll come round. I've found that so often. My mother's parents lived in Burwood. "We had to really behave ourselves when we were little." "Going to see grandma, we had to look right and be very polite to grandma." So there's a little bit of a, ‘Oh that old lady’, you know. She was only about 60 or 70. I was three months old and my father drove to Sydney "and picked me up with mother and took me up to Coffs Harbour." It was a three day trip in those days. The first stop we had was at Hawkesbury. "The next one was at Taree and the next one was at Kempsey." And then we got to Coffs Harbour. At one stage the road was flooded and Dad "got out of the car and walked into the flood" "to see how deep it was, whether he could drive the car." It was too deep and he was able to get the help of a bullock team that was standing on the side road and that pulled the car through the water. Mother had to steer the car and Dad "had walk in front of it so that she kept it on the road." Oh, he was wonderful. He was kind and gentle, and he could be very firm when I I played up later on, "but he gently steered me on the right course." My mother, of course, was very cuddly. And she loved music, so she used to play music to keep me quiet. I had porridge the first morning and "it had a flat edge on the plate and on that plate" "we put little black specks that we found in the porridge." "It turned out that the flour had weevils in it," but they cooked them with the porridge But I loved being a border and I was happy to be a house prefect. "I made great friends with several of the girls" "and friendship continued after I left school for years later." "The War was just starting and a lot of the girls joined the army." I went to a business college. I had to get a job to earn some money, "pay my way, try and support myself a little bit anyway." "When I left school, I had to find a boarding house" and that is where I met John. My dear John. He had a room with Ron Lowe. For a while they were quite pleasant. "Then they started to tease me after being there a couple of weeks." Short sheet my bed . Tie my pajama pants into knots. "And yeah, I thought, oh oh, they were on for making a pest of themselves." "Anyway, Mrs McDowell used to tell them to leave me alone." "I think Dad must have spoken to her because" she was a good watchdog! John grew up in a country town. "And the very first time I went there, to Young." "And I was you to meet his father and mother, and they made me very welcome." Real country folk. "Potted stew on the fire, they had the old stove you had to stoke all day" and they were quite excited when they knew John and I would like to get married. At that time I was attending St Mary's Church at North Sydney. "It was there that the wedding was taking place." 1944 I was a war bride. It was a war on. "And I had to have a makeshift dress, which was quite nice." It was quite crepe. Short. "And there was a lady in Her Majesty's Arcade in Sydney" who made little hats for weddings, "and she made me a type of beret that sat on the back of my head ." The florist made the flowers for me to carry. She didn't know I wasn't a full bride, so "I was only in a short dress, but she gave me a great big," "great big bunch of flowers which a bride would carry in a trail." "But anyway, it was wartime, and you didn't shake your head" and say, I didn't want it or anything. "And John, for his best man, he was quite a character." "His father was Jimmy Sharman’s Boxing Tent at the Easter Show." "So Jim’s had a rough up-bringing but he was a real gentleman" "and looked lovely in the photographs and was always" a good friend to us. ‘48, I had twin daughters born. My father sent me a telegram from Coffs Harbour “Congratulations, darling. But white girls?” But they were the joy of my life. I was learning "about life, didn't know very much about what goes on," but I felt I had warmth and friendship, and advice if I needed it. "And I just sort of fitted it into the program." We had great conversations laughed at the same jokes, and loved reading, all the things that I liked doing. So he was a great partner. I loved playing tennis "and started competition tennis and worked up" from low grade up to A grade. "The tennis led me to the NSW Tennis Association." I was invited to join with the president and two others to build a tennis museum. White City. I thoroughly enjoyed that. A lot of work went into it. I was out there five days a week and my husband said to me, ‘You better "get it arranged to take the bed out, next time”." Ken Rosewall was our patron. He was a great worker in the museum. "We always enjoyed a day when he came and helped us." And we work on a collection that had been put aside and I was there or 16 years. I think we're living in a plan of things, from something that’s greater than we are. What it is, we will never know until we finish our life on this earth. I'm not worried about what's ahead of me. I just want to make each day one that I can remember, not one that I push out and forget about. I'm not afraid of what's ahead. I think it must be something rather wonderful because all the beautiful things around don't just happen. That's how I feel. Beautiful trees. "I look at the trees and the sky and the clouds" and they all tell a story. "Is there something final you'd like to say?" Oh, not yet. No, for the video!