Sarah Neal

After high school I decided not to follow in the footsteps of my two older sisters in Sydney and went to university in Armidale. After three years living on campus in a university college I graduated with an arts degree and started a social work diploma in Sydney but gave it away for the more tempting option of working and travelling in the UK and US. I was away for two years in interesting times – I was living in Boston when JFK was killed and joined the March on Washington at which Martin Luther King gave his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech.
To which my daughter commented, ‘But that was history’…

Back in Sydney I did market research for a while then spent five years as a judge’s associate. I passed a few law exams with some interest but not much enjoyment so did a Dip Ed with EFL at Sydney Uni, having taught English in Hong Kong for three months in an earlier holiday. I then taught at Enmore Boys High for two years to a wonderful group of boys, mainly from Turkey, Greece and Yugoslavia. Teaching also meant taking boys to sport – a challenge for someone who was always the last to be chosen for any sports team.

Less stressful was teaching adults at the Institute of Languages at UNSW for a few years before a year travelling overseas with Terry, now my partner of 35 years. Today I remember every cheap hotel we stayed in across Asia while he forgets the cockroaches and cold showers and happily recalls every meal we ate, and would like to do it all again.

My daughter Patience was born in 1976 and I spent a few years at home with her until she was old enough to find me an embarrassment as a school helper. I did a librarianship diploma at Kuring-gai CAE and worked for 20 years as a law librarian, mainly at a law firm in North Sydney. People’s eyes glaze over at the idea of being a law librarian but I enjoyed both the order of it and the searches for obscure information.

For the past four years I’ve been working part-time for Greenpeace in their Clean Energy campaign. Helping with lobbying on climate change and promoting clean energy keeps me busy and the energy and commitment of the people I work with is inspiring. Outside work I help look after my 94 year old mother, play croquet, do bush regeneration, sew, cook, read, run – all fairly predictable. I also organise dinners occasionally with some of the Fort Street girls - 53 years on!

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