focusinterview.
Out to Lunch
with Susie Boswell
JILL POLLARD T H E P O L L A R D FA M I LY H A S B E E N SYNONYMOUS WITH SWIMMING POOLS I N P O RT M AC Q UA R I E F O R M O R E T H A N 40 YEARS. SUSIE SHARES AFTERNOON T E A A N D L O T S O F L AU G H S W I T H T H E C O - F O U N D E R O F A N E N T E R P R I S E T H AT ’ S BECOME A LOCAL HOUSEHOLD NAME.
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hat a wag! I’m having fun, laughing with Jill Pollard as we pore over crammed photo albums, scrapbooks and newspaper cuttings spread across her dining table, snacking on a strawberries and chocolate high tea she’s prepared and sipping from swirly gold china mugs, a gift for her birthday a fortnight ago. I’m captivated by my guest’s infectious, rascally sense of humour and joie de vivre: a refreshing unaffected feminine personality who’s achieved much in 44 years in Port Macquarie - yet who, everyone comments, maintains the warm naturalness and generosity that are her notable, very attractive, qualities. What a surprise to meet her, this doyenne, one of those women always dressed immaculately (given to elegant monochromes), reminiscent of Hollywood’s Debbie Reynolds in the star’s heyday: petite frame, gamin face, sparkling blue eyes, soft wavy fair hair and, if I may say so, a shapely pair of pins. (Quite coincidental to my private observation, she’d early on offered me detailed exercise tips for my own legs for first thing in the mornings, demonstrating with a semi-high kick.) Her limbs are fit from a lifetime practising elite physical culture, tap dancing, walking, yoga
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and, perfect for a Pollard, swimming. What a hoot she is! Given to japes, she plays a couple of tricks on me over a few hours, catching me out, and once breaks spontaneously into song, prompted by a topic of our chatter. Photos taken when she turned 60 show a crowd of 30 or so girlfriends behaving as if it’s an 18th birthday party, scandalising the citizenry of Flynns Beach. The streets there were startled by the posse of women, well fed and “watered” at lunch at then iconic Tommy’s Restaurant - led by Tommy himself in full Scottish kilt and waving a wand (if you didn’t know Tommy, just ask anyone) parading in the centre of the roadway wearing tiaras, trailing balloons and blowing whistles in a cacophony of cavorting to celebrate Jill’s milestone. You’d had a few wines? “Oh yes, we all had. I didn’t know it but Marguerite Black had organised the Salvation Army Band to come and play, so we had to march!” The hullabaloo was such an assault it caused one frustrated resident to lean out a window and shout: “SHUT UP that [swear word] noise!!” The occasion and commotion made the front page of the paper, Jill recalls with an impish grin. At another birthday lunch, at Sydney’s Otto, radio’s John Laws photo-bombed her ... in fact, wherever this woman goes it seems a little ray of sunshine and merriment follows
her path. And does she go places! But let’s start from whence she came. Jill Noble, from the Cronulla area, met her future husband, apprentice builder Kevin, at a dance in a nearby suburb, both in their late teens, she a typist in a legal office at Circular Quay. The pair married in early 1966 shortly before her 21st birthday and lived in a flat behind his mother’s house when Jill had their first two boys, before moving to an old house nearby that Kevin then renovated. In 1973 the young couple, by now with three sons under six, struck out in their work truck for Port Macquarie. Kevin set up as a builder. To start, they slept in a friend’s garage. The 1930s home on Lord Street (pictured) they then bought for themselves was rudimentary at best. “When we first looked at it I said ‘Oh’, ’cause I’d left a nice big home, in-ground pool, all my family and I had no one. And it was a mess.” (By contrast, the Pollards’ remarkable current home is uniquely bijou, a work of Kevin’s art exquisitely decorated by Jill – again, in striking monochromes of black and white with touches of beige, gold.) “You should see what Kevin did with that home!” Jill remembers, gazing at an “after” picture of the Lord Street house. His skills transformed it into a beauty adding, again, a swimming pool. And: “He was doing swimming pools as a sideline ... and the pools took over! They became so popular, we became so busy, we concentrated just on the pools. The business expanded.” The expansion, in 1975, to the corner of Hay and Gordon streets (where the Pollard Pools shop, still there, later opened) was a landmark event. Kevin built display pools and a spa for a gala launch. Jill’s first office, though, was a mere grass-thatched hut on the site. Landscaping and garden design was becoming trendy and Kevin had branched out into pool landscaping “so it was an island theme. The mayor, Bob Woodlands, came and did the
official opening; my niece was a mermaid seated on a rock, we had palm trees all around and everybody in grass skirts, even the big fat men!” Jill’s face lights up at the memory. “I’ve had a busy life,” she muses almost to herself, leafing through the albums. Indeed, by this time the couple had four boys: Lee, Rick, Dean and Mark. As well as being a wife and mother to the brood and working in the business throughout the couple’s career, she came to enjoy a packed social calendar encompassing the ambit of life in the growing town and community. A photo triggers a recollection: “Here,” she points out, “Fund-raising at the races in Rio Week. Kevin and I and another couple ran a beer, wine and champagne stall to raise money for charity. It was a warm day, so it was busy,” she smiles. She was involved with Nippers:”I used to do the recording for them; all the boys were in it. That was my Sundays.” She belonged to the VIEW Club. “It was a night-time club, a lovely group of ladies, an enjoyable time. We put on several skits [raising funds for disadvantaged children].” (The women in blackface surrounding Jill as “Fanny La Rue” wouldn’t be p.c. today, but who doesn’t have mementos from another era we’d rethink now!) “Then I joined Heather Eldridge, who had a physical culture team, and it was the first ladies’ team in Port Macquarie. She was a very good teacher and we ended