that it was John who took her to the doctor to have the pregnancy confirmed. When they told me I remember that I prayed it would be a girl and I can recall Dad picking me up from school to take me to the hospital to see her. Then, apart from praying that she would stop screaming so I could go to sleep and hearing Dad walking up and down the hall trying to calm her, I think I ignored her for the next few years. I was probably jealous because Dad transferred all his attention to her. For years I harboured resentment that when we had professional photographs taken they got lots of her and she took pride of place on the mantelpiece and they didn’t get any of me! We did get on well once I could relate to her as person and we have never been competitive.” The family was very involved in the Khandallah Presbyterian Church and for years it was the focal point of their social life. It had a really big youth group and there were camps and dances. It was a gathering place for friends from all the different schools around Wellington, and Elisabeth remembers that it was also the place where she learnt to mix and socialise with adults and her parents’ friends. “My Dad was a real intellectual and the dinner table was quite an academic exercise. He studied the bible as a textbook and for all his volatility and faults I never doubted his belief in God. I took on these beliefs and have never been shaken from them. When I was fourteen I was baptised in the Karori Baptist
Church to publicly affirm my beliefs and Dad really supported that.” The children were given plenty of opportunities to develop their interests. Elisabeth learned the piano and enjoyed it but hated the practice, so didn’t go as far with it as she would now have liked. She dabbled briefly in Brownies and she did ballet. “I think I tended to give up easily and now I wish my Mum had been tougher and made me stick at things. She always smoothed the way for me and did things that I should have done for myself.” Elisabeth loved school. She thinks she worked hard and felt a responsibility to do her best. From Khandallah School she moved to Onslow College. Her favourite subjects were English, French and Geography. “I particularly remember Jenny Gubbins, my fourth form (year ten) English teacher who introduced us to different genres and made us see the variety of ways of expressing ourselves in English. I loved that. “I left school at the end of the sixth form and I was uncertain about what I wanted to do. None of the usual line up of professions appealed to me. Dad suggested town planning and I went along with that. I got a job at the Ministry of Works but it was very dry and boring. I studied part time at University and the plan was to finish my degree and then go to Auckland to do a postgraduate diploma. The arrival of Peter Smith on the scene changed those plans!”