DNA Notes of Life

DNA was granted an exclusive interview with Ps Don and Ps Adrienne. We’ll be passing on some of what they said over the next few months. Here’s the first installment…

DNA: Tell us where were you born and about your growing up years?

Don: ‘In South Australia we were born, heave away, haul away…’

Adrienne: We both grew up in country SA in the sixties, kids of hard-working, low-income parents who loved us and gave us great childhoods and a love of God that was part of life.

Don: We actually grew up in fairly close towns– about 40 k apart. But we never met, even though we went to some of the same dances. Maybe you wouldn’t have liked me in those days!

Adrienne: :) ?? … There was a great sense of freedom in our childhoods. Country SA in the 60s was a fairly safe environment. Mum and Dad never locked the house except when we went on holidays. I never even knew there was a key to the door until I was about 10.

Don: I used to ride my bike with my mates over the sand hills and light fires to cook our fritz for lunch, go rabbit trapping…

Adrienne: We were allowed the freedom to roam for the whole day in summer holidays as long as we were home before the sun was a hand width above the horizon so we had time to do our jobs. I loved summer, bike riding, rafting on the creek on rafts we made ourselves, wearing thongs the whole time even though the three-corner-jacks would go right through them like they did our bike tyres!

DNA: After you left school where did you go?

Don: Well…it took me a long time to finish school. I wasn’t a good student. I spent ten years finishing high school! I failed and repeated year 11, then I failed year 12 ‘cause I had a mate who let me ride his motorbike. So, in 1974 when my family moved to Adelaide, I went to night school to do year 12 again. It took me 3 years but I knew I had to do it because God had called me into the ministry. I worked at the same time and did a lot of things in my church- Starting and running youth group, being an elder, starting and playing in the band. Then I went out to the country as a youth worker. I was there 18 months before I met Adrienne.

Adrienne: I finished school on time! I had just turned 17 when I left home to go to Adelaide to teachers’ college. I was so homesick! But I graduated after 3 years and then moved to a town close to my hometown to teach. I taught there three years before I met Don.