I was born in the Seychelles. Cecile’s Day, 22nd November. So Mum called me Cecile. Cecile Therese. But at home I was called by everybody, Mum and Dad too, Therese. I was never called Cecile at home. I was very, very respectful to my Dad and Mother. My mother was a Hickey. H-I-C-K-E-Y. From America. North America over there. My father was Joseph Savy. Dad was an administrator. So he had to go away to administrate all those works so Mum had to go with him. But we stayed with Grandma. My grandmother was Deila. Everywhere she went, I went with her. And Aunty, Mum's younger sister. We lived in a place in the north "of the island that was called Anse Etoile." So we had school there. Catholic school. "We had a Governor. An English Governor. " Yeah. He asked for all the schools to give the children something to write about and to see which one was the best. The Queen sent her commendation. So we had to go to the Government House "to receive that commendation from the Governor." And we had a property, so we had pigs on the property. We had chicken. Fowls anyway. Ducks. All those on our property. We had fish Monday, Tuesday. Wednesday we had salt meat or something. Then on Sunday we had a roast. Actually, to tell you, we had servants. Paid so much a month for them to to do the work. "And these are the black people that we employed." Yes. So they are very very nice. "Yeah, we had a young boy, just a bit older than me." Ned. But he was a very nice, very nice young man. Very respectful. Oh yes. We had friends. I had two brothers. My big brother, Phillip. "Every Saturday afternoon we had friends coming for bingo." They played bingo. Dominoes. We went swimming. Play on the beach. It was a good life. It was a lovely, lovely island living. Oh, I don't know... I had a French one that Dad used to sing. Viens, le soir descend. My first crush. Mum buggered that for me. His name was Hoareau. Channel Hoareau. He was working in the hospital. This young man was working in the hospital. He fell in love with me. He fell in love with me and so I did I with him. But Mum... Mum forced me to marry this other man "because he was working in the Electric Light Company." To start with, I was too young to marry a man that age. He was much older than me. I didn’t love that man. Didn’t love that man, I had nothing. And he was not my my type. "You know when you marry somebody, you have to be the same type." Somebody you can connect with! But I could not with that man. I should never have married this man. I told Mum, “Don't force me to marry this man”. He was forcing himself on me. "Every morning he would go to the market and send" a big bag of provisions from the market to Mum. Yes. Flattering Mum for him to get me. Yeah. The young one was there for me. "If I had married that little boy, we would have had a good, good marriage." I met his mother. She said to me, she said, “Ah, there goes ma petite fille”. ‘Ma petite fille’ means ‘my little girl’. Put her arms around me. She said, “Ah, my dear girl. You broke my son’s heart”. Then I thought I broke mine too. Not only his but mine too. Can you believe that? "But every word had gone from my mouth is the truth." And we both cried. And I did marry the wrong one. This morning I had a cry. I had a cry this morning. All of my long life has escaped me. Sometimes I think I should have had a much, much nicer, younger life, you see. Yeah. So? And we had to... "We were very, very obedient to our parents." That's the trouble. "We had to accept all that our parents wanted us to do." That's the problem. "We would not make a decision on our own." We were too obedient. In my time we were too obedient. If Mum said something, that was it. We could not say ‘no’. But Dad, Dad was not like that. But it was hard on us. Hard on us. Really hard on us. I've got three children. Always ‘M’: Margaret, Marlene and Michael. But they were good. I had nine years... We had nine years in the Seychelles,. Yeah. We were coming to Australia. He died just before we came. I came home from work one day. Mum told me, “He has been very sick all day”, I looked at him. His face was yellow as anything. "I said to him, “You have to go to hospital." Why didn’t you go to hospital?” The doctor said he should have come, before. Anyway, he passed away. "So, I wrote to his mother in England to tell her." She told me, “By all means...”. I will never forget those three words, “By all means, take the children to Australia " because that's what their father would have wanted”." And I had a sister here with her family. So I came here. But I [was] alone. No man in my life. No husband, with three young children. Two girls and one boy. My mother came to Australia with me but Dad was losing his eyes so he didn't want to come. I said, “Come on, Dad, come with me”. "So he stayed with my brother in Seychelles." Otherwise I would have taken him with me. I loved my father. I made my own passport too. "Yes, because I was the Chief Passport Officer." "You know how many people here, Seychellois," "that are still holding the passport made by me?" "Sometimes I think maybe if I had stayed at home," "I had my property, a big five bedroom house," "coconuts to sell, cinnamon leaves to sell, " all those things. And I had a good job at government. Yeah. "I was a chief immigration officer at a good wage." "The government had put so much money in the bank" as a gratuity for me, so I was okay. I think myself, I made decisions too fast. Her name is Letizia. My sister. We went everywhere. They took us over the ship to see this and that and that and that. They took us on shore to see where we stopped. We had a wonderful time.