Legends of the Garden - Ray & Ethel Tavner

ANT: Where were you born?

RAY: Ferntree Gully Victoria. In 1941 we moved up to Gippsland, and I lived there until I came to Tasmania. I was no good in school, I left in Grade 7. When I was 14, I went out to work. The farmer I worked for was a hard taskmaster. He had 60 cows to milk and when it was spud season we had to be in the paddock when the sun was coming up, and we worked there until it was too dark to see the spuds. We’d come back, have tea, milk the cows again and go to bed. I was getting £5 a week and they were taking £3 off me for board. I came to Tasmania just before I turned 21 on 19 January 1960, for 2 months holiday, and I’m still here. I briefly worked at the Jones Jam Factory and went to work on a building site. I didn’t know nothing about building. I got shifted up to Launceston. There my brother-in-law went to a dance, met two girls and said he was taking them to the dance next week. I said, “I’d better come along.” That’s where me and Ethel met.

ETHEL: It was me and my sister. I was born in Burnie, and grew up in Stanley, and we’d just gone up to Launceston for a few weeks.

RAY: We went out for about three months and then I went back to Victoria.

ETHEL: I wrote him a “Dear John” letter (laughs).

RAY: So I came back, and I thought “bugger this”, so I just tagged along.

ETHEL: I paid my own way and I thought I could do whatever I pleased. Just went along for the ride.

RAY: Anyways, we were married in 1963, and we lived in Launceston while I built us a house out at Perth. We lived in Perth for a while, then we came up here to live because there was all this work up the coast here. At that time, we had a company in Launceston called DKT Construction, (Dickerson, Kitto and Tavner). In 1982 when Bob Hawke got in, my partner and I had just done a sub-division in Launceston and we was building units and houses on it and suddenly, the interest rate went from about 14% to 23%. They’d floated the dollar, you see, and we couldn’t handle it. So, we lost everything. It was the lowest point of my life.

Eventually we bought our place on Allens Road. Lived there for 31 years. It was a bare paddock went we got there. Started building in the September and moved in February the next year

ANT: How did you get involved with the Rhodo Garden?

ETHEL: My twin sister was in the rhododendron society, so we started going around gardens with them.

RAY: We joined the rhododendron society back about ’79 I think. In ’81 we walked down through the bush and onto the knoll where the big gazebo is and there was old Mr [Vincent] Pease, Maurie [Kupsch], Hilary [O’Rourke]. They said “we’re gonna build a garden here”. We said, “Oh, okay”. Didn’t dream it would ever come to what it is now. In 1987 the bicentenary was coming up and they got a grant to build the bottom piece of the building, so Noel Burley and myself, Maurie and a few others got in there. I put a few days in there through the week just to get it going. The footing around that, you wouldn’t believe it is about 4-foot-wide by about 2 foot deep. The day we poured it all, the trucks were there about 11 o’clock, but the pump only arrived at one o’clock. The concrete had just been turning around in the bowl, it got pretty warm and as soon as it hit the deck it went off, that’s why if you walk over that floor at the bottom you can feel yourself going up and down. By then there was just me and Hilary there to pull the screeds out and get it finished and whirlybird it. I was that tired that night I could hardly get in the truck to drive home. It nearly killed me, and I was only in my early 40s!

ANT: You did a lot of building at the Garden

RAY: We did the covered bridge in 2001 I think it was. Noel Burley, Maurie and myself. Talk about health and safety – the scaffolding we had back then was 4x2! No safety harnesses. Took over 12 months to build. Then we built the Japanese teahouse.

We wanted to build a tea and meeting room on our slab. I phoned Senator Richard Colbeck. I knew him pretty well. I was Chairman of Master Builders when he was doing his training. I phoned him in his office. I told the reception-ist he was a friend of mine, and she said, “they all say that!” I told him we needed money to build up at the Garden. He came up to the garden and met the board, Terry Shadbolt, Noel Burley, Maurie. He asked, “how much do you want?”. I pulled a figure out the air, “oh, a couple of hundred thousand would be nice”. There was an election com-ing up. John Howard got back in and we got our money.

We extended the slab, employed two blokes and Noel, Maurie and I all worked on it. We put the roof on ourselves too – took all day. It turned out a bloody nice building. I’m pretty proud of it. We did have a couple of incidents. We had scaffolding on four wheels, and we had a ladder leant up against it. We were putting up the beams, and when Charlie got up the ladder, it pushed the scaffold. He came down that ladder so fast he didn’t even touch the rungs!

ANT: Tell me about your farm on Allens Road

ETHEL: We had a reasonable big garden. We put a little dam in. We had a spring. That watered all the grapes and the garden. We reared cattle. It was just a hobby farm.

RAY: In about ’95 I got some cuttings from the owner of a vineyard near Nook. Borrowed a tractor and ripper and planted 750 vines. Built up to 1,000. We got grapes a couple of years later. People from the garden would come and help us pick. I’d put on a BBQ for them and gave them all a bottle of wine to go away with. It was a really good so-cial thing. Then we pressed the grapes and made wine. The best year we got 1,800 kg of grapes. Made quite a few dozen bottles. I made a really good red wine.

ANT: Do you have time for hobbies?

RAY: Not hobbies, but after I had my quadruple bypass, we joined Heartbeat; a group raising money for cardiac parts at the hospitals and after a year I took over as president. We finished it up in July because we couldn’t get of-fice bearers. We raised about fifty grand. We made $1,000 to $1,400 per year just collecting aluminum cans.

ANT: You retire early.

RAY: I got a detached retina and had to have my eye removed. That’s when I retired. I was 57.

ANT: Can you imagine life without the garden?

RAY: No. I started going there when I was 43, and I’m now in my eighties. So, it’s almost half my life. I love it. I love going up there, and I love these ships coming in coz I meet people. It’s a labour of love. Still is. I can still take people around in a car, but I can’t walk around anymore.

ETHEL: He put more time down at the Garden than he did at our own place.

ANT: Tell me about your children

ETHEL: Our eldest Terry, just turned 54. He has arthritis really bad, been in hospital with it. He has two kids. Janette is 52. She’s got two kids too, and Neville is 51 and he’s a carpenter. He has one child and they foster chil-dren.

ANT: You must get a real feeling of achievement with the garden.

RAY: Yes, but all those people at the garden every step of the way they were all part of it. The people that have passed away wouldn’t believe what’s happened to the garden. I’m just pleased to have been a part of it. I wouldn’t change it a bit.

ANT: What’s your philosophy of life?

RAY: I’m not religious, but I like to do for people what I’d like done for me. I would always bend over backwards for people who gave me a good go.