The Kidd Family A Family History
Chapter Three · Archibald & Ada Robens

The Reverend

Alfred Archibald Thomas Robens

1899–1982

The only son — a Methodist minister who spent forty years on the circuits of New South Wales, from the Tweed to the Illawarra, and wore the army chaplain’s collar as well.

Alfred Robens as a young minister, with his bicycle, on one of the North Coast circuits
Born
18 September 1899 · Newtown, Sydney
Died
13 December 1982 · Calvary Hospital, Canberra
Married
Freda Amy Jones, of Hamilton (m. 26 March 1927)
Lived
83 years

Born 18 September 1899 at Newtown, the second child and only son — his the one birth of the five registered there rather than at Marrickville or Ryde.16 He appears in the c. 1900 studio portrait beside his sister Ethel, and again, a year or two later, in a cabinet-card portrait with his great-grandfather Archibald Joseph Jeffries, the blind Bathurst saddler, taken not long before Jeffries died in May 1903 — the Jeffries line is followed in Chapter Two.30

He trained for the Methodist ministry and was admitted a Licentiate of Theology, the “L.Th.” that follows his name in every later notice. On 26 March 1927 he married Freda Amy Jones, second daughter of Erasmus William Jones of Hamilton, at the Hamilton Methodist Church, and the couple left — after a honeymoon at Katoomba — for his first circuit as a married man, at Nimbin in the Lismore district.3439

What followed was forty years of the itinerant Methodist ministry, a new manse every few years across the length of New South Wales, and a spell in the Australian Army Chaplains’ Department besides. An earlier draft of this history had him “moving the branch to Canberra”; he did not. He retired to the Blue Mountains and then the North Shore, and it was only at the very end, near his daughter Patricia, that he lived in Canberra at all.

The next generation

Children

  • Shirley Joy — married Jack Whiteman Secomb, Kempsey, 1948
  • Patricia Joan — married Jack Graham Leonard, air-force chaplain, Wollongong, 1952
  • Brenda June — married John Dennis Milne, 1962
Alfred and Freda in the doorway of the Hamilton Methodist Church, 26 March 1927 — the bride in ivory georgette under a Brussels-lace veil
1927–1963

A manse every few years

The Methodist system moved its ministers on a short lead, and the electoral rolls carry Alfred and Freda from one parsonage to the next. The telegrams read at their wedding came from his “late circuit at Barraba”, on the north-western slopes; Nimbin, in the hills behind Lismore, was the first they kept together, and by 1930 they were at the parsonage in North Macksville, on the Nambucca.3234

Then Coopernook, on the Manning, from 1933; 77 Mitchell Street, Stockton, from 1936, where he also took services across the water at East Maitland and Largs; and by 1943 the manse at 173 Belgrave Street, Kempsey.32 From Kempsey he went to Tamworth as circuit Superintendent, and from there to Wollongong by 1954, to Killara on the North Shore by 1958, and to Strathfield by 1963 — the last circuit before he retired.32

The gaps in that list — the years between Nimbin and Macksville, between Stockton and Kempsey, between Kempsey and Wollongong — are not yet filled; the Methodist Conference stationing minutes would close them.

1936

The chaplain’s collar

On 19 August 1936, while he was at Stockton, Alfred was commissioned Chaplain (fourth class) in the Australian Army Chaplains’ Department, the appointment gazetted in Melbourne a few weeks later.35 His service file is held by the National Archives and has not yet been read; whether he served through the war that followed, and where, is still an open question.

One thread of that world survives in his own hand. In July 1944 he wrote the obituary of Chaplain Gordon G. Wood for the Methodist — the friend who had been his room-mate in college and his best man in 1927. “To know him was to love him,” he wrote; “a great all-rounder.”35

Kempsey · Tamworth

The committee, and the crusade

At Kempsey he took on work beyond the pulpit. In September 1946 the state government named him to the district’s Technical Education Advisory Committee, one of sixteen local members overseeing technical courses; he was taken off it in October 1947, when he left the circuit.36

At Tamworth, as Superintendent, he mounted the town’s first Methodist Youth Crusade Demonstration — six hundred young people and three hundred adults in the Town Hall in November 1950, with a 160-voice choir on a portable stage, and Alfred welcoming the visitors beside the Mayor. The youth leaders asked that it be made a yearly event.37

A family Christmas about 1962 — Rev. Alfred, in his clerical collar and dark glasses, at right, among his sisters Pearl, Muriel and Ethel and their husbands
Family

Freda, and three daughters

Freda Amy Jones was a Newcastle girl — born at Wallsend in 1905, second daughter of Erasmus William Jones of “Alwyne”, Veda Street, Hamilton.39 She and Alfred had three daughters, each married out of a different circuit town: Shirley Joy at Kempsey in 1948, to Jack Whiteman Secomb of a Willawarrin farming family; Patricia Joan at Wollongong in 1952, to Jack Graham Leonard; and Brenda June in 1962, to John Dennis Milne, the couple settling at Fremantle in Western Australia.40

Patricia’s husband was himself a chaplain — Jack Graham Leonard (1929–1995), of the Royal Australian Air Force, who rose to a rank equivalent to air commodore and earned an entry of his own in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. It was to Canberra, where the Leonards were living, that Alfred went at the last.40

The three Robens daughters — most likely Shirley, Patricia and Brenda — at a brick house, probably in the early 1940s
1965–1982

The last years

He left the circuits in the middle 1960s. The rolls put him first at 6 Jersey Avenue, Leura, in the Blue Mountains, and by the later 1970s at a home unit on the Pacific Highway at Pymble — where, at nearly eighty, he was still entered as “methodist minister”.33

Alfred died at Calvary Hospital, Canberra, on 13 December 1982, aged eighty-three, and was cremated at the Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens at North Ryde. Freda died the same year; which of them went first is not recorded. Patricia followed thirteen months after her father, and was cremated at Gungahlin, in Canberra.3840

The plaque at the Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens, North Ryde

The Record

Sources & References

Shared with Chapter Three.

  1. 1

    Civil registration & census, Archibald and Ada

    NSW BDM birth register 1872, ref. 2307/1872 — Archibald T. Robens, 3 September 1872, Sydney, father Thomas Robens, mother Rebecca Robens; marriage register 1895, ref. 5357/1895, Newtown district, which indexes the groom as “Archibald I Robens” and the bride as Ada E. Baldock; and census returns tracking the Seaview Street, Marrickville household. The I for T on the marriage index is a transcription slip, not a second man: the birth entry, the golden wedding notice and every later record give Thomas.

  2. 2

    Bathurst Technical School examination rolls

    “Technical Students”, Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 8 January 1891, p. 2 (Trove nla.news-article64231396) — the published examination roll, naming Archibald Robens with second-grade passes in Perspective (first year) and Freehand Drawing (first year), and his cousin Charles Mills with a second-grade pass in Practical Chemistry, on the same list.

  3. 3

    Technical College Examination Ledger, 1891

    Master State Administrative Education Archive Ledger, 1891 session, Shorthand Manual section — second-grade pass credentials issued to Archibald Robens.

  4. 4

    Golden wedding notice, 1945

    “Golden Weddings”, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 July 1945, p. 12 — “Robens—Baldock. — July 31, 1895 at Newtown, Archibald, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. T. Robens, Bathurst, to Ada, daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. A. Baldock, Newtown. Present address, 6 Denistone Road, Eastwood.” The date corroborates a 31 July 1895 marriage against the 29 January given in earlier drafts, and the printed address independently confirms “Denistone” over the “Denison” of one family caption — see reference [30].

  5. 5

    Newtown Police Court, 1907

    “Unlicensed Second-Hand Dealer”, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 10 August 1907, p. 20 (Trove nla.news-article238077806) — Archibald Thomas Robens fined 10/- and 6/- costs, or three days’ imprisonment, for carrying on the business of a second-hand dealer at Marrickville on 27 July 1907, without a licence.

  6. 6

    Motor-driver electoral entries

    Commonwealth Electoral Rolls recording Archibald, William Wesley and Harold James Fuller Robens in the motor transport trade across the metropolitan and country districts.

  7. 7

    1930 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

    Division of Parramatta, Subdivision of Ryde, 1930, p. 89, entry block “Robens” — Archibald Thomas Robens, storekeeper, and Pearl Ada Fanny Robens, shop-assistant, Cox’s Road, North Ryde.

  8. 8

    Postmaster-General’s tender, 1935

    Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, Postmaster-General’s Department accepted public tenders register, 21 February 1935, schedule entry 713 — contract for the conduct of the Post and Telegraph Office at North Ryde awarded to Archibald Thomas Robens.

  9. 9

    1936–1937 Cox’s Road residency registers

    NSW Electoral Rolls, Ryde Subdivision, 1936 and 1937 — Lilian Alice Maude Robens working as a printer at the Cox’s Road post office premises. An earlier reading of these rolls also reported a listing for Archibald’s father Thomas Robens; that is withdrawn. See references 19 and 20.

  10. 10

    Parramatta intersection collision, 1937

    “Overturned Car — Lorry-Driver Fined — Parramatta Accident”, Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 20 September 1937, p. 2 (Trove nla.news-article106165940) — full report of the Parramatta Police Court hearing into the 9 May 1937 collision. Names Archibald Thomas Robens, “postmaster at North Ryde”, and the lorry driver, Robert Cromp, a gasfitter of Rickard Avenue, Bondi, fined 30/- with £2/2/- costs for dangerous driving; records testimony from Robens, the eyewitness Charles Budin and Cromp himself, before the magistrate Mr Balmain and police prosecutor Constable M. McKeon.

  11. 11

    Macquarie Park Methodist burial index

    Macquarie Park Cemetery transcripts, Methodist Section D, Row 3 — the shared gravesite of Ada Ellen Robens and Archibald Thomas Robens, with the “a wife & mother” headstone inscription. An earlier draft of this history also placed their daughter Muriel (Mrs Llewellyn Owen) in this plot; the cemetery transcript in fact has her buried with her husband in the A J Hare Lawn section, Row 9 — see her own page.

  12. 12

    Probate of Ada Ellen Robens, 1949

    Supreme Court of NSW, Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, estate ref. B 7751 — the 3 April 1949 death at age 75, the £450 estate, and administration granted 13 July 1949 to Alfred Archibald Thomas Robens and Ethel Ida Violet Cook via proctors R. Thornton & Son.

  13. 13

    Eastwood & Aeolus Avenue electoral rolls

    Subdivision of Eastwood, 1949 and 1954 — Archibald at 6 Denistone Road under “no occupation” (see references 21 and 23 for the sighted entries). An earlier draft also carried a Ryde roll said to cluster Ada Ellen, Archibald Thomas and Pearl Ada Fanny Norman on Aeolus Avenue. The Ryde rolls sighted since — 1933, 1963, 1972 and 1977 — show 7 Aeolus Avenue as the married home of Pearl and Alfred George Norman, never a Robens household; the supposed Ada Ellen and Archibald Thomas entries there were a conflation with the Cox’s Road and Denistone Road rolls. Pearl Ada Fanny Robens’s own page sets out the Aeolus Avenue and Lake Conjola records.

  14. 14

    Death registration, Archibald Thomas Robens

    NSW BDM death register 1972, ref. 1198/1972 — Leichhardt district, 16 January 1972, age 99, parents Thomas Robens and Mary Rebecca Jane Jeffries.

  15. 16

    The five children’s birth registrations

    NSW BDM birth register, each naming the father as Archibald T. and the mother as Ada E. — Ethel I. V., 4796/1898, Marrickville; Alfred A. T., 33090/1899, Newtown; Pearl A. F., 5206/1906, Marrickville; Muriel I., 5785/1910, Marrickville; Lilian A., 39288/1914, Ryde. Read in order, the districts date the household’s move from the inner west to Ryde to between 1910 and 1914. Note also that the 1910 entry gives Muriel first and the initial I. second, as does the 1933 electoral roll; the “Isobel Muriel” of later summary records is not the order either contemporary source uses.

  16. 17

    Sands Directory, 1913

    Sands Sydney Directory 1913 — Archibald Robens, Hercules Street. The copy held records no suburb. A Hercules Street appears elsewhere in this history on the 1913 Chatswood electoral roll, where Arthur Leslie and Florence Maud Doust are entered near David and Martha Jemima Doust of Anderson Street. Whether it is the same street has not been established; the connection is offered as a lead only.

  17. 18

    1933 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

    Division of Martin, State District of Ryde, Subdivision of Ryde, 1933, entries 3536–3538 — Robens, Ada Ellen, Cox’s road, North Ryde, home duties; Robens, Archibald Thomas, Cox’s road, North Ryde, storekeeper; Robens, Muriel Isobel, Cox’s road, North Ryde, home duties.

  18. 19

    1936 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

    Division of Parramatta, State District of Ryde, Subdivision of Ryde, 1936, entries 3727–3729 — Robens, Ada Ellen, Cox’s road, North Ryde, home duties; Robens, Archibald Thomas, Cox’s road, North Ryde, storekeeper; Robens, Lilian Alice Maude, Cox road, Ryde, printer. Three Robens entries and no more. Entry 3687 on the same page reads “Reynolds, Thomas, Roma, Cox’s road, North Ryde, retired” — the neighbour previously misread as Archibald’s father. The federal division had changed from Martin to Parramatta since 1933; the address had not.

  19. 20

    1937 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

    Division of Parramatta, State District of Ryde, Subdivision of Ryde, 1937, entries 3844–3846 — the same three Robens entries as 1936, unchanged. Thomas Reynolds appears again at entry 3804, “Roma”, Cox’s road, retired. Thomas Robens had been dead since November 1928 and is on neither roll.

  20. 21

    1949 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

    Division of Parramatta, State District of Ryde, Subdivision of Eastwood, 1949, entry 6864 — Robens, Archibald Thomas, 6 Denistone road, no occupation. He appears alone; Ada Ellen had died on 3 April of that year.

  21. 22

    1943 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

    Division of Parramatta, State District of Ryde, Subdivision of Eastwood, 1943, entries 5804–5806 — Robens, Ada Ellen, 19 Doomben avenue, home duties; Robens, Archibald Thomas, 19 Doomben avenue, no occupation; Robens, Lilian Alice Maude, Eastwood, saleswoman. The move from Cox’s Road, and the first roll on which Archibald has no occupation against his name.

  22. 23

    1954 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

    Division of Parramatta, State District of Eastwood, Subdivision of Eastwood, 1954 — Robens, Archibald Thomas, 6 Denistone road, no occupation. The same address and description as 1949, and again the only Robens of that household on the page.

  23. 24

    1958 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

    Division of Parramatta, State District of Eastwood, Subdivision of Eastwood, 1958, entry 9515 — Robens, Archibald Thomas, 6 Denistone road, no occupation. The third successive roll at that address, and the last before he turns up at Leichhardt on the 1963 roll.

  24. 25

    1963 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

    Division of Dalley, Subdivision of Leichhardt, 1963, entry 5101 — Robens, Archibald Thomas, 15 Marion street, no occupation. Entry 5081 places Sarah Ann Rigart at the same number. This is the earliest record of him at Leichhardt, the district in which he died nine years later.

  25. 26

    1968 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

    Division of Dalley, Subdivision of Leichhardt, 1968, entry 4804 — Robens, Archibald Thomas, 15 Marion street, no occupation. He is the only elector at that number; Sarah Ann Rigart, who shared it in 1963, appears at entry 4777, 170 Norton street. The last roll entry found for him, four years before his death.

  26. 27

    Sands Directory, 1905

    Sands Sydney Directory 1905, p. 402, Marrickville — “Robens Archibald T., fruiterer”, Marrickville Road. The earliest named trade for him after his technical training, and two years before the unlicensed second-hand dealing case.

  27. 28

    An expunged elector at Newtown — unresolved

    Electoral revision list, Newtown–Camperdown Division (Camperdown), List No. 2, “Names not objected to but expunged” — “Robins, Archibald Thos., 135 King-street, Newtown, saddler”. The forenames, the surname variant and the district all fit Archibald Thomas Robens, who married at Newtown in 1895 and whose son was registered there in 1899, and saddlery was his father’s trade and his great-grandfather’s. But no other record gives Archibald himself as a saddler, and the list is undated in the copy held. Recorded as a strong candidate, not as an established fact.

  28. 29

    Monumental inscription, Macquarie Park

    Macquarie Park Cemetery, Methodist, Section D, Row 3 — Archibald Thomas Robens, died 16 January 1972, aged 99; the inscription reading “her husband”, added to Ada Ellen’s “a wife & mother”, with a footstone reading “Mother & Father”. A photograph of the headstone as it stands today is reproduced in this chapter.

  29. 30

    Family photographs

    Private family collection, identified by JK — Ada Ellen Robens with her son Alfred; Ada and Archibald in a garden; 6 Denistone Road, Eastwood, with the pair of them on the verandah; and Ada in the back garden there, hand-coloured. The Denistone photographs are dated by the electoral rolls rather than by any inscription: the household was at 19 Doomben Avenue in 1943 and at 6 Denistone Road by 1949, and Ada died on 3 April 1949. One family caption gives the street as “Denison Road”; the rolls of 1949, 1954 and 1958, and a second family caption, all give Denistone, which is followed here — and is now independently confirmed by the couple’s own 1945 golden wedding notice, printed in their lifetime; see reference [4]. A fifth photograph, of Ada and Archibald with a grandchild beside a motor car, carries the family’s own caption naming its subjects but no date; the car and the child’s age suggest the 1920s or 1930s. Three further images from the same collection are placed in this chapter: Archibald with his daughter Lilian beside a decorated cake, the occasion unrecorded; a group captioned “Lilian, Ada, Pearl, Alf and Archibald”, showing four of the five children with their parents and grandchildren; and Ada with her son Alfred and an unidentified woman on a Sydney street outside Repin’s Inn, datable by the shopfront signage and the fashions to the city’s later years. A further cabinet-card portrait, captioned by the family “Ethel (Etty), Alf and Archibald J. Jeffreys”, shows the two eldest Robens children as infants beside their great-grandfather — Archibald Joseph Jeffries of Bathurst, blind in old age, who died in May 1903; the spelling “Jeffreys” is the caption’s, not this history’s.

  30. 15

    Children’s marriage registrations

    NSW BDM consolidated marriage registers, tracking the descendant unions: 1926 Cook (Ethel), 1927 Jones (Alfred), 1932 Norman (Pearl), 1935 Owen (Muriel) and 1947 McMahon (Lilian).

  31. 31

    Alfred Robens as Methodist Church trustee, 1939/1964

    NSW Government Gazette, 21 August 1964, No. 99, p. 2646, “After-Auction Purchases” (Trove nla.news-article220341855) — Land District of Lake Cargelligo, Shire of Bland, Parish of Currawong: a 1-rood 5½-perch allotment at Naradhan, offered for sale 25 July 1939, purchase approved to Raymond John Noble, Alfred Archibald Thomas Robens, Walter Whitbread, George Harold Slade and Rupert Howard Grove, as Trustees of the Methodist Church of Australasia, care of the Rev. R. J. Noble, Property Secretary, 139 Castlereagh Street, Sydney. The twenty-five-year gap between the 1939 auction and the 1964 gazettal is in the original notice, not an error introduced here.

  32. 32

    Alfred Robens on the circuits — Commonwealth electoral rolls, 1930–1963

    Printed Commonwealth electoral rolls, Alfred Archibald Thomas and Freda Amy (also read “Freda May” in 1936–37) Robens enrolled together at each successive manse: 1930, Division of Cowper, Subdivision of Macksville — “Parsonage”, North Macksville, clergyman; 1933 and 1935, Division of Cowper, Subdivision of Kendall — parsonage, Coopernook, minister; 1936 and 1937, Division of Newcastle, Subdivision of Stockton — 77 Mitchell Street, Stockton, minister; 1943 and 1946, Subdivision of Kempsey — 173 Belgrave Street, Kempsey, Methodist minister; 1954, Division of Cunningham, Subdivision of Wollongong — 58 Church Street, Wollongong, minister; 1958, Division of Bradfield, Subdivision of Killara — 671 Pacific Highway, clergyman; 1963, Subdivision of Strathfield — 31 Carrington Avenue, methodist minister. The gaps between these — Nimbin to Macksville, Stockton to Kempsey, Kempsey through Tamworth to Wollongong — are not yet filled from the Methodist Conference stationing lists.

  33. 33

    Alfred and Freda Robens in retirement — electoral rolls, 1968–1980

    Commonwealth electoral rolls: 1968, Subdivision of Leura — Alfred Archibald Thomas Robens, 6 Jersey Avenue, no occupation shown, with Freda Amy at the same address; 1972, Subdivision of Katoomba — the same couple, Jersey Avenue, Katoomba; 1977 and 1980, Subdivision of Pymble West — 6/1068 Pacific Highway, Pymble, the 1980 roll still entering him as “methodist minister”.

  34. 34

    The 1927 marriage and the first circuits

    “Social Circle — Robens–Jones”, Newcastle Sun, 28 April 1927, p. 5 (Trove nla.news-article163406759); “Social News — Weddings”, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 30 April 1927, p. 13 (nla.news-article137651320); and “The Y.P. Firing Line” by R. C. Barlow, The Methodist (Sydney), 3 September 1927, p. 12 (nla.news-article155358970). The three between them give the wedding date of 26 March 1927 at the Hamilton Methodist Church, the bride as Freda, second daughter of E. W. Jones of “Alwyne”, Veda Street, Hamilton, the officiants (Rev. H. W. Woodhouse, assisted by Rev. R. Finnigan), the best man (Rev. Gordon Wood, L.Th.), the telegrams from the “late circuit at Barraba”, the honeymoon at Katoomba, and the couple’s arrival at Nimbin, in the Lismore district, as their first circuit together.

  35. 35

    Alfred Robens as an army chaplain, 1936

    Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, No. 75, 10 September 1936, p. 1659 (Trove nla.news-article232667378) — “Australian Army Chaplains’ Department. To be Chaplain (4th Class) — The Reverend Alfred Archibald Thomas Robens, 19th August 1936.” His chaplain’s service file is held by the National Archives of Australia as NAA: B1535, 731/3/98 (item 369754, Melbourne; open access), and has not yet been examined. He also wrote the obituary of a fellow chaplain and college friend: “Chaplain Gordon G. Wood, by Rev. Alfred Robens, L.Th.”, The Methodist, 8 July 1944, p. 10 (nla.news-article155476447).

  36. 36

    Kempsey Technical Education Advisory Committee, 1946–1947

    Government Gazette of New South Wales, No. 102, 13 September 1946, p. 2077 (Trove nla.news-article224792687) — “Alfred Archibald T. Robens, Esq.” named among sixteen members appointed to the Advisory Committee on Technical Courses at Kempsey, to a term ending 31 December 1948; and No. 120, 24 October 1947, p. 2438 (nla.news-article224773190) — his removal from the committee, with two others, and the appointment of replacements, marking his departure from the Kempsey circuit.

  37. 37

    The Tamworth Youth Crusade, 1950

    “Crusade for Christ”, The Methodist (Sydney), 16 December 1950, p. 5 (Trove nla.news-article155613269) — the Methodist Youth Crusade Demonstration in the Tamworth Town Hall, “the first of its kind in Tamworth”, organised by “the Superintendent of the Tamworth Circuit (Rev. Alfred Robens, L.Th.)” with Dr G. Wheen of the Young People’s Department; six hundred young people and three hundred adults, a 160-voice choir, and Robens welcoming the visitors alongside the Mayor, Ald. H. J. Varley.

  38. 38

    Deaths of Alfred and Freda Robens, 1982

    Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens and Crematorium, North Ryde — memorial plaque (plot reference “397 1K”): “In loving memory of Rev. Alfred A. T. Robens, 13th December 1982, aged 83 years.” He died at Calvary Hospital, Canberra. NSW BDM death register 1982, ref. 8195/1982 — Freda Amy Robens, Sydney district, father Erasmus William, mother Elsie. Which of the two died first has not been established.

  39. 39

    Freda Amy Jones

    NSW BDM birth register 1905, ref. 38616/1905, Wallsend district — Freda A. Jones, father Erasmus W., mother Elsie. The 1927 wedding reports (reference 34) name her as the second daughter of Erasmus William Jones of “Alwyne”, Veda Street, Hamilton, with sisters Elsie and Ena as bridesmaids.

  40. 40

    The three Robens daughters

    NSW BDM marriage registers: Jack Whiteman Secomb and Shirley Joy Robens, 1948, ref. 10888/1948, Kempsey district; Jack Graham Leonard and Patricia Joan Robens, 1952, ref. 28139/1952, Wollongong district; John Dennis Milne and Brenda June Robens, 1962, ref. 5258/1962, Chatswood district. Patricia Joan Leonard died on 11 January 1984, aged 52, and was cremated at Gungahlin, in Canberra (monumental inscription, naming her husband Jack and children Karen, Andrew and Simon). Her husband, Jack Graham Leonard (1929–1995), a Royal Australian Air Force chaplain who rose to a rank equivalent to air commodore, is the subject of an article in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (adb.anu.edu.au/biography/leonard-jack-graham-27709).