Cox’s Road to Lake Conjola

Pearl Ada Fanny Robens

1906–1979

The daughter behind the Cox’s Road counter. She married Alfred Norman of the Eastwood orchard family and spent the middle of her life among the oyster leases and holiday cabins of Lake Conjola.

Pearl Ada Fanny Robens was born on 15 February 1906 and registered in the Marrickville district — the middle child of Archibald and Ada’s five.¹ She grew up in the inner west and crossed the harbour to Ryde with her parents as a schoolgirl, when the family moved north between 1910 and 1914.¹²

By 1930 she was the daughter at home on Cox’s Road, North Ryde, working the counter of her father’s store as a shop-assistant while he kept it as storekeeper.³ On the strength of a marriage registered at Ryde in 1932 she became Pearl Norman.⁴

Her husband, Alfred George Norman, was a Ryde motor carrier from an Eastwood orchard family. The marriage took her first to a house on Aeolus Avenue, then south to the oyster leases of Lake Conjola, and at last back to Aeolus Avenue for good, where she died on 29 July 1979, aged seventy-three — the shortest life of the five.⁵¹³

The next generation

Children

Alfred (“Alf”) — married Wilma
Francis John (“Frank”), carpenter — married Jeanette
John Winston, carpenter and joiner — married Diana

Dulwich Hill

The Middle Daughter

Of the five Robens children, Pearl leaves the lightest early trace. She was six years behind the brother above her and four years ahead of the sister below, and little of her childhood survives in the family collection. The clearest piece is a real-photo postcard of Pearl, perhaps seven, standing with four-year-old Muriel on a bare verandah, the family’s own note tying it to Dulwich Hill Public School.²

The birth districts of the five children — Marrickville, Newtown, Marrickville, Marrickville, Ryde — chart the household’s slow migration north. Pearl was a Marrickville registration in 1906; by the time Lilian arrived in 1914 the family was at Ryde. Pearl made that move as a girl of seven or eight.¹

Two young girls stand close together on a verandah — the elder in a buttoned coat with a wide lace collar, the younger in a plain pinafore and boots. — Pearl Robens, right, with her younger sister Muriel — a real-photo postcard the family connects to Dulwich Hill Public School, about 1913

Ryde, 1932

Alfred Norman

Alfred George Norman was born at Eastwood on 28 March 1906, five weeks after Pearl.⁵ He was a son of Edwin Spooner Norman, a fruit grower whose people worked orchards and poultry runs across North Ryde and Eastwood — along Small’s Road, Cressy Road and Bridge Road, where the 1932 roll counts a dozen Norman households in the fruit and farming trades.⁵ When his father’s will was proved in March 1933, Alfred and his brother Leonard Victor Norman were its executors.⁵

Alfred himself had turned from fruit to transport: the 1932 roll has him on Small’s Road, Ryde, a motor carrier.⁶ He and Pearl married at Ryde in 1932, and the 1933 roll finds the two of them together for the first time — Alfred George and Pearl Ada Fanny Norman, Aeolus Avenue, Ryde.⁴⁶

A young woman in a drop-waisted dress with a sailor collar stands beside a young man in a three-piece suit, an open touring car behind them and paddock beyond. — Pearl Robens and Alfred Norman in open country, in the years before their 1932 marriage

Lake Conjola

Oysters on the South Coast

Some time after the wedding the Normans went south. Alfred and his brother Harold had taken up oyster-culture leases on Conjola Lake, on the coast below Milton, and from 1934 the Government Gazette follows them there: a five-hundred-yard lease renewed that December, a six-acre lease renewed in January 1937 and surrendered again that April, and in 1942 a fresh ten-year oyster farm of six hundred and ten yards’ frontage.⁸ The Milton rolls of 1936 and 1937 put Pearl and Alfred at Conjola, him entered simply as “farmer”.⁹

They lived at Yatteyattah, on the lake’s edge, where Harold ran a guest house; the family’s photographs from these years show a row of timber holiday cabins along the water, and the Norman boys in a rowing boat and astride a full-sized bicycle propped on a packing crate.¹¹¹⁴ It was the middle of Pearl’s life, and the stretch of it furthest from Cox’s Road.

A calm lake with a row of identical timber cabins raised on stumps along the far bank, water tanks and bush behind; in the foreground a small boy sits in a wooden dinghy holding an oar. — The holiday cabins at Lake Conjola, with one of the Norman boys in a dinghy — the camp the family kept on the lake where Alfred and his brother farmed oysters

1942–1945

The Air Force, and Home to Ryde

On 29 April 1942 Alfred enlisted in the RAAF at Sydney, giving Yatteyattah as home and Pearl as next of kin. He served as a corporal, number 64340, and was discharged in August 1945 from a posting at Darwin.¹⁰ Twice in those years the Gazette closed the Conjola beds — prohibiting the removal of oysters for a year at a time, in 1942 and again in 1943 — and the 1943 roll still lists Pearl at Yatteyattah while her husband was away.⁸¹¹

After the war they came back to Ryde, to 7 Aeolus Avenue. Alfred kept the Conjola operation going as a holiday resort — the rolls of 1963 and 1972 give his trade as “holiday-resort proprietor” against the Ryde address — and the house filled with the next generation: in 1963 two of the couple’s three sons, Francis John and John Winston, both in the building trades, were living there with their parents.¹²

Head-and-shoulders portrait of a lean man with close-cropped hair, in a checked jacket over an open-necked shirt, a small round badge on the lapel — hand-coloured. — Alfred George Norman, in a hand-coloured portrait — the lapel badge is a wartime civil-defence one

A studio portrait of a woman seated with three boys — an older boy in a school tie, a middle boy in a soft forage cap, and a toddler in a romper on the middle boy’s knee. — Pearl Norman, right, with her three sons — Alf, Frank and John — about 1943

7 Aeolus Avenue

The Last Address

This is the address Chapter Three leaves hanging. An earlier draft of the Robens history placed Archibald and Ada on Aeolus Avenue late in life; the Ryde rolls say instead that 7 Aeolus Avenue was Pearl and Alfred’s own home — from about their marriage, and then without a break from the late 1950s. Whether Archibald ever stayed there with his daughter is a family memory the rolls neither carry nor rule out; his own entries keep him at Eastwood and then Leichhardt.¹²

Pearl died at Aeolus Avenue on 29 July 1979, aged seventy-three.¹³ Alfred outlived her by thirteen years and stayed on in the house. He died on 26 April 1992, aged eighty-six, “late of Ryde”, remembered in the family’s notice as the father of Alf and Wilma, Frank and Jeanette, and John and Diana.¹³

Three older women outside a brick house — one in glasses and a light floral dress, one in front in white, one at right in a dark dress with a lace collar. — Ethel, Pearl and Muriel Robens outside a house at Ryde — three of the four sisters who kept in close company all their lives

The Record

Sources & References

1
Birth registration

NSW BDM birth register 1906, ref. 5206/1906, Marrickville district — Pearl A. F. Robens, father Archibald T., mother Ada E. The same index underlies the Ancestry entry giving her birthplace as New South Wales and her registration place as Marrickville. The birth districts of the five Robens children (Marrickville 1898, Newtown 1899, Marrickville 1906, Marrickville 1910, Ryde 1914) date the family’s move north to between 1910 and 1914.
2
Pearl and Muriel at Dulwich Hill

Private family collection, identified by JK — a real-photo postcard of Pearl and her sister Muriel as small children, the family’s note connecting it to Dulwich Hill Public School. It places the household in the Marrickville–Dulwich Hill district, where four of the five children were registered.
3
1930 Commonwealth Electoral Roll

Division of Parramatta, Subdivision of Ryde, 1930, p. 55, entry block “Robens” — Ada Ellen Robens (home duties), Archibald Thomas Robens (storekeeper) and Pearl Ada Fanny Robens (shop-assistant), Cox’s Road, North Ryde. The same entry is cited at Chapter Three, reference 7.
4
Marriage registration, 1932

NSW BDM marriage register 1932, ref. 10714/1932, Ryde district — Pearl Ada Fanny Robens and Alfred George Norman.
5
Alfred George Norman — birth and family

Department of Veterans’ Affairs World War II nominal roll — Alfred George Norman, born 28 March 1906 at Eastwood, NSW. Probate of Edwin Spooner Norman, NSW Government Gazette, 7 July 1933, No. 102, p. 2496 (Trove nla.news-article219976049) — “Edwin Spooner Norman, late of Eastwood … fruit grower”, died on or about 6 January 1933, will proved 13 March 1933, executors Leonard Victor Norman and Alfred George Norman. The 1932 electoral roll, Subdivision of Ryde, records the wider Norman family as orchardists, fruitgrowers and poultry-farmers around Small’s Road and Cressy Road, North Ryde, and Bridge Road, Eastwood, with Edwin Spooner Norman himself entered at Marsfield, confectioner.
6
Alfred and Pearl at Ryde, 1932–1933

Commonwealth Electoral Rolls, Subdivision of Ryde — 1932: Norman, Alfred George, Small’s road, Ryde, motor carrier. 1933: Norman, Alfred George, Aeolus avenue, Ryde, motor carrier (entry 3095), and Norman, Pearl Ada Fanny, Aeolus avenue, Ryde, home duties (entry 3109) — the first roll on which the couple appear together.
7
The courtship photograph

Private family collection, identified by JK — Pearl Robens and Alfred Norman beside an open touring car in paddock country. Her drop-waisted dress with its sailor collar, and the car, place it in the years just before the 1932 marriage.
8
The Lake Conjola oyster leases

NSW Government Gazette, all in the joint names of Harold Edwin Norman and Alfred George Norman: renewal of Oyster Culture Lease No. 15,344 (500 yards frontage, Conjola Lake), 28 December 1934, No. 232, p. 4855 (Trove nla.news-article223065195); renewal of Lease No. 16,116 (about 6 a. 2 r. 6 p., Conjola Lake), 5 February 1937, No. 17, p. 600 (nla.news-article224742239); acceptance of the surrender of Lease No. 16,116 as from 17 April 1937, 20 August 1937, No. 123, p. 3383 (nla.news-article224748587); grant of Oyster Farm Lease No. 41-147 (610 yards frontage, Lake Conjola, ten years from 8 July 1942), 24 July 1942, No. 106, p. 2237 (nla.news-article225108793); and prohibitions on the removal of oysters from Lease No. 15,345 and Oyster Farm No. 41-147, 31 July 1942, No. 108, p. 2269 (nla.news-article225108868) and 9 July 1943, No. 71, p. 1153 (nla.news-article225080599), the second for twelve months from 5 May 1943.
9
1936 & 1937 electoral rolls, Subdivision of Milton

Division of Eden-Monaro, State District of South Coast, Subdivision of Milton, 1936 (entries 854–855) and 1937 (entries 889–890) — Norman, Alfred George, Conjola, farmer; Norman, Pearl Ada Fanny, Conjola, home duties.
10
Alfred George Norman — RAAF service

Department of Veterans’ Affairs World War II nominal roll and RAAF service record — Corporal Alfred George Norman, service no. 64340; enlisted 29 April 1942 at Sydney, locality on enlistment Yatte Yattah; next of kin Norman, Pearl; discharged 27 August 1945; posting at discharge Darwin. A hand-coloured portrait of Alfred wearing a round civil-defence lapel badge survives in the family collection.
11
1943 electoral roll, Subdivision of Milton

Division of Eden-Monaro, Subdivision of Milton, 1943, entries 858–861 — Norman, Alfred George, Yatteyatah, farmer; Norman, Harold Edwin, Lake Conjola, Yatteyatah, guest-house proprietor; Norman, Helen Emily, Lake Conjola, Yatteyatah, home duties; Norman, Pearl Ada Fanny, Yatteyatah, home duties.
12
Post-war electoral rolls — 7 Aeolus Avenue, Ryde

Commonwealth Electoral Rolls, Subdivision of Ryde / Ryde Central — 1963: Norman, Alfred George, 7 Aeolus avenue, holiday-resort proprietor; Norman, Pearl Ada, 7 Aeolus avenue, home duties; with Norman, Francis John (carpenter) and Norman, John Winston (carpenter and joiner) at the same address. 1972: Norman, Alfred George, 7 Aeolus Ave, proprietor; Norman, John Winston, 7 Aeolus Ave, carpenter; Norman, Pearl Ada, 7 Aeolus Ave, home duties. 1977: Norman, Alfred George, and Norman, Pearl Ada Fanny, 7 Aeolus Ave. Archibald Thomas Robens appears on none of these; his own entries run 6 Denistone Road, Eastwood, then 15 Marion Street, Leichhardt (Chapter Three, references 21–26).
13
Deaths of Pearl and Alfred Norman

Pearl Ada Fanny Norman died on 29 July 1979, aged 73 (see also Chapter Three, reference 13). Family death notice, April 1992: “NORMAN, Alfred George. — April 26, 1992, late of Ryde … much loved father and father-in-law of Alf and Wilma, Frank and Jeanette, John and Diana, loved grandfather and great-grandfather … Aged 86 years.”
14
Later family photographs

Private family collection, identified by JK — Pearl with an infant son against a brick wall at Ryde; the row of holiday cabins at the Lake Conjola camp, with a Norman boy in a rowing boat; the two elder boys with a bicycle at the camp; the three Norman sons at Christmas 1944; and Pearl with her sisters Ethel and Muriel outside a house at Ryde.