Now and Then – Lifeview Resident Stories: Maureen

Maureen grew up by the sea, in Humberston on the Lincolnshire coast, a proper English seaside town where families spent their holidays and children ran to the water's edge without a care in the world.

Before that, the family had lived in Doncaster, with her mother's roots stretching back to Hull.

Maureen was very much a Yorkshire and Lincolnshire girl, shaped by the North Sea air and a close family that meant everything to her.

Before marriage and children, Maureen had built a life working for British Railways with the quiet diligence and independence she brings to everything she does.

Then came Allen, a proper English gentleman who was rarely seen without a suit and tie.

On the weekends, Maureen remembers going for rides with her hair trailing behind her on the back of Allen’s motorbike.

“When I was that age, I’d be on his bike. We’d go on holidays, anywhere we wanted to go,” Maureen says.

Together they built a family and a life full of warmth and adventure. Three children, Lorraine, Paul, and Stephen, and a life shared between two continents.

That adventure came sooner than expected. In 1977, Allen was offered the national service manager role when the car manufacturing company Saab launched in Australia.

One morning he and Maureen gathered their children and delivered the news that they were moving to Australia. None of the kids quite knew where Australia was, but every one of them was thrilled.

The family arrived in Melbourne, spending their first weeks in Kensington before settling into the leafy eastern suburb of Wonga Park, and later Ferntree Gully. 

As Allen rose to become managing director of Saab Australia, Maureen became the heart of their home by entertaining guests and business colleagues with the natural warmth of someone who simply loved having people around her table.

And what a table it was. Maureen was a gifted and passionate cook who taught Chinese cookery and was famous for her signature beef and black bean sauce.

But she was equally beloved for her Sunday roasts and golden Yorkshire puddings, English comfort food.

“I’ve always cooked,” she says. “I just did things I liked, and then you do more, you build on it, you try things out."

“I learnt from my mum, she was a good cook. So was my grandmother.

“We’d cook together and she’d write the recipes down. You learn as you go along, and if you want to get to know something that you don’t, you have to ask someone who does.”

Beyond the kitchen, Maureen paints folk art, sews beautifully, and embroideries in the traditional style.

Ask those who know Maureen, like daughter Lorraine, to describe her, and they reach for the same words every time. “Lovely. Happy. Not a mean streak in her body,” says Lorraine.

Maureen is the kind of person who makes a room feel warmer just by walking into it, and who has been doing exactly that, on two continents, for the better part of a century.

Maureen lives at Lifeview The Willows.