George Reynolds Reid (George Raymond) Part two
From this point I will call June ‘Mum’ for obvious reasons. I must back track here: not long after Dad moved from Brisbane to the Gold Coast, about 1950/51, he made a visit to Sydney to visit his mother, Bernice, in Auburn. He found Bernice suffering from dementia and living alone in the house and almost crippled with arthritis. Dad made arrangements for his mother to be moved to a hospital in Goodna, just outside Brisbane, where she would be cared for and where he could visit her more readily. Dad sold the house in Auburn eventually. Bernice continued to live in the hospital at Goodna until her death.
In 1956 Dad and Mum moved down to Sydney, first living at Northbridge. It was about this time that Dad received news from Brisbane that his mother, Bernice, had died. They then bought a house in High Street Willoughby in 1958. During this time Dad established himself around Sydney as a solo cabaret act; also in 1959 Dad and Mum both had small roles in the 1959 film Summer of the Seventeenth Doll appearing alongside Ernest Borgnine, Sir John Mills, Angela Lansbury and Anne Baxter. Mum said their scenes were filmed at the Atranza Studios, later called the ABC studios, in French’s Forest north of Sydney. Dad and Mum then regularly toured rural NSW with the ‘Rick and Thel Show’ as part of the tour troupe headed by the popular Australian country music husband & wife duo in 1960/61.
Dad established himself as a successful act, fiddle player/comedian/compere, in the clubs and nightspots of Sydney in the 1960’s. He often had regular spots at the Silver Spade Room in the Chevron Hotel at Kings Cross as well as Chequers, and worked with international artists such as Ethel Merman, Tony Martin and Nat King Cole. After I was born in 1962, and then my sister in 1965, Dad was at the height of his career and sometimes took us, along with Mum, on tours taking in many towns of rural NSW as well as Victoria where he played at the Hampton Hotel in Brighton for two weeks as the headlining act. In the 60’s he also appeared on In Melbourne Tonight hosted by Graham Kennedy.
In 1971, after we had moved to North Manly, Dad signed on with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to tour Vietnam with fellow entertainers to do shows for the soldiers in places like Vung Tau. I remember the whole band coming to rehearse in our house just before they left…what a day that was, the house literally shook with music! during the rest of the 70’s Dad regularly worked the clubs of Sydney and NSW but towards to late 70’s complained about the work slowing down due to the clubs’ new practice of importing second rate acts from the UK…those which we saw on the Royal Command Performance on TV. The club managers claimed that audiences wanted to see more acts from abroad. In 1972 Dad was compering a show at a club in Sydney and introduced to the audience a new act; a young woman from Galga with a beautiful voice…Julie Anthony. Dad often worked on cruises; the Orsova, Arcadia, Fairstar among many. Sometimes he took a drop in salary in return for taking us along with him and having an A deck family suite cabin.
In 1973 Dad’s friend, the country music legend Tex Morton, asked him to play the fiddle part on a new song he was recording about the 1972 Melbourne Cup winner Gunsynd. The song was called ‘The Goondiwindi Grey’ and was a number one chart hit. I sat in on that recording at the old EMI studios in Sydney on a rainy day in 1973. It was during the late 70’s that Dad got back into acting and appeared in many TV commercials and series such as Certain Women. In 1979 Dad declared himself semi-retired and wished to devote more of his time to his gardening and had even set up a nursery called the Willow Glen Nursery at our home at North Manly. He bought his first plants for the venture from a young bloke named Don Burke who ran a plant nursery at Terry Hills, north of Sydney. Trouble was Dad was such a devoted gardener that he fell in love with most of the plants he bought and subsequently could not bring himself to sell them!
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