STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY
COLLECTION
OH 505/10
Full transcript of an interview with
PATRICIA CROOK
on 27 October 1999
by Denise Schumann
for the
HONORED WOMEN ORAL HISTORY
PROJECT
Recording available on CD
Access for research: Unrestricted
Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study
Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the
State Library
OH 505/10
PATRICIA CROOK
NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT
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J.D.
SOMERVILLE
ORAL
HISTORY
COLLECTION,
MORTLOCK
LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIANA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 505/10
Denise Schumann interviewing Mrs Patricia Crook AO for the State Library of
South Australia’s Honoured Women Oral History Project. The interview takes
place on 27th October 1999. Mrs Crook received her award for service to the
small business sector and to trade development.
TAPE 1 SIDE A
[Interviewer reads the citation of Patricia Crook’s award.] Interview with
Patricia Crook who is Chairperson of the South Australian Health Industry
Incorporated which consists of about a hundred and fifty small to medium sized
businesses that produce exportable health industry products. As Managing
Director of Dynek Pty Ltd, a suture manufacturing business started by Mrs
Crook and her husband, she has expanded her own business so that it now exports
to 29 countries. The small business sector has also benefited from her
involvement as a board member of Austrade, as the South Australian
representative to the Reserve Bank of Australia Small Business Finance Advisory
Panel and as a member of the Trade Policy Advisory Council advising the Prime
Minister. She has also served as an external industry adviser to the South
Australian Liberal Government and contributed as a member to the South
Australian Development Council Board and the Premier’s ‘Business Round
Table’. Mrs Crook is also a board member of the South Australian Employers’
Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and a member of the American Chamber of
Commerce in Australia.
Patricia, would you like to tell me when and where you were born?
I was born in Bristol and I was born on the 18 th of November 1942, and I lived quite
a lot of my younger life in Bristol, and then we moved to Devon in, probably when I
was around about eight or nine, and I went to live in a place called Littleham, which
is near Exmouth, which is near Exeter, so it tells you how small the village is. And I
lived there on a small farm with my mother and father.
What are some of your earliest childhood memories?
I guess that some of my earliest childhood memories are of being able to live on a
farm  having a horse and going around and being part of a community, a very small
community which was very close. I remember going to school in a two-room school
 an upper and lower school in each one  and having lunch brought around where
we would sit out with our knives and forks and enjoy ourselves immensely, and
being taught how to eat properly, and being in a community which was very close
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from the point of view of church, community effort, and of course the whole village
knew who you were and, if you were playing up, what you were doing.
How would you describe your social class background? What were your parents’
occupations?
I came from a working class background. My father was a bricklayer-stonemason,
and actually changed his whole lifestyle by  because of his health  by learning
farming, so it was quite a change for him. He had worked in the mills and on
various other things in building in Bristol and had developed a lung condition, so he
was told to change his lifestyle and go to the country, which is what he did by going
to Littleham. My mother was a stenographer and a homemaker, and when she
moved to the country she became a farmer’s wife and she adapted very well. But it
was very much a working class background.
Were you an only child?
Yes, yes. Without a doubt. My mother often referred to the fact that, after I was
born, they broke the mould.
Did they have great expectations for you? How would you describe your early
childhood in terms of the kind of cultural milieu which you were in?
It was very much a work environment. My mother had expectations of me doing
things around the house, and I learned to make bread and I learned  there was no
deli that you could go to, so we killed our own meat. And so my job was very much,
you know, looking after the hens and making sure the eggs were in and doing all
those things at a very young age. My mother actually had a job. She was a cook and
a maid to Lady Chetwin, who actually was, I believe, the old king’s equerryess when
he was alive. He had passed on and Lady Chetwin had this huge house that had
three hundred and sixty-five windows in it. So she never lived in the whole of the
house, naturally; she only lived in a small part of it; and my mother was her cleaner,
cook and confidante. Of course I was always told, you know, never to enter the
gates because I was, you know, ‘the child’. But of course, as children will, they are
inquisitive and I was no different.
I can always remember coming home from school one day and putting my head
through the railings to see if I could see my mother, and this lady popped her head
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out and said, ‘Oh,’ you know, ‘Hello, who are you?’ And I said, ‘Oh, my name is
Patricia Seward,’ and she said, ‘Oh, you’re Gwennie’s [?] daughter!’ And I said,
‘Yes.’
She said, ‘Would you like to come in?’ and I thought ‘Oh, well, the
gardener’s inviting me in.’ So I said ‘Yes.’ She took me by the hand and took me
around to the back of the house and we entered into this, which I can only describe
as a huge kitchen  it had slate doors and a big, big wooden table: it was huge. And
I always remember my mother was standing on the opposite side of the room and she
turned around and looked at me and I could tell by the expression on her face that I
had done something really bad. It turned out that the ‘gardener’ was actually Lady
Chetwin, of course. Anyway, we became very good friends. My mother told me,
‘Be very careful about coming to the house too often.’
Anyway, when I was there, I was told that there was a lodger and that he did not
like children very much and to keep out of his way. One day I happened to be in the
house and his door was ajar and I stuck my head around the corner and I can always
remember this voice from the deep  because there were books everywhere  he
said, ‘And who are you?’ And I said, ‘Oh, I’m Gwennie’s daughter.’ And he said,
‘Ah! My name’s Eliot.’ We became quite good friends, on the basis that I really
never talked to him but he showed me how to read. My family never had a lot of
books and you could say work was their first priority. Reading was really never in
the vision at all. And so in the afternoon I would go and have my glass of milk and a
biscuit and sit out there and he would give me books. I always remember the first
book he ever gave me, it had very, very fine writing, and I said, ‘I don’t like this
book, I don’t like it  there’s no pictures.’ He started giving me photographs to look
at and picture postcards that he had collected from around the world.
And I
remember reading on the bottom of it ‘T.S. Eliot’. Now, I don’t know if it is the
T.S.Eliot that we’ve all heard about or not, but that was his signature. And every
afternoon he would just say, ‘Hi, how are you today? Did you have a good day at
school?’ and that was about the limit of our conversation but, for the next hour, I
would sit up and look at all his books and he would teach me how to look at the
books. And that went on for about  nearly two years; and then one day he said to
me, ‘Patricia,’ he said, ‘I am leaving.’ He said, ‘I am getting very old and my family
want me to come and live near them.’ And he said, ‘I’ll miss our conversations and
5
our times together,’ and he gave me a great load of photographs and picture
postcards that he had collected from around the world. (break in recording)
When we decided to come to Australia, of course I couldn’t take all the cards with
me  there were absolutely shoeboxes full of them everywhere  and I managed to
grab a few. The interesting things that I grabbed actually were photographs of old
Melbourne, picture postcards he had collected, and some of Adelaide. And would
you believe that I picked out some of the Adelaide Hills, the old Montacute Road,
and I actually ended up living in Rostrevor, which is right at the base of Montacute.
And so, you know, fate works in mysterious ways.
It is an incredible coincidence. How much do you think that impacted on your
consciousness, looking at these postcards around the world?
That is an interesting question, because it was almost as though from that point I
travelled to some of the places that I had seen. For example, we went to Aden and to
Port Said because we came here by ship on the second voyage that the Arcadia ever
made  it was a P&O ship  and of course we called into some of the places that I
had seen, like Aden, like Port Said, like Colombo, and of course we ended up here in
Adelaide.
How old were you when your parents decided to migrate to Australia? You might
like to elaborate on why they left rural England and what seemed to be a very
idyllic lifestyle.
My father had always told me that every person should be allowed to reach their full
potential. And his reasoning for coming to Australia was the fact that he didn’t
believe that I would be able to reach my full potential in anything that I wanted to do
in England because it is quite class distinctive and, we being working class people,
there wasn’t really an opportunity to develop. He always said that I had big ideas. I
was about, I think, twelve, when my father first broached the subject of migrating,
either going to Canada or to Australia. My mother, being a fairly warm-blooded
person, decided that Canada was too cold and that we would come to Australia, and
that we would come to Adelaide. She had looked at all the pictures and felt that
Adelaide was just the ideal spot and, of course, her prediction has proved to be
correct.
6
Patricia, what about the notion of leaving family and friends? Did they have a lot
of family connections?
Well, actually, no; my parents didn’t have a lot of family connections. They came
from fairly large families but, because my father had moved to the country anyway,
a lot of those connections had been severed  or weren’t there in the first place. As
regards from my point of view, well, I had also moved quite a few schools and made
lots of friends, but I found that I  I knew I was going to miss everyone terribly: I
actually was at Southend [?] Girls’ Grammar School when I actually left England
because we went back to Bristol, and I can always remember the headmistress there,
Mrs Gumeau [?], who said to me, you know, ‘You are going on a wonderful
adventure,’ and I really started to think of it as an adventure, not just something ‘Oh,
I am moving and I am leaving all my friends’, but that this was going to be the
adventure of my life.
Obviously your parents must have made some sacrifices to send you to an
exclusive  reasonably exclusive, I believe  public girls’ school. In a sense, were
they perpetuating the class system, or did they just believe that you needed to
become part of that, to be able to maybe get beyond it?
To be perfectly honest, I think it was the only school in the area, so maybe I just
happened to be in the right place at the right time (laughs).
But you never felt as though you were different from the other children? Were
there other working class children there too?
Oh yes, very much so; it was a working class area. I just happened to be there and I
was very fortunate to go to that school.
Did your parents have strong religious beliefs at all?
My parents  I would describe my parents as being spiritual with a closeness to the
land, a great understanding about preserving the land. My father was a great one for
taking me for long walks and explaining to me about life and the land  so I would
say that they were very close to the spiritual side of life. My father loved trees, and
always protected that type of environment. My mother loved plants and things like
that. So I would say that they were spiritual: they always believed in a force, and
they believed in themselves, and that came through to me, that I have always had a
strong sense of self and knowing myself and knowing where I was going.
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Interestingly, you mentioned at one stage that, from a very early age, you used to
visualise.
Yes. In fact, the one greatest gift that my mother gave me was to teach me to
visualise. She said to me one day, ‘There is nothing you can’t be, there is nothing
you can’t have, as long as you can see it in your head first.’ She was a strong
believer that you could create good things from visualisation  and you could also
create bad things. But she believed that if you could spend the time looking within
yourself and developing your own grip of your life, that you could succeed.
It is a very profound philosophy for people from a rural background, isn’t it?
It is. And I never realised until I got older, you know, that most people don’t even
think about it. But she often used to say to me if I wanted to do something or I
wanted to go somewhere she used to say, ‘Well, you really need to think about this.’
But her way of thinking, of course, was to visualise it.
So you boarded a boat, left jolly old England, it was 1956, post-War, and you
headed for a country that you knew very little about.
Yes. Although, I can always remember, we went to Australia House, and going to
London was really a big thing, to go to the big city. I mean, although Bristol was a
very large city, a very bustling city  the seaport  but still, going to London was
such a big thing. And I always remember we ended up at Australia House and being
interviewed to find out if, you know, we were the right sort of people to come to
Australia. And looking at all the pictures, and really starting to absorb the culture,
and realising that, as migrants, we were going to be part of a lot of other migrants
who were coming to Australia. My father said, ‘Well,’ you know, ‘We are going to
have to work hard.’ So boarding that ship was really an adventure in itself. I can
always remember my father had to go to the men’s cabins and Mum and I went to
the ladies’ cabins.
So you were separated?
Yes. But it was exciting. You know, we were right down in the lower levels.
The steerage.
8
But it was very nice and it was air conditioned; the ship was great and we did lots of
wonderful things on board.
What was your father’s listed occupation in coming to Australia?
Bricklayer-stonemason.
Which obviously, in that post-War era, was in much demand.
Absolutely. And especially because he was a trained stonemason which was then
very rare, to actually have them with such a degree of skilfulness. For instance, he
worked on the Bristol University, creating things that had to look as though they had
been sitting there for two hundred years. He also worked on the various old bridges
around the place which was, again, replacing the old with the new but making it look
as though it had been very old. So he was really a craftsman.
Do you think also it might have been his experiences or the family’s experiences
during the War, too, that contributed to him deciding to leave? Were you subject
to the bomb raids?
Yes.
Can you remember those experiences?
I can’t remember them vividly, but I do remember the bomb shelter that we used to
go to every time the sirens went off and I can remember that siren. I still hear it
sometimes and I know that, deep in my psyche, that siren means danger. My mother
could never stand the sound of that siren. Even when she came to Australia she
would hear it; you could see her become alarmed. Yes, if the siren went off, you
would go, you would head out for the underground, you know, to live underground.
Sometimes we were down there for days on end. I know for a fact that we lost all of
the panes of glass in our house; the street was machine-gunned, machine-gunned by
the Germans; my mother lost a lot of friends; and it was a terrifying experience. But
I wasn’t very old. But I do remember that bomb shelter quite well.
That must have been a very strong experience for them, given the fact that they
were such nurturing people. As you moved towards Australia, how long did it
take you to travel here by boat?
It took us a month, and I always remember when we arrived in Port Adelaide it was
something like a hundred and five degrees (laughs). I could never, I could not
9
believe how hot it was. But it was beautiful, blue sun, blue skies and sunshine, and
we were welcomed by all of the people that were there because we were immigrants.
We got off the boat and then we started watching the unloading, and I always
remember seeing that our boxes came off and were dropped. My mother said, ‘Well,
there goes the tea set.’ And it was, yes, it was quite an experience to actually get off
the ship, this absolute luxury of a ship, and then head for Elder Park which, of course
 there was a hostel behind the old City Baths. You are probably too young to
remember all this, but it was where the Festival Theatre is right now, that was the
City Baths and right behind there was the hostel which we went to. That was an
experience that had a profound effect on me, definitely. Because we went from the
luxury of the ship to the not-so-luxury of this hostel, which I always remember.
Everything was painted brown and we had wire beds, bases, with a flock mattress;
and anyone knows that a flock mattress is one of those that you really have to move
around to find a spot that you can sleep comfortably in.
Were you in separate rooms, or again were men and women separated?
Yes, men and women were separated and I was in with my mother.
It was almost like refugee status?
Well, yes, I guess, but in those days you were pleased that you had somewhere to
sleep and it was safe. But it was certainly  I looked at it from the point of view that
 I can always remember sitting up there on the first night and thinking, you know,
‘What have I come to?’ and my mother said, kept saying to me, to settle down, settle
down. And I remember saying to her, ‘I’ll never do this to my children!’ and she
said, ‘Don’t worry; everything will be fine. Your father will make it all right.’
What about the first images of Adelaide? What was Adelaide like in the 1950s?
Do you remember the city at all as you came into it?
Well, I can remember  Government House hasn’t changed and Parliament House
hasn’t changed; and of course the bank  it was the Bank of New South Wales on the
corner of North Terrace and King William Street.
Did you think the city was small?
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No. Actually, I rather liked it. My mother immediately thought it was great because
she loved the parks. My mother was a great walker. She would walk me off my feet
 and so would my father. I think the first things that we went and saw was the
Adelaide Oval and the parks, which she thought was absolutely fantastic. I think the
first place that my father  well, after we had sort of had a look around  the first
place my father went to was the Housing Trust, which used to be  and I think
probably still is  in Angas Street, because we were naturally looking to see what
was going to happen to us. We were also waiting for the people who had sponsored
us which was a building company named Orlit [?]. The builder is no longer in
business. He had actually helped my father migrate.
So he had sponsored them out to Australia?
Yes, that’s right. Anyway they said, ‘Oh well, we are not going to be able to supply
you with a house right away. You will be here for probably about seven to ten days
in the hostel in Adelaide and then you are going out to Gepps Cross.’ That was
another interesting experience because we went to live in a Nissen hut and we were
actually there for twelve months before our house was provided for us by the
builders.
Was it mainly English migrants, or was it mixed?
It was actually mixed. I can always remember we had Polish people, German people
around us, but predominantly it was English.
And my father went to work at
Elizabeth and Salisbury building houses   .
So what was a typical day for you?
Well, a typical day, I guess, was to get up and trot across the paddock to go and have
a shower, which was an interesting experience, and get ready for school. I went to
Enfield High which was right opposite the Gepps Cross hostel.
Well, that must have been an initiation into something different.
It was, and I rebelled a little bit. I always remember saying to my mother, ‘I’ve done
all this work before. Why do I have to do it again?’ This was particularly on the
mathematics side.
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Was it a mixed school?
Yes, it was a mixed school, which was another interesting experience because I had
gone to single sex schools before that. But I had  I can’t say that there were any
particular teachers that helped me at all, although there was a Mr Tindall [?] that I
remember who taught me a lot and I had a lot of respect for him.
How were you treated by the Australians?
Very well. I guess because I did not have a real accent  that probably helped.
Did you notice theirs?
Not really. But I can always remember the Italian people and the young people and
the Scottish and the Irish tended to get a little bit of stick from them.
Patricia, how did your mother cope with these changes? I mean, it is an enormous
thing to migrate, to be in these transit sort of camps. Enfield is an interesting
place in itself and it is pretty barren and dry and sparse. How did she handle that
whole experience?
I was amazed. My mother was a very gentle, very hardworking person, and she was
very fair-skinned, and one day she said to my father, ‘I am going to get a job,’ and of
course she’d been trained as a stenographer all her life and  or she could cook or
look after a house. And she said, ‘I’m going to pick grapes.’ Watching her being
out in the sunshine and getting her fingers caught in the clippers and all the rest of it
was something that I  I can remember my father saying to her, ‘That’s going to be
pretty tough,’ you know. She said, ‘Well, no; I’m going to do it.’ Every morning
they would come along with the truck and she would hop up the back and off they
would go and she would be brought back around about four, five o’clock in the
evening. I used to say to her, you know, ‘Are you happy doing this?’ And she said,
‘Well, I am meeting a lot of interesting people, and they are not just English: there
are a lot of interesting people, particularly the Italians.’ A lot of Italian women used
to go along and the German women also. She felt that she learned a lot from them.
Because it was very lonely for her, being left in the hostel all day  everyone else
was going off to work, and she was never a person to gossip  and she felt that she
needed to have something in her life. So I think this helped her adjust by meeting
people and getting out there and doing something.
12
And she never resented the fact that those sorts of menial tasks were reserved
mainly for the migrants, that she couldn’t do her stenographer’s job or get an
office job?
No. My mother always  and both my father  said, ‘Any job is a good job and you
make something out of it yourself, and it is what you think about it. If you think it is
menial it is menial, but if you think it is important it is important.’ And that is a
good philosophy.
So how long did it take them to get on their feet, to get a house?
It was twelve months before the company actually came forward and said, ‘We
actually have a house for you.’ In the meantime my parents had sold their house in
England and the real estate fellow had run off with the money. So we actually
landed in Australia with five pounds in cash: that was it. So we managed to get
some of the money back from the fellow  the police eventually caught him  but it
was never a lot. It was interesting: my father said, ‘Well,’ you know, ‘five pounds
is five pounds and we will make the most of it,’ and of course he did.
Okay, thank you, Patricia.
END OF TAPE 1 SIDE A: TAPE 1 SIDE B
Patricia, how long did it take your parents to get established in their first house?
Approximately twelve months, and we ended up with a house just on Grand Junction
Road by Prospect Road, and it was a very nice house and big lawns and my mother
really enjoyed living there.
What was happening with your secondary schooling at that time?
I continued on going to school, to Enfield High, and at that time most young women
were either hairdressers or stenographers or working in a bank, and really that was
my choice. Of course my mother had been a stenographer. But the idea of me
actually going to university was not one that was touted, and of course we did not
have the money anyway, so the logical thing was that I was going to be a
stenographer too. My mother said it would take me anywhere I wanted to go in the
world. So that is what I followed. I did a commercial course at school. It was that
13
you either did a general course or a commercial course at school and I chose
commercial and did all the typing and bookkeeping and quite enjoyed it, actually.
Did you ever harbour any dreams underneath the notion of being a stenographer?
Did you ever think that there was  I mean, did you think that was going to be the
be and end all of your life?
I thought it was going to be a stepping stone to what I wanted to do, but it wasn’t
until I was actually eighteen that I had an idea of what I wanted to do, and I told my
father and mother that I was actually going to manufacture a product and I was going
to make things. And it was going to be either in health or in food, because I believed
that everybody got paid in those two industries. And my father sort of, I guess,
looking at this young woman telling him that she was going to actually manufacture
a product and become involved in making things, and he said, you know, ‘How do
you propose to do this? Where are you going to get the money?’ and ‘You just don’t
make this statement and then hope it is going to happen.’ And I said, ‘Ah well, I’ll
have to give it a lot of thought,’ and left it at that. And then I landed my first job. I
guess I came out of school when I was about seventeen; you know, you did your
Intermediate certificate. I did not actually get my Intermediate because I went and
got myself a job with three architects: it was Michelmore Roeger and Russell. And
I came home and said, ‘Mum, Dad, I’ve got a job’  and of course that was
important in those days  and so it was towards the end of the year, so I took the job
and I was their typist and I suppose they called them ‘Girl Fridays’ in those days.
And from there where did you go?
Well, of course I reached the age of twenty-one, and that was when you started to get
an adult wage, and I guess the idea of paying me adult wages by the architects really
did not sit well with them, so I took the hint and left. And my father said, ‘Well,
what are you going to do?’ And I said, ‘Well, I really want to get into somewhere
where they do marketing and they have products.’ So I applied for a job with a
company called Andrews Laboratories, which had its office up in Archer Street in
North Adelaide in one of the very old houses. Actually it was right where the car
park is now of the Village Shopping Centre. Andrews Laboratories was bought out
by a company called Ether [?], which was indirectly owned by Johnson & Johnson.
And I was their invoice clerk, correspondence person, everything you could think of
14
I did and I quite enjoyed it  plus I managed to get the products out and despatch
them at the same time, so I found it really interesting. Then, of course, the more that
Johnson & Johnson took over the companies, we ended up with an office in Kidman
Park, and I remember the old General Johnson  because Johnson’s of course was a
family business originally before it became a public company  the young General
Johnson arriving in Australia in his boat, I suppose you would call it a rather large
yacht. And he came to the opening of this wonderful building here in Adelaide, and
I thought he was an interesting sort of character. The first thing he did when he saw
the building was he did not like the long glass panels, had them all changed, so they
must have been a pretty important firm.
Would that have been one of the first sort of corporate companies, I suppose, in
Australia? Were they different to other companies at that time, in that they were
a bit market driven?
Oh, absolutely.
Product driven.
Absolutely. Totally market-focused. And as much as they are my competitor I have
to give them credit that they taught me a tremendous amount. I mean, their training
programmes were excellent with regards to their staff.
Were you involved in those training programmes, or was it seen as being very
much in the ’50s a male kind of occupation, sales and marketing?
Oh yes. But I guess I got involved in sampling and literature and things like that. It
was a very low, low profile, but I mean I was the sort of person that pushed myself
onward and read and got involved with things. And in fact, that is when I first
started to apply for sales positions within the company.
That was unheard-of, wasn’t it?
Oh, absolutely. Women just were not in the sales force at all. I thought, you know,
‘This is great; this is the way I want to be.’ I realised that if I wanted to really be
there then I would have to start studying some of the subjects outside of the business.
So I started to study anatomy and physiology and I started to read as many books as I
could on marketing, selling, because I thought, after watching some of the guys
there, that I could do just as good a job. So I applied; I applied seven times and got
15
knocked back and they said, ‘Look,’ you know, ‘Patricia, we are really not interested
in employing women.’ But I kept at it, and I can always remember the Managing
Director arriving at the office one day and basically looking for the State Manager of
Ether, as it was at the time. So I thought, ‘Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.’
I asked him for a job. And he said to me, ‘What sort of job do you want?’ I said,
‘Well, actually, the suture representative is leaving, going to Melbourne: you have
given him a promotion,’ and I said, ‘I would like that job.’ And he said, ‘Well, we
have just started to take a few women on in the eastern states,’ and I said, ‘Well, I
really think that I could do it.’ Anyway, one thing led to another and I did get the
job. But I was told that I had to double the figures in the first year and that I would
have the extra territory of Western Victoria to go to, and that I would also have to
visit Darwin and then I would have to do Broken Hill  which was not part of the
deal for the previous rep  and I would have to go as far as Cowell on the Eyre
Peninsula.
So was this with the intention of testing you, of them thinking, ‘Well, we’ll see
what she’s made of and she won’t be able to handle it’?
I think it was in a way that they were hoping that I would probably back off. But the
idea of actually having my own car, you know, a company car and being able to go
to all these places really did not faze me at all: I thought that was terrific.
That was very unusual for a woman, though, at that time, too, to be driving, like a
sales rep.
Yes.
Do you remember any interesting experiences, being a woman, a lone saleswoman
out there?
Oh yes, I can always remember driving from Peterborough, through the back blocks
to Port Pirie and, you know, dirt roads, bulldust, the whole lot. I can always
remember it, because I had a Holden Kingswood, a white Holden Kingswood, with
the gear shift on the column and learning the H-shifter going along. There was no
such thing as an automatic car. I can always remember going around this corner and
hitting the bulldust and suddenly doing four wheel slides backwards and forwards
across the road and eventually ending up facing back to where I had come from.
16
And you are out there in the middle of nowhere; there is no-one, you know, you just
have to sit there and pull yourself together and have a bit of a cry and say, ‘Well, I
am okay  dusty, but I’m okay,’ and keep going.
And of course you would meet the odd interesting character along the road. I
picked up some interesting people, and of course in those days you did. If there was
somebody on the road you did not pass them by. Of course nowadays you would
race like mad not to pick them up, but in those days I picked up some interesting
characters and learned a lot from them, too, because they were travelling around
Australia by foot. So, you know, I can always remember my family saying to me,
‘You should be very careful who you pick up.’ People, you know, I always had a
look at them and would think, ‘Well, they look pretty good,’ and give them a ride to
the next town.
How were you treated by your male peers?
I guess I was a bit of a  I mean, it was a bit of a surprise that they put on a woman.
And I have to tell you, at the time when I went to Sydney for my training  and I
have to tell you it was very thorough: I think I was in Sydney for about two, two and
a half, three weeks  there were only, I think, three of us ‘girls’, as they called us,
and I guess we worked hard to make that right impression. And there was no doubt
about it: we worked doubly hard to make the sales. And I have to tell you, not only
did I double the sales, I tripled the sales. And I enjoyed doing it. They thought, I
think, that we would go away.
You actually love the challenge of that sort of situation, don’t you, I mean that
sense of belief in yourself? A lot of women during that period just wouldn’t have
had that self-confidence, that resilience, to cope with that.
That’s probably right. But, as I say, I keep going back to my mother. She was, she
always used to say that you can do anything you want to. And that was always in the
back of my mind.
That nothing is impossible.
Nothing, absolutely nothing. And I say that to people now. You’re only limited by
your own imagination.
17
What about the expectation of marriage? I mean, the 1960s also was a very
conservative time in Australia that women were expected to be married or get
married fairly soon.
That was interesting, because when I made the decision to tell my parents that I was
actually going to manufacture or make a product when I was eighteen, my father
actually sat down with me and said to me, ‘Now, look, marriage is very important
for you, and bearing in mind that you only have your mother and father here in
Australia, you have no immediate family, I want to make sure that you are wellprepared and well taken care of.’ And he said, ‘You know, you might like to think
about that.’ And I said, ‘Well, marriage is really not what I am really looking for,
and I should be able to take care of myself.’ So I was twenty-five when my father
actually sat down with me again, because there were no prospects on the horizon and
I was having a pretty good time. He said, ‘Have you had any thoughts about getting
married? Your father and mother are getting older here.’ And he said, ‘I know I told
you,’ he said, ‘when you were younger that your mother, your father and your bank
book were very important to you, but there is other things in life that  maybe having
a family, and   .’ So he was quite concerned that he would leave me on this earth
with no-one to protect me. But I did assure him that I felt that I could cope.
So you never missed the company of men, of going out? What was your social life
at that time?
Oh, goodness. We went out, we had a wonderful time. I can always remember the
‘Bodgies’ and the ‘Widgies’ and up and down Rundle Street. But, as a group, we
used to go dancing to the Wonderland Ballroom; we used to go to dancing down
near the Palais. We went to the pictures; we did all sorts of things as a group more
than anything. And we had a ball. I mean, we had great petticoats where we would
go out there and starch our petticoats and, you know, they all had to stand out
beautifully. But I was very much a group person; I was  and I have never been
alone. I have been  sorry  I have been alone, but I have never been lonely, and I
think there is a big difference. I had boyfriends, but most of them were just friends
and I just enjoyed their company and we had a great time. It was not until I met
Barry that I knew that I had met the right person.
And when did you meet Barry?
18
I met Barry when I was about twenty-six, twenty-seven, and we got married when I
was I think about twenty-nine.
Were you still at Johnson & Johnson?
Yes. I was then, of course, working in Sales and Marketing, and Barry was actually
working in the industrial side, and we just got on like a house on fire. Anyway, I
started going out  and he was actually divorced; he had a small daughter, Susan 
and we just got on so wonderfully well, I felt like I had known him all my life. He is
a very comfortable person to be with. I found out I loved him very dearly, so he
asked me to marry him and I said yes.
But he plays an important part in your story about what happens with Johnson &
Johnson. He’s another key turning 
Yes.
 point, isn’t he?
Yes, he is.
Do you want to elaborate on that?
We had been married a year and I was actually pregnant and training the
representative who was going to take my place, and I had gone through quite a few
miscarriages, and the doctor said, ‘If you do not have time off you are going to lose
this one as well.’ I will always remember I was training this representative and
Barry walked in and said, ‘Can I see you a minute?’ Bearing in mind that he’d been
with Johnson’s for about twelve, thirteen years and was Salesman of the Year and
done all those sorts of things. Anyway, Johnson’s decided to close that division,
both in South Australia and in Western Australia, and handle it from Victoria. So he
has always been the placid one, I guess, in the family  I’m the more fiery  and he
came in and said, ‘Don’t get upset,’ he said, ‘but I have been basically given a
month’s notice to find a job.’ I rang up my boss and told him that I was not going to
go on with the training, and we went home. We sort of sat there and I said, ‘God,’
you know, ‘this is terrible: here we are caught between this rock and a hard place.’
So we decided that maybe this was the opportune time to actually start our own
business, and at that stage I had the miscarriage and we said, ‘Well, this is fate. We
19
won’t try any more. We will sit down and we will really start to plan out the
business side,’ and so we did.
We basically said we were not going to work for a year, and our parents provided
us with sustenance, and we took our three thousand dollars which was our super fund
that we had been paid out and started to really evaluate what we could do. We
decided that it would be a health product and, after a lot of work, we decided it
would be a suture. Then we started to go around to all of the international chambers
and look at all their books and find out if we could find machinery, equipment,
technical advice, and it was actually the Japanese Consul here in Adelaide  I can
always remember, he had an office in North Adelaide  and I used to go up there
with Barry and we would pore over the books looking for companies overseas that
made needles in Japan. We found this company and contacted them and they were a
family-owned business and their name was Matsutani, and they helped us with
telling us how to do the machinery and how to make it, because we made most of the
machines or Barry made most of the machines and designed them. They told us they
would supply the raw materials and they put us in touch with other companies in
Japan. The interesting thing about Matsutani is that we are still friends. Thirty years
down the track we still know them and we have recently just had their son here in
Australia so he could learn English.
Patricia, the reason that you went to a Japanese company, was that because
nothing was being manufactured in Australia or America? I mean, Japan seems
an unusual place to be going: was that where most of these health products came
from at that time?
No; actually, it was interesting.
Most of the American companies were big
multinationals and we contacted them and they were not really interested in working
with us, and there was nothing in Australia. I mean, you have got to remember you
are looking back to the early 1960s. There was just nothing in Australia. Very little
was manufactured here.
And the Japanese, for some unknown reason, we just
clicked with them. We actually got on a plane and went up there and met them, and
we have never had a signed agreement with them in all the time we have been doing
business. It is a handshake and we stand out there and there is the Australian flag
and the Japanese flag, and that is how we have conducted business all the time. And
they are very honourable people.
20
Again, you’re at the frontline. Not a lot of Australian companies or people would
have been doing business with Asia in the 1960s, so again you are almost ahead of
your time.
It is funny how you should say that, because I know when we were talking to various
people they said, ‘But why Japan? It’s not English-speaking.’ But they were the
ones that offered us the technology and how to do things. They were the ones that
pointed us in the right direction. We’ve kept that connection. That link is there and
it is a very strong link. I found them easy to deal with  even in those days they tried
English and I tried Japanese and we got on extremely well. And they were very,
very kind at introducing us to other family businesses around the world  one in
Switzerland  who adopted us.
In that first year, you obviously would have had to put your house on the line to
raise capital: what about the banks?
The banks were an interesting exercise, and probably a story in its own right, but I
felt we probably had the distinction that Barry and I went to every bank and every
bank said, ‘No. You want to manufacture what?’ ‘Sutures.’ You know, ‘What are
those? And you want to export? Well, forget about it. We are not interested.’ Yes,
that was very, very difficult. We had a triple-fronted cream brick at Rostrevor, on a
corner block, and a beetle Volkswagen and that was it, and very limited cash.
We went to the state government  it was a Labor government; I think Corcoran
was the Premier at the time  and we went to the government as a lender of last
resort and said, ‘Would you lend us this money?’ and they said, ‘How much do you
want?’ And I said, ‘Fifty thousand, and this is what we want to do.’ And we’d done
our little business plan and we did a marketing plan. And anyway, they looked at it
and they said, ‘Well, look, we will give you twenty thousand to start with and a
mentor’  someone to come down and basically make sure we were not fiddling the
books, of course. We progressed on from there. We ended up with a factory at
Kilkenny, because manufacturing a suture is manufacturing a medical device that is
used in the human body. You cannot make it in your own back yard. So we had to
have a building that we had to adapt for the manufacture of a clean product. And
away we went. But I can always remember we had to have approvals as well from
the TGA [?]. In fact we were finishing off a machine to make packaging because we
21
could not buy a machine to make these sorts of packets, and we had done a lot of
trial and error runs and we had made our own dies, our heating equipment, and I can
always remember hearing a knock on the roll-up door. So I remember pulling up the
roll-up door and first of all sighting a pair of sparkling black men’s shoes closely
followed by a very dark pin-striped suit which spelled ‘government’ to me all the
way along the line. This six foot two gentleman was standing there and he said,
‘Hello, I’m from the TGA,’ which of course was the regulatory body for medical
devices. And he said, ‘I am here to inspect your facility,’ and I said, ‘Well, we have
not even made a product yet,’ and he said, ‘Well, that is all right.’ And I said, ‘We
are doing a lot of trials with the packaging.’ The man’s name escapes me right now
but he took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and helped us produce the very first
packet. He was the one that advised us and told us what we had to have and was
there all day and was very supportive of us, people who were going to start their own
business. And that’s how we started. And we started out with actually six types of
sutures. Of course, now we have got over two thousand different types and it is
growing all the time because of the different combinations.
You did have a major setback at one point with Johnson & Johnson, didn’t you?
Yes. The second day that we operated with the doors open, there was a knock on the
door and this gentleman said, ‘Are you Patricia Ann Crook?’ and I said ‘Yes,’ and he
hit me with a subpoena to appear in court in Sydney in the next 48 hours to answer
why, in the opinion of Johnson & Johnson, we had copied their designs in a
catalogue. And I always remember feeling  I had never had a parking sticker at that
stage, and the lump in my throat was quite severe. I said to Barry, ‘What are we
going to do?’ And he said, ‘Well, obviously they want to tie us up in court.’ So I
said, ‘Well, we had better sleep on this.’
Anyway, I got up in the morning and we talked about it and I said, ‘Look, I think
we should fight this,’ and he said, ‘What with?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, but something
will come up. Anyway, I think we should ring Johnson & Johnson and explain to
them that they are really not going to win this,’ said I with a certain amount of
trepidation, I have to tell you. But I picked the phone up and I rang the man who
gave me my first start at Johnson’s and his name was Alan Starr [?], and I said, ‘Mr
Starr, it is Patricia Crook,’ and he said, ‘Oh, how are you? How’s things going?’
22
And I said, ‘I have to tell you that I have started a suture company.’ ‘Well done!
How wonderful!’ And I said, ‘Well, it would be even better if your people were not
hounding me with this particular situation. I am sure you don’t know about it,’ so I
explained to him what was in the subpoena and he said, ‘Oh, my goodness!’ And I
can always remember feeling as though my stature was growing because he was sort
of saying, ‘Well, this is not too good, is it?’ and I thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s a
chance we can get out of this.’ And he said, ‘Well, look, we’ll have a look at it.’
And I said, ‘Well, you have really only got 24 hours because I have to be in Sydney
and I will have to get my lawyers.’
And all of a sudden it came to me about this paper that we had in Australia called
The Truth, and it used to be printed, I think, in Melbourne but it was out every
Saturday and everybody used to buy The Truth and I have to tell you that it was a bit
of a rag. But they used to have a lot of interesting stories. So I said, ‘And by the
way, if we don’t happen to come to an agreement and we do happen to end up in
court, I don’t think it’s going to look terribly good to see Johnson & Johnson’s name
splashed across Truth, you know:
“Big multinational stamps on little Aussie
battler.”’ And he said, ‘I get your drift.’ Well, anyway, he rang me back in about
two hours and they withdrew the case and here we are.
Patricia, with respect to where the company has gone, can you just  from those
early days to where it is now  can you give us some idea of just how much you’ve
sort of increased in size and the scope of the company?
Well, it has gone from two people to 44, and at one stage we had 50  that was the
maximum we have ever employed  and we have gone from a zero turnover to a
multi-million dollar company, and so yes, there has certainly been a huge growth.
And we have gone from six lines to over two thousand, and of course we have also
specialised now in cardiovascular and plastic surgery, all those sorts of areas.
Thank you.
END OF TAPE 1 SIDE B: TAPE 2 SIDE 1
Interview with Mrs Patricia Ann Crook who, with her husband, is the Managing
Director of Dynek Pty Ltd, a suture manufacturing business started by Mrs
Crook and her husband. Interview for the Honoured Women’s Oral History
project for the Mortlock Library, tape two.
23
Patricia, you were elaborating on just how far your company has expanded: in
those early days how did you develop your market share against such a huge
company as Johnson & Johnson.
Well, it certainly was not easy, and I have to say that it still is not easy. Being
Australian in Australia with a product is sometimes a disadvantage.
Why, why? Why would it be a disadvantage?
Because we have been so indoctrinated with American companies over the years that
the loyalty to Australian manufacture is something that lacks in the psyche of
Australians, and it is something we really have to develop, particularly with
globalisation.
So how did you manage to develop your market share?
We developed a range of sutures that was directed to general practitioners, and I
have to say that the general practitioners in this country have been very supportive of
our company. And if you ask me where my strength is, that is definitely one of those
areas. But it also became very obvious to us that, if we wanted to grow, that we
were in a limited growth factor, and GP’s were something that wasn’t going to get
very much bigger. So we had to look at what was happening in the hospitals, and it
became very obvious to us that the hospitals were not going to support us. So, rather
than go broke  and we were very close to that after around the second or third year
 it was decided that we would export. And of course, in those days we had
‘Austrade’ here and they were very helpful, but sutures were also an unknown factor,
a totally new product.
Anyway, there happened to come our way a tender for sutures in Malaysia, and I
always remember our accountant at the time said, ‘Well, Patricia, you are the
marketer: you had better get on the plane and go over there,’ and so I did. I can
always remember looking down over the coast of Australia as we headed out over
Western Australia, thinking to myself that my umbilical cord was being cut as I was
moving into a new part of my life. Of course landed in Kuala Lumpur and fronting
up at the Health Office, the Health Minister, and they were expecting a Pat Crook
and they thought it was a man. The first thing  the gentleman who I went to see  I
always remember entering his office and finding my ankles surrounded by this
24
beautiful carpet. I sort of approached his desk and the first thing he said was, ‘Don’t
bother sitting down.’ And I thought, ‘Well, this is going to be interesting,’ and he
said, ‘I was expecting a man.’ And I said, ‘Well, I have to tell you that Pat is a lady,’
and he said, ‘I don’t deal with ladies.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s interesting: I have
not come all of this way, you know, eight thousand kilometres or whatever it is to be
told that  to dismiss me.’ I felt that he was just  I was being shown the door. I
always remember pulling myself up to my five foot eight and saying to him: ‘I shall
report you to my government,’ because I could not think of anything else to say at
the time, because I was absolutely horrified that this guy was giving me the brushoff.
And so I headed back to the hotel  and I think I stayed at the Imperial  and I was
sitting in my room and thinking, ‘What are you going to do, because you are now
nowhere.’ And this fellow was quite adamant about the fact that I needed to have a
….. ….. company, which is a home company for Malaysia. Anyway, I sat there and
I thought, ‘Well, you are no use sitting here crying; you had better go and talk to
someone,’ and the phone rang, and this fellow said, ‘Mrs Crook, I’m so-and-so,’ he
said, ‘I believe you are looking for an agent.’ And I thought to myself, ‘Well,’ you
know, ‘how does he know?’ And he said, ‘A friend of mine told me that you’re
looking for an agent,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ And he said, ‘Well, I would like to
meet with you,’ and I said, ‘That would be nice: when would you like to meet?’ He
said, ‘How about now? I am in the foyer.’ So I was beginning to get the drift, you
know, that this fellow thought he was on a good thing. And in those days, of course,
we never had business centres in the hotels, so I invited him to my room. I always
remember opening the door and he came and I was busy trying to shut the door and
the door was to-ing and fro-ing in my hand as I tried to push it shut, and I realised
that there was someone else on the other side of the door, and I opened it up and it
was this gentleman who had really given me the brush-off. And he said, ‘Mrs
Crook, I would like you to meet my brother-in-law.’ I quickly got the drift exactly
what was going on. Anyway, we sat down and we talked and he said he would put
the tender in for me  and we had to pay ‘earnest money’ in those days.
What’s ‘earnest money’?
25
Well, ‘earnest money’ was actually to put the tender in, you know: the government
wants to see how serious you are, so you have to pay to put your tender in. I was
carrying money on me to put on this thing, and I was really learning how to negotiate
for the first time. I said to this fellow, ‘Of course, you are going to have to put the
earnest money up,’ which was considerable thousands of dollars. And he said, ‘Oh,
naturally.’ So I thought, ‘Well, there you go!’ The money that I was actually
carrying around my waist was going to remain there. We sat down and got the
prices out and I remember typing all night on this rickety old typewriter in my room
the whole tender and putting it in. But I knew I was not going to get it. I had this
feeling that we were not going to get it. But I did it; it was a great exercise. I went
to some of the hospitals while I was in Kuala Lumpur and saw what they were doing
and the products that they were using, and anyway I decided that, out of the blue, I
would not go straight back to Australia, that I would go to Singapore. And you hear
about the saying of being in the right place at the right time.
I decided to call in at the Austrade office, and Austrade  it is funny now that I am
actually on the Austrade board, because Austrade has played, you know, it’s always
had a thread in my life in export  and I called into the office and the fellow said,
‘Well, do you have an appointment?’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t, but I was just hoping
to see a commercial officer.’ I just wanted to wave the flag and let them know that
we were around.
And he said, ‘Oh, just a moment.’ Anyway, out came this
gentleman. He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You are here without an appointment.’ And I
said, ‘I am terribly sorry, but could I wait and could someone see me, or can I come
back another time?’ He said, ‘Oh, look, what product do you make?’ And I said, ‘I
make, manufacture ’  oh, no; he said, ‘Do you make a product?’ I said, ‘Yes; I
manufacture sutures.’ He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I manufacture sutures.’ He said,
‘My God, don’t move, don’t move.’ He said, ‘This is so fortuitous that you are
here,’ and he disappeared. And I’m just sort of left standing there. About two or
three minutes later he comes racing back, ‘Come with me.’ He grabbed me by the
arm, raced me down this corridor and into this office, and he said, ‘Mrs Crook, I
would like you to meet Laurence Lau.’ And he said, ‘Mr Lao,’ he said, ‘desperately,
desperately needs a suture company.’ This gentleman had actually tendered on
sutures for the Singapore government and had won the tender with a company in the
26
United States. However, the company in the United States was most unco-operative
and hadn’t supplied the product, and here was Mr Lau caught between, you know, a
proverbial rock and a hard place where the Singapore government was saying to Mr
Lau, ‘If you cannot supply the product we are going to go out and buy one and if it’s
dearer you are going to have to pay the difference.’ So when they found out that I
made sutures, you know, he sort of said, ‘Sit down,’ you know, ‘Can you make
this?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Can you make it?’ ‘Absolutely; I can make anything.’ So I
mean I said yes to so many different things, and when we added it all up there was
twenty thousand US dollars. I remember coming out of the place, I don’t even
remember my feet touching the ground  and of course there was no such thing as
mobile phones  and racing back to the hotel and telling Barry that ‘I got this order
and it is worth twenty thousand US dollars, and I told them we can make it all,’ and
he said, ‘Well, that’s very  that is great!. Do you believe we really can?’ And I
said, ‘Absolutely, absolutely.’ So I told him what it was all made up of and he said,
‘Well, actually we can.’ And that was our first export order. And from there, of
course, the export became very much part of our culture and as far as I was
concerned there were no boundaries to what we could do.
How would you classify or describe that your business is different, in the sense
that because it is catering for an export market, what have you done back here to
the culture of the business to make it distinctive?
That is an interesting question. I suppose the thing is, in those days, export was
something that was so different, it was very hard to start, to come to terms with who
we were dealing with, the funny names that they had to learn to get their tongue
around, the phone calls that we would get from overseas, that they’d have to
suddenly listen more intensively. So training within the company was so important.
What about this thing about you being the front person of the company, though?
More so than Barry, you tended to take on the negotiations, didn’t you?
Yes, yes. I   .
That is a first, I mean, really for a woman at that time to be dealing with an Asian
business community.
The interesting thing about it was that I never ever felt, they never made me feel,
inferior. They never made me feel a lesser person. Once  I mean, business is very
27
much a business thing, you know: if people want information or they want a product
I don’t think it matters whether you’re male or female; they’re just interested in
getting the product. They want the product, the service, the value added, all of those
sorts of things whether they’re dealing with a male or a female, and it’s up to you to
deliver. So that was important for us to get that across.
Was it easier to deal with those Asian communities and that Asian business
culture than, say, with America or England.
We never ever went to America. I mean, as an example, if I went to Asia and I said I
was a family-owned business and I was it and Barry was it, we were received with
open arms. But I never told anyone in Australia right at the beginning, any of the
doctors, that I owned the business. I mean, I did a couple of times and you could
almost see that I had gone down in their ladder of self-estimation, that they thought
that, ‘Oh, you couldn’t possibly be.’
That’s the conservatism of the medical community here. You mentioned that a
little earlier, actually.
Yes, very much so. But overseas family businesses are so well-received: they like
to deal with the person who is going to make the decisions, not dealing with a
manager that has got to ring up and get permission or anything like that; they just
like dealing with a family business.
We have still got those, a lot of those
connections that we’ve dealt with.
The resistance among the medical community  how have you tried to overcome
that?
No, we haven’t  to date we haven’t overcome it. But doctors are far more open
now. I think our biggest problem is the fact that some of the multinationals have
formed linkages which have cut us off from our markets. You know, taking off my
Dynek hat and putting on my hat for the community, I think that family businesses
have got to raise their profile, be far more assertive in business than they have ever
been before. Globalisation will push us out completely by the fact that the global
companies are becoming bigger and bigger and they are trying to push us into the
background, whereas we are going to be the competition; we are going to be able to
offer the specialised product. We are the ones that are going to say to the customer,
‘What do you want?’, where the multinationals say, ‘Well, this is what we’ve got;
28
you’re going to have to take it.’ But I see that globalisation is going to reduce
people’s ability to be able to get quality products. I mean, if you look at the IT
industry now, there are  two weeks ago there were six major IT companies in the
world and now, this week, there are only five. The more that they become bigger,
the more that they reduce the number of competitors, the more problems you are
going to have. So I am really keen to develop that family business or small to
medium-sized enterprises that are going to be competitive.
Well, as you say, they are generated out of the local culture rather than out of
some mass culture. But again there are enormous difficulties in having the assets
or, as you say, the up-frontedness to take on those big multinational companies.
I think there has got to kind of be a change of culture in the community. We have
got to start looking after where the jobs are going to be created. And I think when a
company walks into another company and says, ‘Look, I’m South Australian, I’m
Australian or I’m New Zealand,’ then we’ve really got to take notice of that
company and say, ‘How can we assist them?’ Not in maybe giving them all the
business, but giving them a small percentage that is going to allow for growth. I
mean, if we want companies to manufacture in this country, we want growth and that
means jobs and wealth, then we’ve got to buy the product, and especially if those
companies are going to export and they are only fledgling at it.
Specifically within your own company itself you’ve done some interesting things
with regard to customer service and to quality control which is, again, at frontline.
Do you want to just talk a little bit about some of those techniques that you’ve
developed which really have been quite radical?
Quality control, for example, and quality assurance  quality assurance is identifying
the problem before it happens; quality control is about ensuring that the standard
operating procedures written for the manufacture of the product that you make are
maintained. I think that everyone within Dynek is a quality assurance person, a
quality control person, although we have specific people in those positions. We have
evolved people into teams rather than having individual castle builders. We try to
keep it as a one level management. We put quality as our first priority.
We
manufacture a product that is used in the human body: there is no second chance.
So quality is our big issue, and it is something that, you know, accountants look at
and say, ‘Well, you know, what have you  what can you produce that is on the
29
bottom line that is going to be better?’ Well, not having quality means you have not
got a company, as far as I’m concerned and as far as Barry is concerned. So quality
is everything. And that is something, that culture has to be built up within the
company. We are very fortunate to have a lot of people in the laboratory that have
been with us for a long time and that philosophy of quality, that idea of doing it right
the first time, is something that we have developed over a period of time.
How important is your own involvement and Barry’s involvement, that ‘handson’? I mean, you have been with the company now a long time: are you going to
be able to delegate and hand over?
That is something that we are actually doing now. We have  we have looked very
seriously at succession and it is something that often family businesses do not do till
the last moment. I am on the wrong side of 55 and I want to do other things as well.
So in the last year we have actually been writing a succession plan. We also have
two sons  our children are adopted  and our eldest son is Ralph and he is 24 next
month, and he has just finished university, has a degree in manufacturing,
engineering and automation, and a double degree with management focus. He is
also doing accountancy at the moment whilst working. Our second son, Kiyosaku is
20, and he is going through university. He is doing electronic engineering with a
double degree in management and language. And both our children are Japanese, of
Japanese origin  Japanese-American and Japanese-Korean  and they are very keen
to come into the business, but not on an everyday focus like we are. In fact, twelve
months ago Barry and I started to step away and delegate, and start to make other
people realise that, you know, the company is not Barry and Patricia Crook; it is
made up of everyone that is there. I certainly realise that we need to take another
focus  not just me  but I think that that will probably come in the next three years
when we are putting marketing people in to take the position that I am doing. I am
not doing the overseas travelling as much because I have an export executive who is
doing that now. But I still get invited by some of the companies because they want
to see the principal, or Barry will get the invitation, you know. They want him to
travel and meet with them.
How did you manage to find time to squeeze in the adoption of two children? This
is something that we haven’t talked about. It is important, because you do have
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this profile as a very intense businesswoman: what then made you think that you
needed to adopt children?
Well, we went through so many miscarriages and then I didn’t want to go on any
programmes to see if I could become pregnant, and I am very much philosophic, that
it was not meant to be. I said to Barry, ‘We can’t adopt  we can’t have our own;
maybe we should adopt.’ He said, ‘Oh no, no, no, I don’t want to.’ And I decided I
wouldn’t push it because adoption is a very personal thing.
I knew he would
probably do it if I wanted to, and I felt that he had to want to do it too. So he came
to me one day and he said, ‘I think we should adopt,’ and I said, ‘That’s great.’ So
we started the process of talking to the Department of Community Welfare, and
anyway they said, ‘Look, you should really go and try again and see if you can,’ and
we did and anyway by the time we had gone through all the trying again and finding
out it wasn’t working we went back to them and they had actually changed the rules
and Barry was too old. So we went away and I said, ‘Well,’ you know, ‘what about
an older child?’ Because actually any child over the age of two is disadvantaged by
the fact that it is two: its age puts it right out of people  they want to have
something they can pick up, cuddle and bond with. After long, long discussions and
a lot of soul-searching, we decided to adopt an older child. And we decided to let  I
guess let nature or God, whatever you want to call it, take its course. And it took us
five years to adopt Ralph. And the interesting thing about it was that we went
through all the processes and I can always remember the Department of Community
Welfare saying to me, ‘How are you going to cope when you look into this face of a
child that comes from Asia that looks different? How are you going to say, “This is
my child.”?’
Why did you turn to Asia? Was it because it was easier or, again, because you
had developed this connection with Japan?
Well, we had developed a connection with Japan and I liked the culture; I liked the
streamline, the cleanliness, the honesty of the place. And, of course, when we went
to actually say, ‘We want to adopt from Japan,’ they said, ‘Oh no, they all go to
America; none of their children ever come to Australia.’ So that was a bit of a
challenge. And I said, ‘Well, look, I will do all the paperwork,’ so I used to send the
Community Welfare all my letters and did all  basically did the work, and worked
31
through the International Adoption Agency in Melbourne.
I always remember
getting a call one day at work and she said, ‘Mrs Crook, I am so delighted to tell you
you have a son.’ And I said, ‘That is wonderful,’ and, you know, the first thing you
said, ‘What is his name?’ The weirdest thing about this is that Barry always had a
nickname for people, you know, Australians, we’re great at giving people
nicknames, and his nickname for people in the ….. was Ralph. And what happens?
Ralph. And she said, ‘His name is Ralph Iwasaki,’ and of course the Japanese for
that is ….. So I said, ‘That’s wonderful. How old is he?’ And they said, ‘He is six.’
Well, anyway, it took a long, long time and eventually he ended up here in Australia
and, as I say, after he had been here a year we decided, we all talked about adopting
another one. So Kiyosaku came along, so we have a Kiyosaku Matsumura and he
was nine. You ask me how difficult it was? Well, I have always taken challenges on
the chin  but I have to tell you that Kiyo was a challenge because he was nine and
you have got to remember that they have already got their personalities. You can’t
try and change someone, though; you have to accept them as they are. And when we
actually went to pick him up he was in a Catholic orphanage in Osaka and I will
always remember when we met him on the Osaka railway station.
They actually brought him to the Osaka railway station?
Yes. With this nun. She was six foot four, a huge woman, and  her name was
Sister Suzanne. Actually, it’s the first woman I ever felt petite up against. She gave
me this huge hug and whispered in my ear, she said, ‘I am going to have to do a lot
of ‘Our Fathers’ and ‘Hail Marys’ because I have lied to you.’ She said, ‘He is very
tiny for nine  in fact, stunted  and he is retarded.’ And I said, ‘Where is he?’ And
she said, ‘He is inside my skirts.’  that’s how tiny he was. He stepped out from her
skirts and there he was. And she had taken all of his photographs by kneeling down
and looking up at him to make him appear larger than what he was. I can always
remember sort of my mouth dropping and Barry saying, ‘What’s wrong?’ and I said,
‘He is very short and he is retarded.’ What can you do, you know? You can’t sort of
turn away.
So we went to the orphanage and I had a look at him, and his great thing was to
actually hide in cupboards and jump out at people, and he kept that up until he was
32
around about twelve, I have to tell you. But I just looked at him and I thought,
‘Mm,’ you know, ‘it is all about communication and love,’ and of course Kiyo
wouldn’t talk. He was very stubborn, but also I am very stubborn, and I can always
remember when we got him home he said, ‘Why do you want such  I am such a
little nothing; I am not important.’ So we had to start building his character up. I
would never bend down to talk to him; I would stand him on a chair and eyeball him.
We had some interesting times. But I can remember one time, I asked him, I said,
‘You must keep up your Japanese language.’ ‘No, I’m not going to; I am Australian
now; I am going to speak Australian.’ And I said, ‘No, you are going to keep your
language.’ So I used to send both of them to school on Saturday mornings, when
everyone else was out playing footy   . Now, of course, he is absolutely pleased
as punch that he has got his second language.
I have to tell you that he was sitting there one day and I said, ‘You are going to
write this story in Japanese,’ and he said, ‘No, I am not.’ I can always remember, it
was a Sunday morning and I was actually running around in my nightie. I said, look,
your mother is not going to get changed: you are going to sit there and you are
going to write this story. I don’t care, none of us are  I am not getting changed until
you do. I can always remember it was eight o’clock in the morning; two o’clock in
the afternoon I was still running round in my nightie and he still had the pen in his
hand. And he said, ‘This is terrible: I hate writing stories.’ Of course I didn’t
realise that when you have lived in an orphanage for most of your life what history
do you have to write about? You know, you do the same thing every day, day in,
day out, it is totally regimented. I mean, what sort of history have you got to write
about? So anyway, all of a sudden he started to write and I thought, ‘This is
wonderful.’ Anyway, he ended up with a page of Japanese ….. and all of a sudden
my  Ralph looked at me, he said, ‘You know, Mum,’ he said, ‘He is writing the
same thing over and over again but he is staggering it down the page so you can’t
pick up that it is the same thing.’ And I said, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘What is he
writing?’ ‘He is saying, he is writing, “Tell me a story”  the words that you said.’
And I said, ‘Oh.’ So I went over and picked it up and tore it up and I said, ‘Don’t
you ever do that again!’
He said, ‘I didn’t know you could read Japanese!’
(laughter) ‘I can do anything. Just write me  I only want a paragraph, you know,
33
this big.’ And he said, ‘Okay.’ And that is when I realised he was actually a lot
smarter than anyone had ever given him credit for, and he has gone on to getting his
degree and speaking a second language and doing all sorts of wonderful things.
Did you ever ring the nun back and tell her 
Yes   .
 that she didn’t have to say all those ‘Hail Marys’?
No, no. Well, I just  well, I don’t know: she was probably saying them for quite a
while before I rang her. And we still send a card at Christmas.
You had a lovely story when you, the first day that you picked him up. Was that
Ralph?
When I picked Ralph up, yes. I met Ralph in Tokyo because he was born in
Yokohama and he was actually brought to the office of the Department of  their
Community Welfare. I always remember, I fronted up  you know, you could
imagine this fair-haired woman wearing a white dress, and I never realised that white
was the colour of death in Japan, and he sort of took one look at me and he had his
teddy  it was Mickey Mouse, actually, which he has still got  clutched in his hand
looking at this foreigner, you know, and he didn’t want to talk at all. We were
leaving the place and he started to scream out ‘Abu nai, abu nai [?]’ which was, you
know, ‘Help me, help me, I am being taken off by this terrible woman,’ and we got
into the taxi, he screamed the whole way until we got to the Imperial Hotel, opposite
the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. He screamed the whole way.
I had a social worker, he had a social worker, and she said, ‘I don’t know how you
are going to cope with this because he is being really difficult.’ And I looked at him
and there he was  his eyes were dry. I mean, there were no tears; it was just, you
know, crocodile tears. And we got out and I asked him to pay the taxi driver. I gave
him the money, and  and of course you don’t realise that when a child is in an
orphanage they never ever get to see what money is all about. So anyway I told him
what he had to do  bearing in mind that my Japanese is very limited and he, his
English was practically non-existent  and we got into the hotel and I said to the guy
who gave us the rooms, ‘Please make it at the end of the corridor because I think it’s
34
going to be noisy.’ We got into the lift and I said to the two social workers, ‘This is
where we say goodbye.’ She said, ‘How are you going to cope?’ And I said, ‘I have
to cope: I’m his mother; I have to cope. I believe I can.’
Anyway, I got him into the hotel, first thing he did was shut himself in the
bathroom and said, ‘I am never coming out,’ or words to that effect. So anyway,
after about an hour, the door clicked and he walked and he sat up on the bed and I
talked to him and I read. Barry had made him tapes and we listed to all this sort of
thing together. And even now when I ask him what did I say to him he laughs and
he says, ‘Mum, you basically told me that you were going to love me a lot and that
Dad and you were going to take care of me,’ and I said, ‘Oh, okay,’ I said, ‘but I can
remember talking to you for about an hour;’ he said, ‘Yes, but that was the basic
idea.’
END OF TAPE 2 SIDE A: TAPE 2 SIDE B
Interview with Patricia Crook. Patricia, you were awarded or appointed an
Officer of the Order of Australia in 1998. What has that meant to you in your
life?
I must say that when I heard that I had been appointed to this Order, I was absolutely
amazed. But I was very honoured because I realised that my peers had thought
enough to sit down and actually write about me and about what I had been doing in
the industry, because I received an award for assistance for small to medium-sized
enterprises in business and in export. And I was overwhelmed with the fact that they
had taken the time to sit down and write this, which had evidently being going on for
over twelve months.
I really thought about, you know, should I accept it or
shouldn’t I, and I accepted it on the basis because I thought, first of all, the people
thought enough of me to nominate me for it, and somebody obviously thought that I
was worthwhile to give me this award; the other thing I thought, ‘Well, if I have this
award, how will it benefit not only me but for the things that I want to do,’ and that
is to develop small to medium-sized enterprises and to develop business generally.
And I spoke to several people who had the award, the Order, and they told me that I
could use it to benefit not only myself but other people, and that’s why I accepted it.
You stated then that you thought you may not accept it: what would have been
your reasons for not accepting it?
35
The reason why I thought about not accepting it was the fact that, you know, was it
really Australian or was it something that was British, and  but then I thought to
myself, ‘Well, it is Australian and it is by Australians and it’s for an Australian,’ and
that is what made me accept it. But I was concerned about the fact that maybe it had
sort of connotations of class distinction, I guess, was running around in my mind a
couple of times.
Obviously that would have been connected to your early childhood and your own
background coming from England: how would you say that it is different, that
it’s not part of that thing of saying to people you are better than other people in
society? What does this award give?
Well, actually I think that  I’d like to think that we all think that we are equal, and I
believe in that philosophy, that we are. But I have to tell you that there are people
out there that put you on a particular pedestal or put you in a particular area, and they
give you power without them even knowing that they are doing it. Because they are
creating that class system, and no matter how hard you try to change it and how hard
you try to say to them, ‘I am no different than anyone else,’ it is people that put you
there. It is  and I don’t know how we are going to change that, but it is just that
when people who do it, it isn’t actually the individual that says, ‘I am better than
anyone else,’ because I certainly don’t believe I am. I mean, my mother and father
were great levellers. Any time they ever thought that I was terribly important my
father would really level me out very quickly  and so does my husband. I mean,
Barry is a great one for, you know, if you said to me, ‘Well, now you have got the
Order of Australia, does that mean that, you know, we have to do the washing up?
Because, you know, you are wrong!’ Nothing has really changed, except that I guess
a few more doors have opened.
That’s interesting. Can you remember when you were awarded the   ?
Yes, I can.
Would you like to describe that day 
Yes.
 the ceremony, the pomp, the pageantry?
36
Well, I knew  I have known Sir Eric for some time, because he is a great champion
for business and the State and being in the business community I have been invited
to Government House quite a few times. And I always remember that I felt as
though I was very much in a family atmosphere: I didn’t feel as though it was pomp
and ceremony. When I walked down the centre my family were there and of course
all the other families were there, too, and I can always remember the collar was
actually supposed to be put around my neck and Sir Eric decided to put it over my
head and the little clip got caught in my hair and he sort of said to me, ‘How do you
think we are going here?’ and I sort of had to bob down and then I could hear the
audience at the back sort of begin to sigh with relief as the collar went down over my
head. But I felt as though I was with friends, and the people there, I mean, they
came up to me afterwards and they said, ‘Congratulations, and,’ you know, ‘wasn’t
Sir Eric terrific. You know, you bobbed down so that he could get the thing out of
your hair,’ and it was great, and everybody was the same. And I did not feel there
was pomp and ceremony. I think we are very fortunate to have Sir Eric and Lady
Neal there because they are great, really great people.
Who were some of the other people there on that day?
Ah, goodness! Mind’s a blank. But I can tell you that Barry was there and my boys
were there, and that was important to me. It was a family thing, as far as I was
concerned, and of course, you know, you sort of wish that your parents could be
there. I think that was the one thing that really upsets me even now to think about it,
that it would be nice if they had been there. I think my father  I know my Mum and
Dad would have been extremely proud of me.
Barry has always been, obviously, in your life a man who is very generous in
nature. Did you feel that he should have also have been nominated in some way?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, there isn’t anything that I get that he doesn’t deserve as
well. I mean, you don’t get these things without a lot of self-sacrifice in the family.
When you have a business you both sacrifice so much. To allow me to go out and
do things he has had to always be there and has often has said to me, you know, that
he’s played a background role.
But that was his choice, and certainly we’ve
37
discussed it. And he’s certainly  he does other things within the business; we don’t
sort of cross over.
And you’re much more the public front of the company.
Yes, yes.
And an advocate for small business.
Yes, yes.
You mentioned that this award has opened certain doors to you: which of those 
would you like  can you elaborate on which are those doors, in what way?
I think  well, the thing of course is there are not a lot of small  not of business
women that have got a reasonably high profile, and we need to change that. I think
that  I think it’s a little hard to actually describe to you, but I guess the fact that I
have got the AO, the fact that I am older  a very mature person, I am not a threat
and therefore I can move within business men’s circles and I can get on and do
things; whereas  I don’t attract very much attention, I don’t think, because I am not
very young. But I am there and I plod on and I get things done. So I guess they let
me in, into many areas.
So the doors have opened. And in one respect, too, the notion that to be awarded
as a woman for business skills and the recognition of that publicly must be very
important in terms of providing a role model for other women in the community,
that it’s outside traditional women’s roles of community service or arts, that this
is a very significant award.
I believe so. And it shows to other women that you can do it. I mean, I have talked
to a lot of women’s groups, and I recently talked to the Zonta group  at their recent
national conference I was their guest speaker here  and my theme was ‘Never,
never give up.’ Because a lot of women do give up, and they say, ‘Well, it is all too
hard; I am not going to do this.’ But I hope that I am that beacon that says, ‘Well,
from whatever background you come from, from whatever education you have, from
whatever your colour, your creed is, you can do it in Australia,’ and I honestly
believe that.
So that’s a lovely irony in many respects, because you are such  you do love
Australia and you love its egalitarian nature, and you’re actually using this award
in a sense to further those aspirations and ideals.
38
Absolutely. I mean, we  women have to wave the flag and say, ‘This is what you
can do.’ And I am not a feminist, but I believe in  when I look at a person I look at
them as a human being; I don’t look at them as being female or male. I look at them
as their culture, what they are doing in their community, what they are doing in their
business; but the fact that they are male or female to my eyes, it just doesn’t even
enter the conversation.
Do you think that goes back to your early upbringing by your parents, in that
there wasn’t that differentiation obviously through gender?
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I’m sure that my mother and father were instrumental
in the way I think now, particularly from the fact that I can accept anyone from any
part of this world, and it would not matter what they were or anything, yes, so
absolutely.
Finally, Patricia, has there ever been a moment in your life when you have had
self-doubt and when you have thought, ‘No, it is all too hard.’? Have you been
fragile at times?
Of course. I don’t think that anyone is ever  can go through their lives and say they
are not fragile. But let me say to you I have never lost focus, but there are times
when, you know, you are tired; things are not working out the way you feel; you
have got an enormous amount of pressure on you and you think to yourself, ‘God,
how am I going to get rid of this?’ But I have always known that I would achieve
and continue to achieve, but there certainly have been times when I have found a
quiet corner when I have had a good howl  usually in the car, away from everyone
 and said, you know, ‘Why am I doing all this?’ It doesn’t last very long. Usually
the phone rings, and things   . I love people, because I can  you know, I feed
off of them; it’s like somebody  if someone’s very unhappy, I have to watch out
because I can be very unhappy with them, but most times I love people that are
exciting, that are focused, that are achievers, that want to get on, and I surround
myself with that sort of environment. So when I’m not feeling that brilliant, I go and
have a good injection of ‘I can be anything, I can do anything,’ type person.
Thank you very much.
You’re welcome.
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TAPE ENDS.
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