Obituaries Australia

Margaret Bettison, no date

Supplied by the author

When we walked through the grand entrance to this magnificent building we could see up high an inscription beginning ‘In Books lies the soul of whole past time’. In this library Margaret explored past time with boundless curiosity.

Margaret Selina Bettison was born in 1927 in Kapunda Hospital the eldest child of Tom and Margaret who lived in Mt Mary, which as the crow flies is about 120km North East of Adelaide.  Calling it mount is a bit of a stretch as it is only about 70 feet  high. She was a twin, sadly her twin brother died a few weeks after birth. From time to time in the last year of her life his death and the death of three other brothers would acutely distress her.

Margaret attended the local primary school. To attend high school  she had to go to Kapunda to live with her grandmother. This school had only had 70 pupils making it the smallest high school in the State. She was determined to go to university, then something that only a minority of men did, and for women it was very rare.

To  matriculate she needed subjects not offered at Kapunda and went to Adelaide to attend High school there and lived in a boarding house. She got a teachers scholarship and went to Adelaide University where she gained a BA in 1949, followed by Dip Ed in 1952. She did not like teaching to which she was bound for three years.  Then she began her career as a librarian, gaining a certificate in Librarianship in 1956. She was a wonderful librarian who would take great trouble to search out elusive references for those who were lucky enough to get her on the desk.

And although she didn’t like teaching throughout her life liked sharing knowledge. For instance she was a big fan of Radio National and book programmes were among her favourites. If there was a book about a topic of interest to someone in her circle she would alert them to it and may even buy the book for them. Thanks to Radio National she was recommending books right up until the end of 2022. 

Margaret worked in the Smith Barr Library at the University of Adelaide for three years. Then like many adventurous middle class Australians of the 1950s and 60s she sailed for England. In September 1956 she arrived in London, expecting to find accommodation and work. She unsuccessfully tried to get a job in the legendary Foyles Bookstore, and by a quirk of fate she would 20 years later marry a man called Foyle. She soon got a temporary job at the Institute of Education Library. I have found her detailed diary for this period of her life. It describes looking for work, accommodation, going to galleries and theatres. She had studied German at university and to improve her German worked as a mother’s help in Miesbach for some months. She wrote to her family often then as she did until the phone displaced letters as a way of keeping in touch. 

On learning that her mother had become very ill she flew from London on 16 August 1958 to Perth. Sadly her mother had just died.  

She was still keen to travel and in 1960 she set of for Canada to work in Vancouver Public Library in British Columbia. Among her papers I found several manuscripts of short stories, some set in the South Australia of her childhood, which she submitted for publication. One story, The Children, captures the anguish of a child’s death, Radio Canada accepted this work and paid her $150

On returning to Australia she worked for the Library Board of WA from 1964-1968. Then off again, this time Kuala Lumpur to work in the Prime Ministers Department from 1969-1971. 

She returned to Australia and in 1972 became research assistant, and then senior researcher to Professor Henry Mayer in the  Dept of Government and Public Administration. Margaret was quite diffident but underneath was a person who could not be pushed around. Years ago I met Henry Mayer’s widow, I told her my friend Margaret worked with him and she said Oh Yes “The Steel Mouse”.    

In 1976 she became a librarian at the Law Library UNSW where she remained until her retirement in 1984.  While there she compiled Introduction to Legal Research Material UNSW

When she returned to Australia she rented a place in her Glebe. Soon after she actually bought her own place in Denison Street Camperdown. In those days very few single women bought house because banks would not lend to women. 

Around this time she saw an ad for a singles group outing to the Art Gallery. There she met Ernie Foyle, plasterer and divorcee with 6 children. His friendliness impressed her. They married in 1977 and Margaret sold her house in Camperdown and that money helped them purchase Ernie’s mother’s house in Coogee. Ernie and Margaret were both interested in art, Aboriginal issues and politics.  Margaret used her formidable research skills to delve into Ernie’s forebears from a social history perspective. They had several trips around NSW looking for where family had lived and meeting distant relatives. They travelled to Canada, Denmark, Western Australia and ACT to visit the step children and Margaret’s relatives.

After Margaret retired she enrolled in the new field of women’s studies gaining an MA  (History) UNSW 1988. Over a number of years she wrote eight entries, all but one of them about women, for the Australian Dictionary of Biography. We would sometimes go to where one of her subjects had lived. We went to Edgecliff and found the building named Shirley where Newcombe and Hodge ran their school over 100 years ago.

Margaret got great satisfaction from researching the lives of ordinary people, particularly women, and writing their stories.

In the late 1990s Jill Roe asked Margaret to be a researcher for her acclaimed biography of Miles Franklin. This was before online resources and involved hundreds of hours poring over documents and endless microfilms, often barely legible, of newspapers. We often discussed what she had found in the library and how it impacted Miles daily life. 

In the 1980s she became very good friends with historian Audrey Tate. They spent many hours in this library researching and discussing their projects and phoning each other almost daily. But Margaret’s glaucoma worsened and she could no longer pore over microfilms and Audrey’s health declined and sadly their contact gradually faded.

Paul and I met Margaret in the 1980s as Paul was a friend of Ernie. At Ernie’s funeral in 2000, a friend of Margaret, the historian Beverley Kingston, asked me “Look after Margaret.” I thought Margaret was very nice and I was certainly happy to look out for her. We became good friends, sharing our interest in history, reading, word puzzles and current affairs. She regularly came to our place to do the Saturday cryptic crossword. She was a perfect speller with an enormous vocabulary. When she could no longer see the crossword grid she could still help. She did the SMH Target every day after I read out the 9 letters to her.

Margaret had severe glaucoma and was legally blind for at least ten years. At first she could still read. Margaret coped stoically with her decreasing sight, which for a writer, reader and lover of art and is awful. She listened to audio books biographies, the classics and of course Radio National. When she was about 90, the eye specialist suggested she get an iPad. She was doubtful at first but then became a great friend of Siri, who at 2am one morning told her it was time she was asleep Much to Margaret’s amusement.

As her sight deteriorated Vision Australia helped her maintain her independence. Until she was about 95 she would walk up the street with her white stick to have a coffee or go to the local shops. She had good hearing and would listen for traffic but if ever unsure she would wait patiently and invariably someone would help her cross the road. She was so moved by the kindness of strangers. She continued to live in Brook Street until the last year of her life when her support needs increased and she moved into Montefiore, Randwick. 

Margaret was softly spoken but underneath was  a steely determination and for her time she was really rather radical. This was demonstrated firstly by going to university and then by becoming part of the exodus of young Australians who went overseas to discover a more exciting world. At a time when it was almost impossible for a single woman to own a home she bought her own house and later she joined a singles group and found a partner. She was a committed feminist and a supporter of Aboriginal causes long before such support was widespread

Margaret was also interested in the lives of the people she knew, family, friends, neighbours and later the various professionals and carers who came to assist her at home.

I miss my kind intelligent friend with boundless curiosity and perfect spelling.