I was born in 1927. They tell me I was born at the farmhouse, which was located where the Berkeley Road bridge now goes over the freeway. I was the second eldest out of three girls and two boys. My father Leo Condon, came from a dairy farm at Jamberoo. My mother was Margaret Martin and her parents bought the Jamberoo Hotel in 1914. My parents got married in St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney. They left Jamberoo at 4am to get to Sydney by 9am. My father leased the dairy farm at Unanderra from the Lindsays.

The farm was over 180 acres. The south boundary was from the Nan Tien Temple going across to the crematorium to Berkeley Road. It followed the old Berkeley Road to the railway station. It was L-shaped and the cemetery was in the middle. When there was a funeral, cars used to drive up through the paddocks on the farm. We had about 40 cows. We met a lot of fishermen from Berkeley. If we were walking to school, they'd pick you up and give you a ride in the car. They would leave parcels of prawns and fish for us on the gatepost and dad would leave parcels of vegetables for them. There was only seven houses in Berkeley. We knew all of them, such as the Waples and Barrett and Burgess and Jobson families. We were a nice, close lot of people. We were the only ones with a phone and we used to take messages for people. Mr Waples got sick and I went over and helped them milk the cows. During the war, we had big anti-aircraft guns along the coast. At night time they used to fly a plane out at sea towing a big white target behind and they used to practise shooting at it. The ammunition for those guns was stored in a shed next to where the Jenkins house used to be.

We worked hard as kids. It was a good healthy life. We had a big vegetable garden, plenty of milk and cream. I don't know how old I was when I started milking cows. We walked a mile to catch the bus to school. I went to St John's at Dapto, then Christian Brothers. In 1938-39, there was a big drought and a third of our stock died. We had to hook them onto horses and drag them to a dry hole in the creek. It was a very distressing time. On Black Saturday in 1939, there was a big bush fire and the escarpment was alight. The burnt leaves were hitting our house; that's how close it was. At Unanderra we had a blacksmith and a general store, Jay's. The milk was taken from our farm down to a drop-off point near the railway station and it was picked by truck and taken to Dapto. The council resumed all the farms in 1938 to use as future industrial sites. My parents stayed at the farm. Mum died in 1954 and dad left the house in 1964. The freeway was built around 1965.

I was 16 when I finished school. I was off for school for six months when I was 12 because of rheumatic fever. I had swollen ankles and knees. It was very horrible. My father bought me a pushbike and got me an apprenticeship to a painter at Lysaghts. My boss was a very fastidious fellow. He was the biggest bludger on God's earth but by God he knew what he was doing. Every afternoon, at 20 past three he rolled a smoke and went to the toilet - that was him for the day. He went on holidays one year and he left me two railway trucks to paint and signwrite. He came back and we didn't have much work so he told the top office it wasn't good enough and made me repaint them again. There was a big coal strike at Lysaghts and we all got put off. I worked for a contractor and started out on my own at the age of 22.

I met my wife Shirley David, at a dance at Wollongong RSL when I was 17. I always danced with this nice girl then she brought her sister along and I ran off with her sister. She wouldn't get married until she was 21 because she had to get permission from her parents. We got married in September 1949. We bought a block of land at Gwynneville and we rented a flat in Finlayson Street, Wollongong. We bought the house here in West Wollongong in 1959. We've been here ever since. I retired in 1997. My wife died two years ago. Last year I went along to the Berkeley Pioneer Cemetery Restoration Group and I was talking about the farming families so they asked me to give a talk this year.