May 5, 1973 AD
A Son for Marine Terrace
David Geoffrey Marston was born at 6:12 am at the Burnie Hospital, the first child of schoolteacher Evelyn Joyce Marston and fisherman Geoffrey Walter Marston. Geoffrey waited out the night in the corridor, saw his son through the nursery glass and at his wife's bedside, and settled the boy's middle name as his own. Then he went down to the wharf and took the Steady Return out on the morning tide. Evelyn spent the rest of the day with her mother-in-law, Margaret Rose Marston.
David Geoffrey Marston was born at 6:12 am at the Burnie Hospital on the north-west coast of Tasmania, the first child of Evelyn Joyce Marston, a teacher at Burnie Primary School, and Geoffrey Walter Marston, owner and skipper of the trawler Steady Return. He weighed seven pounds nine ounces. The labour was long but without complication, and he was delivered by the hospital's resident medical officer, Dr Alan Fennell, with Sister Joan Rudd attending.
Evelyn's labour began in the small hours at the house on Marine Terrace. Geoffrey drove her to the hospital in the utility he used for the boat and was sent, as fathers then were, to the corridor outside the labour ward. He sat there through the rest of the night on a wooden bench, without a newspaper. Sister Rudd came out to him a little after the birth to tell him he had a son.
He saw the baby first through the glass of the nursery window, washed and wrapped in a hospital blanket, and then briefly at Evelyn's bedside. He held his son for a short time and handed him back. Evelyn had already chosen the name David, which belonged to no one in either family. Geoffrey told her that the middle name would be Geoffrey, his own and his grandfather's. He did not put it as a question. Evelyn, exhausted, did not argue, and the name went onto the hospital card as he had given it.
The Steady Return was due out on the morning tide, with ice loaded and a deckhand waiting at the wharf. Geoffrey had told Evelyn weeks earlier that the trip could not be put off, and he did not put it off. He left the hospital within the hour, drove down to the port and took the boat out of Burnie harbour into Bass Strait. He was at sea for two days.
Margaret Rose Marston, Geoffrey's mother, walked up from Wivenhoe later in the morning and stayed with her daughter-in-law until the evening. She held her grandson, inspected him with care, and made no remark on her son's absence. At Evelyn's request the hospital switchboard placed a trunk call to the Carringtons in Launceston, and Evelyn told her mother the news herself, from the telephone at the end of the ward. She did not mention the boat.
