My Mum was born 92 years ago, the eldest child and only daughter of Harold and Ruby Jensen, farmers at Mondure in Queensland’s South Burnett region.
She was a shy child, but from her earliest years showed the true grit that would define her.
At the age of six, she rode her black pony Mona all by herself two miles to Keysland School to start Grade One.
When she fell off, she didn’t want her much-loved pony to get in trouble, so she climbed back on and didn’t tell a soul.
More than forty years later, a friend’s Dad spotted me at the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane and his eyes lit up in recognition.
“You’d have to be Sylvia Jensen’s daughter,” he said. “I went to school with your Mum at Keysland. She was the smartest kid in the school!”
Unfortunately Mum didn’t get the chance to pursue her studies.
In 1943 her parents moved the family to the Callide Valley. Biloela didn’t have a high school and Mum finished her schooling at Mt Murchison Primary.
She was the eldest, thirteen years old, and had to work on the farm. Her four younger brothers were eleven, seven, six and a new-born, and a fifth arrived three years later when Mum was sixteen.
She often said she worked like a man in those early days on the dairy farm. Yet she made time to teach herself dress-making and became an accomplished seamstress.
She sewed her own debutante’s gown and bridal dresses for local ladies.
By the time her younger brothers were old enough to work the farm, Mum had earned her stake in a little house in Biloela.
She loved dancing and tennis, fashion and travel. She ran a local dress shop and even managed to escape to the Whitsundays on a glamorous working holiday.
She was an elegant figure our Mum, long-legged and slim, clever yet shy.
It was inevitable that she would catch the eye of a handsome young Dutchman working hard to make his mark in a new country.
Theirs was a love match. Mum married my dad Ted Bongers in May 1959.
She sewed her own wedding gown and the dress worn by her Matron of Honour.
(Such was the quality of her work that the bridesmaid dress outlived her. Karen, one of her much-loved six daughters-in-law, wore it more than 63 years later at Mum’s funeral.)
Ted and Sylvia honeymooned in North Queensland, and the children came, thick and fast.
Twins, Tony and Peter, nine months and five days after the wedding. Me a year later. Mike two years after me. And the little twins, Rick and Tim, two years after that.
Six kids in five years.
And eight years later, Jason arrived to surpise us all when Mum was 42.
Mum was a legend, juggling babies in that little house in Biloela while Dad share-farmed 300 kilometres away at Springsure.
Juggling more babies in a house without electricity at their first farm out the back of Jambin.
And more babies again, back in Bilo when the eldest started school.
She was clever, our Mum, packing the big twins and me off to school before we turned five, so that she never had more than four preschoolers at home at once.
In 1967, Mum and Dad bought the farm at Jambin where my brothers Tony and Peter and their wives Bridget and Janelle still live.
The tiny three bedroom home housed eight of us, with the five boys sharing a room.
In 1972, an extension added an activity room for us, a sewing room for Mum, two extra bedrooms and the luxury of our first indoor toilet.
Mum and Dad were a partnership, T&SR Bongers, but as kids we knew who was boss.
Dad put Mum on a pedestal, and if you wanted anything, it was always “Ask Mum”.
She showed love for her ravenous horde with freshly baked biscuits every day after school, puddings for dessert, six neatly packed school lunches on the bench every morning.
A piece of fruit, a meat sandwich for protein, and a jam sandwich to sweeten our day.
Little Rick had the sweetest tooth, and in a family of carnivores, he never had any trouble swopping his sandwiches for all jam.
For me, the only girl, she sewed her fingers to the bone.
Dresses and hotpants, a white satin Abba jumpsuit for 70s discos, and a red satin off-the-shoulder gown with a thigh-high split to make me queen of the prom.
Poor Mum. Dad often said I was more trouble than my six brothers put together.
I remember boldly announcing I was leaving school at 14 (I had secretly sat the Commonwealth Bank exam and had been offered a job starting immediately).
Mum’s hidden steel came out. “Over my dead body,” she said. “You are finishing high school, my girl.”
And I did.
I think we only truly understand how much our parents loved us when we have children of our own.
The night I had my daughter Clancy, I couldn’t rest until I had phoned Mum and apologised for my appalling behaviour as a teenager.
She laughed and said she’d waited a long time to hear that. (Twenty-two years at least, to my shame.)
When I left home to go to Uni, she told Dad she wanted to visit me in Brisbane.
He was busy on the farm and said the trip would have to wait.
So she packed up five year old Jason, caught a McCafferty’s bus at 4am and sat through a 14 hour bus ride via Toowoomba to Brisbane. Just to see me.
Mum was quiet, but determined, and nothing could change her mind once she set her heart on something.
She always loved a sea view, and in particular, the beaches where we had holidayed as children.
I remember phoning home from Europe in 1987 and discovering that Mum had packed up and moved house to Yeppoon.
She had bought Gadabouts Boutique, fulfilling a lifelong dream to own her own dress shop.
Yeppoon became Mum and Dad’s much-loved retirement home.
Mum indulged her loved of travel, dragging an often reluctant Dad to places far-flung … Egypt and the Holy Lands, Holland, the Kimberleys, Tasmania, the Ord River and more.
After Dad’s death twenty years ago, Mum stayed on in Yeppoon until health challenges forced her hand.
In 2009, she moved back to Bilo to be closer to family and her lifelong friends.
Hers was a long, productive and successful life, with seven happily-married children, twenty-four grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren.
Family was everything to her. Being the matriarch of a large, close-knit family was her life’s work and her joy.
And as she grew frailer, it became her mainstay and support.
With family support, and the help of home carers, Mum was able to keep living at home until just before her 92nd birthday.
My Bilo-based brothers, Tony, Peter, Tim and Rick and their wonderful wives Bridget, Janelle, Leesa and Karen, were daily visitors, with Mike, Jason and I returning regularly to Bilo in Mum’s final months.
The devotion of my brothers and their wives to Mum was inspirational, and something I was proud to witness and be part of.
Following a fall in early October, Mum entered Wahroonga Aged Care, where she spent her final ten weeks bed-ridden with daily visits from family and friends.
Jason and I were with Mum the week before she died.
Mike and Moy spent precious days with her over Christmas.
Tony, Peter, Tim and Rick, with the unwavering support of their wives, mounted vigil in Mum’s final days.
She died at 11.20pm with Peter holding her hand, telling her that we all loved her, it was time to join Dad, Ma and Pop, and her brothers Eddie and Bevan.
She died, as she had lived, surrounded by the love of her family.
The Biloela church was full for her funeral, and a magpie serenaded her gravesite at Yeppoon where she was laid to rest next to her dearly-loved Ted.
Mum, I just want to say that you always led by example, and you taught us well.
So, we’ve got this Mum, we can take it from here.
You’ve earned your right to rest in peace.
For instance, I would NEVER have thought of buying a book called 
He allowed us all to dream big dreams and dare to believe that if we worked hard enough, we could make them come true.
Along with Michael Gerard Bauer and Lucia Masciullo, I’ll be sharing what being short listed has meant to my life and career.
Christine Bongers 