20/11/2025
Strap in…it’s going to be a long one….it’s not a rant, just a love letter.
I have never given my kids much parenting advice but something I do say is “look around your graduating class boys because one day you might marry one of them”.
“No way” they scream “not one of those bunch of nerds”.
I finished my high schooling at the Sunshine Coast, where surfing was an actual sport. That
meant the boys went surfing with the physics teacher and the girls sat on the beach crocheting our new bikinis. Sadly, Puberty Blues was on the money.
So when I went to QIT to study optometry and met someone like Dean Sullivan, I wasn’t quite
sure what I was dealing with. He liked to do the crossword and talk about the Juliet Jones comic strip. I remember the first time I saw him, he was wearing a sloppy joe with a cut out transfer of the Wacky Races on it. He had clearly hand-sown it on himself.
His recollection of our first meeting was that I said “ooh…you have nice feet, we have shocking feet in our family, my sister’s feet are like Rubik’s Cubes ….as wide as they are high”
I often wondered what it would be like to be someone worthy of Dean’s conversation, to be one of his quirky fascinations, something like Wolverine, Lord of the Rings or David Bowie. He loved his underground music while I was still dreaming of the Coast and Cold Chisel and Australian Crawl.
I had never met anyone as smart….super smart… as him. One exam block he got the timetable boxed up and studied for the wrong exam. He still did better than I did. He lived with Grandma Sullivan in Everton Park and rode his bike everywhere.
Occasionally Dean stayed at my place if we had been out seeing bands with my rockstar
boyfriend and he didn’t want to disappoint grandma by not getting home by 5.00pm dinner.
We graduated from optometry in 1987 (see photo) and Dean went to Adelaide and I went to Cairns. A few years later we were both back in Brisbane and decided to set up a practice
together at Indooroopilly. We had all the stationary printed and our names printed on the door.
He was going to work during the week and I was to work Thursday night and Saturday’s (I was off studying catering by then!)
The first week rolled around, and it got to Thursday, I rang Dean….”I can’t come, I’ve broken up with the rockstar and am moving back to Cairns”.
He said for years after, people would come into the practice and say “I want to see the lady optometrist”. He’d say “she’s not here…
and….she’s never been here”.
A few years later I moved back to Brisbane and started hanging out in a group of optoms. After a rather large day at the Anzac Day races and about a thousand beers later, I found myself going out with Dean Sullivan! No one more shocked than me…so simple….we thought we’d play things by ear.
We married on this day 20 November 1993, it was 41 degrees. The hottest day in November
since 1936, so someone said. Our wedding was so much fun. Because it was so hot people
seemed to drink a lot and often remember it as one of the best weddings they have ever been to!
One little boy followed another, brick by brick we built our family dynasty. After five, we pulled up and have lived a life of fun, laughter and happiness ever since. Our life together has been so joyous but best of all, I have loved being one of Dean’s funny obsessions, what a privilege!
Thirty two years aye, we’ll probably just keep seeing how it goes.
