Doris Florence NISSEN, (daughter of Hans Johannes Trules NISSEN and Florence Harriet SWARZES /MATTHEWS) born 29 January 1922 Ultimo, NSW. With her family she lived in many different houses and went to a number of schools. An early memory of hers is being sent to the butchers by her mother to buy some tongue, and asking: “Have you got my mother’s tongue’! Dot also recalls being taken by sulky by her father to Gosford Primary School at the age of 8 in 1930 and being left to enrol herself. She had been in 2nd class the year before, so she said 2nd when asked what class she was in, so she was put back there for the following year. She spent one year at Gosford High School, and left school in 1935 – she would have been 14 the day school started the following year. She says she did not like school, though she was a good reader. She began her working life washing up in a local roadhouse. Then she was employed for a while in her half-brother Laurie’s shop in Ourimbah. After that she worked three nights a week at the Regal milk bar. In 1940 when her sister Joy was expecting her second child Dot moved to Sydney to help look after Jan, the older child. She stayed at Joy’s place in Bondi and was very warmly welcomed there by Joy and Arthur. She lived for a time at Milsons Point with a girl friend from Gosford. She soon got a job working in the milk bar at Central station. After some disagreement with the owner she moved to Bert’s milk bar at Manly wharf, eventually becoming a manager. Her mother came to Sydney with Betty and Reg after Harry died to begin work at Marcus Clarkes, and she wanted Dot and Ronnie, who was home from the army, to live with her to help pay the rent. Dot found this too restrictive and she soon moved back to Joy’s place till she joined the army on 8 June 1943. On 22 July she was sent to Port Kembla where she stayed till she was discharged on 4 August 1944. She was an instrument operator with coastal heavy artillery. She remembers a Japanese ship firing shells at a coalmine near the camp.
 
While on camp in Port Kembla she met her husband, Stanley HICKMAN, who was in the same camp. He was born 29 January 1921 in Leeton, NSW. His parents had migrated from England in 1919. He went to school in Rozelle. After he left school he worked in Lever Brothers soap factory in Balmain, in a menswear shop, and in the family shop in Mullins St, Rozelle, before he joined the army on 18 March 1941. He worked as a signaller in the Kembla coastal artillery and served there most of the war. A few days after he left the army, on 27 February 1946, he joined the Tramways where he worked till 1952. He then joined the PMG department as a postman and remained with the PMG till his early death at age 59.
 
Dot and Stan were married in St Anne’s, Bondi Beach, on 17 January 1944. Her brother-in-law, Arthur, walked Dot up the aisle, and she wore a wedding dress borrowed from Arthur’s sister, Julie, since they were impossible to buy due to war restrictions. She chose her sister, Kitty, to be Matron-of Honour as Kitty’s own wedding had been very quick and quiet. The reception was in the Bondi RSL. Dot became a Catholic to get married, just as did her sister, Joy. Since Stan was still in the army she lived with her in-laws in Punchbowl for a while after her marriage but moved with her first son, Robert, to 143 Johnston St, Annandale, in December 1945. When Stan was discharged from the army they moved to Waverley till their second child, Susan, was born. After that, the family moved back to 21 Linden Av, Punchbowl, NSW, bought the house from Stan’s parents for £760, and brought up their five children there – the last three, Peter, Andrew and Kathleen, were born within 3 years and 3 months of each other. As her children got older Dot worked in a milk bar, in fruit shops, and for the St Vincent de Paul Society. She and Stan moved to Killarney Vale on the Central Coast not long before Stan died. She shifted to Granville in 1993. In 2004 she moved to a nursing home where she keeps her mind active by reading detective novels. She has thirteen grandchildren and had fifteen great-grandchildren, though one died in 1999.