Joan Hassell

Joan Isabel Wilson stood on the dock at Port Melbourne two days after her twenty-first. With the two red suitcases she had been gifted for her birthday beside her, she looked up at the huge ship she was about to board. What was going through her mind at that time? What did she imagine was going to happen when she disembarked in Canada, weeks later, with no accommodation booked and no job arranged? Her best friend Sandra James stood beside her. Sandra was accompanied by her two blue suitcases and little else. The girls were off on an adventure, excited at the thought of the unknown; the unexpected experiences that awaited them. It was 1960. Joan has lived most of her life in Mildura after being born at Windulva Hospital in 1939, to Bill and Win Wilson.