Karyl Taylor

In Memory of Karyl Colene Taylor
02/03/1967 – 04/06/2023

Karyl was born in Te Kuiti, a small King Country town in the middle of the North Island of New Zealand on 2nd March, 1967. The town was made up of about 52% Maoris and the rest Pakehas. In the maternity ward it was Maoris on one side and Pakehas on the other and the babies all went back to the nursery at night. Karyl was the very much loved youngest child of Colene and Russells three following Andrea & Wayne. She didn’t walk until she was about 19 months but she was a good talker and nothing stopped her getting into the cupboard and chewing open the bag of icing sugar. Karyl was spicy from the beginning and one photo in one of mums albums lists her having a paddy at 11.00pm on the 13/07/1968 – 16 months of age. Her spiciness added to the richness of colour that she brought to her and others life tapestry.

Our childhood was one a being raised by not only our parents but a community of family members (Pam and Rob are here today thank you), friends, people who worked for mum and dad and Dial a Nanny as dads role and interests took them all over the world. This built resilience and got us all used to travelling and living out of suitcases – something that was to feature highly in the rest of Karyls life.

Karyl started school at Te Kuiti Primary which was directly across the road from where we lived. It was while we were there when Karyl was about 7 that the family was lucky enough to travel to Hawaii, San Francisco & Los Angeles, Mazatlán, Guadalajara and Mexico City before moving on to Tahiti and Fiji with rather an interesting mid-flight event landing us unexpectedly in American Samoa on the military base. Tahiti airport has fond memories for me of Karyl – following eating a number of cooked frogs legs needing to deposit these in the airport bin with much flare.

From Te Kuiti we moved to Papakura on the outskirts of Auckland and she went to Drury Primary, another small country school with lots of families who were potato farmers with around 20 children in them. It was here that her teacher eventually told mum that Karyl was coming up to the front of the class to read the board – glasses followed and followed and followed.

Following dads sale of his companies and reticence to work for the purchaser and some really interesting covert activities there was a family vote as to whether we move to Chile and went to American schools or moved to Australia. Karyl, Wayne and I were asked for our view and after much discussion in the lounge room it was a three nil vote to move to Australia. Just as well as Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship was starting to gather momentum.

In May of 1978 mum and the three of us arrived in Sydney with nine suitcases – dad was already here. I can distinctly remember getting off the plane via the rear steps to the heat and the smell of bitumen and thinking what have we got ourselves into! Karyl and I were enrolled at Ravenswood School for Girls – a very strict Methodist ladies college (a number of the attendees are here today) and it was whilst Karyl was there that her sewing teacher sent her home with her project unfinished as she could not get the hem straight on her gathered skirt – it was a checked pattern. Noting that Mum was an Occupational Therapist and able to turn her hand to any craft task – I am sure the hem was perfect when returned to school.

At age 13 Karyl with the family undertook another major overseas trip to Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore much of it associated with dads work. Blonde hair in many Asian countries was a novelty and everyone wanted to touch our hair when they were in the foyer of the hotel. It was a wonderful trip and we both came home with suitcases with many pairs of shoes, noting Karyl became a shoes aficionado post this and was known by name in Peter Shepherds and must have been a highly prized customer of Fluvogs (Canadian brand) by the number of their shoes she had.

A follow up with the GP found that she had one side of her pelvis smaller than the other and over the years she has had to deal with spinal curvature, and knee and hip problems. This created a number of mobility challenges for her over the years.

Mum advises that the week before Karyl sat her HSC she went to the library and got four novels. Mum was not impressed reminding her that she had been sent to a private school and expected to do her best. Her reply was that if she could get 75% without studying then why bother!! Reading was one of Karyls absolute pleasures and I was the welcome recipient of any book (apart from the futurist ones) and she was so well known to the local Dymocks that she received Christmas presents from them every year no matter where she was living in Australia.

Karyls first year after finishing school she went to UNSW to study textile technology with a view to working with fabrics used in space travel. After a year she lost interest and moved to Ryde TAFE to study hospitality. She was a good cook but decided to follow the house-keeping stream which amazed the family as she hung her clothes on the floor and no-one knew what was clean of dirty. In Papakura we had to build a new bedroom for her as there was no way Karyl and I could continue to share a room.

During this time Karyl was turning her hand to all sorts of work which included being the weekend cook for a womens refuge that I worked in, in Kings Cross (the women loved her cooking and instead of feeding 16 she was cooking for around 30) and prior to that she tackled the laundry and the cooking at a private hospital I worked in. She was well known for changing things around to make them more efficient and systematized. This will resonate with many of you here today that have worked with her.

Karyl worked at various five star hotels in Sydney – the Hyatt, the Sheraton and then the Regent where she walked out in tears on her birthday. She could not believe that a hotel that size was still doing rosters by hand – she had to book in to use a computer and if she wanted to print anything she had to go down five floors to retrieve it. When she came back after a couple of days a storeroom with air-conditioning ducts had been converted and she had a computer and printer – things changed that day at the Regent. During this time she was seconded to open the Sydney Airport Sheraton and broke new ground working with the Blind and Deaf Institute to build a laundry that was able to accommodate people with hearing challenges to work in it full time, with visual panels for all requirements including fire alarms. This model was replicated in other hotels. This hotel is now rebadged. I must say that I did enjoy Karyl working for Sheraton – $36 per night to stay in the New York Sheraton was greatly appreciated! Thank you

Karyl then went to America and was trading diamonds for dad. She was living in Crossville Tennessee a dry county, close to where the Clampetts of Beverley Hill Billys fame and full of F500’s and men that appear to be related to ZZTOP with dad and Carol Jean dads new wife and various children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of Carol Jeans family.

Karyl moved to London and was the Executive Housekeeper at Grosvenor House a very large and prestigious hotel that takes up an entire block before it was closed down when war broke out in the Middle East and occupancy went from 90+% to 9%. While in London she also used her chef abilities by working on the Thames boats for extra money. She had a terrific time in London – loved the nightclubs, had an extensive array of hats and gorgeous men of colour would chase her down.

Karyl returned to Australia to live with me, however prior to her return I applied for a job for her in Melbourne (without her knowledge) which she got and became the Executive Housekeeper for two joined hotels in Melbourne starting a few days after arriving back in Australia.

Karyl the moved to Darwin to what was supposed to be a 5 star hotel under new management – the carpet to the ballroom was threadbare!! She lasted there for 9 months. It was probably one of her toughest work assignments.

It was while in Darwin that Karyl decided to do her IT degree online through Melbourne University. She enjoyed working on the help desk which covered all aspects of government in the NT – schools, hospitals, police, councils, ambulance stations, remote Aboriginal Communities etc. She was selected to be specially trained in ‘Itel’, a program being used in schools and this involved many trips to Singapore a country which she loved. After that she was sent to the State capitals to train staff all over Australia. Karyl absolutely loved Darwin, made life long friends – a number of them online today, however she was made redundant five times and did not leave her desk for four out of the five and on the fifth occasion she left. Enough is enough.

From Darwin she went to Perth lived with Fiona and her son whilst working out what she wanted to do and spent three months working for West Power helping Telstra set up their new locations pointing out to them that their old computers were a waste of time as each took eight minutes to get going and there were about 40 staff – 320 minutes lost each day. They were very happy to take on board her advice.

After that she worked for another two companies in Perth prior to a Japanese company take over. Karyl was made redundant one week and the rest of the female office staff the next. In the middle of all of this Karyl was seconded to worked in Washington DC for Lockheed Martin the international arms manufacturer during a massive Washington snow storm that went on and on. To this day no one knows what she did – she was excellent at holding a secret.

Karyl moved in with Lucy who is here today and worked for DataCom in Canberra on a twelve month contract. After declining an extension she applied for a position at AECOM and had an extremely happy four years working for them. Her bosses Craig and Sarah are here today with a number of her colleagues here in the room or online. The family would like to say a huge thank you to AECOM as Karyl absolutely loved her job and the people she worked with – you were like her extended family. She felt listened to and was able to make change and was the happiest I had seen her in a long time working for you.

Karyl had a significant ‘give back’ ethos. This included as examples raising money for the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation for years after HIV had been first discovered, being an ambassador at the early Mardi Gras events, developing an IT course at Darwin TAFE supported by her then employer which won a Telstra Award, sitting as a very well respected community member on multiple ethics committees right across Australia for about 20 years. This included the Northern Territory Ethics Committee – noting that she had a significant focus on the Aboriginal Community and how researched they were, West Australian Ethics Cttee and more recently and up until her death the University of NSW Ethics Committee. She found this absolutely fascinating and engaging. She was also a strong advocate and supporter of the RSPCA particularly the Darwin branch – they will miss her I suspect.

She was also a strong advocate of fixing what was not right. Karyl rode her bike to work for years and she was an early starter so often she was riding in the street light lit roads. After considerable attempts to get a street light replaced at a very busy corner were ignored by Darwin City Council she phoned the NT news to take out an advertisement to celebrate the one year birthday of the light being out. Instead of the NT News charging her they ran it as front page and guess what the light globe was replaced immediately.

Karyl adored her nieces – Kennedy and Maddie, her nephews – Sam and Hamish and her great niece Remi possibly being joined by another sibling whilst we are here today. When I gave birth to Kennedy she could not get to Sydney fast enough despite not liking Sydney and was just fascinated by this little person – one of the photos shows her unadulterated love for her. More recently Remi became an addition to our family (thank you Sam and Kellie) and Emma my sister in law connected Karyl with this beautiful little person.

Karyl had an exceptionally high IQ picked up very early in her schooling, didn’t mince her words or stand fools lightly. She had a quirky sense of humour and typical of the messages the family has received since she has gone and in the words of Leah “your sister left an impression wherever she went and love her or hate her you couldn’t help but respect her.”

Thank you!