GRY

Gry, the youngest girl was born early in 1972 - so early that mom almost didn’t get to finish celebrating New Year’s eve. She came into this world one very cold morning at the Central Hospital in Akershus, Norway. She only weighed 2.41 kg because she was born 1 month too early. I know that mom was so happy. She now had another beautiful daughter, lived in a nice house in Skjetten and was married to Gry’s father who worked as a photographer. Mom could therefore be home in the house with her daughters until Gry started school.

Gunn danced – and when Gry was 4 years old, she also wanted to start training. Naturally she was allowed to, and her dancing partner became Fredrik Bjørklund.

In the beginning mom had to drive the girls to training in Oslo 2 time a week, but then she and some another mothers decided to start a new sports club with dancing as the main activity. So in 1976 the NeRo Sportdancing club was established and with mom as the first president. They rented a place nearby to where they lived so the travel time was not so long.

Besides having a house and home, husband and children – mom was president for the dance club, drove the girls to training – to competitions on weekends and made dresses at night. All the money which was left over in the family went to private lessons and dancing in general.

To really raise the quality of the dancing they brought in English instructors, and Julie and Alex Schambri (originally from Sydney, Australia) came over once a month and trained all the children in the club. Naturally Gry became the mascot since mom had to be together with them for every training session. None of the other parents knew English, so then mom had to be translator. It was strange how the young, especially Gry, understood what they were saying without knowing any English. She was only 4-5 years old! Maybe that was what started Gry’s love of the English language and Australia. In any case, she lives there now and speaks mostly English.

Mom remembers that she and Gry’s father talked about emigrating to Adelaid, Australia but that was never to be. Instead it was the daughter who did it without knowing about her parents dreams. Gry and Zdravko (Zed) are living together in St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia together with their dog Zima (that means cold or snow in Croatian)