In the 1940s Australia was about 98% Anglo-Celtic; by the 1980s a few other Europeans, mostly Italians and Greeks, and latterly some Vietnamese, had started to leaven the mix.

With her husband, she set up a business consultancy in the suburb of Hurstville, once an Anglo-Celtic working-class stronghold.

But this time, the English people did not allow their language to be swallowed up by a foreign language in the way their Celtic and early Anglo-Saxon ancestors had.