Colin North first became involved with Dansu Constructions in 1986, when he was looking for a new factory for his business: ‘I walked into an estate agent in Dandenong and met with a female agent, Yana Waters, whose office down the back was the size of a cupboard. It was obvious that they had put me onto the token woman because they didn’t consider that I was important enough for the people up the front!’ Colin’s wry vexation is as much for Yana as for himself. On meeting Colin, Yana immediately said, ‘I know just the person for you’. Angelo Alberti turned up within half an hour.
‘Angelo and I hit it off straight away’, says Colin. ‘I liked him very much and I think the feeling was mutual. Dansu Constructions had bought about 88 acres in Hallam, beside the freeway. They’d already built one building and they were looking for someone to lease a second one.’ The parties soon put pen to paper. ‘As I recall, we did the deal on two A4 pages’, says Colin.
The arrangement put Colin on the database of Angelo’s wife: ‘As I later discovered, Susan was the back-room half of Dansu Constructions. She was also president of JDRF Australia and heavily involved in putting on the annual Gala Ball to raise funds for type 1 diabetes research. So, from the late 1980s onwards, I knew Sue from going to the ball with my then wife, Christine’. He remembers going to the ball in 2001, just after Danielle had died: ‘I couldn’t believe Sue could stand up there and do that. It was only a matter of weeks afterwards. She didn’t want to let people down’.
By 2002, Colin had separated from Christine, so when he got an invitation to that year’s ball, he declined. ‘I realise now that once Sue has you on that database, you never come off. You’re on for life!’, he says, before continuing: ‘At the time, my response prompted a call from Yana, the original real estate agent who was by then working for Sue, and she asked why I had declined. When I explained that I had no partner, she insisted I come and sit at their table’. A few weeks later, Sue and Colin went out ‘to some ball that involved pink’, which Colin suspects Yana probably organised. They started going out occasionally from that point, and over the next three years the relationship deepened into regular dates and travel. ‘We travel very well together’, says Colin. ‘It’s a good way to get to know someone and you have to be tolerant of things going wrong.’
The first time she met Sue, Colin’s sister Lyn witnessed the closeness of the relationship, and also the subtle social skills that are part of Sue’s style. Lyn recalls how her brother was in hospital, about to have major bypass surgery, when she ‘left the room to get him some lemonade, and when I came back Sue was there. She was dressed in a blazer and suit, very corporate. Her look was very much the power dressing style of the day. The surgeon who was going to do the operation was also there and Sue had asked him to wait until I returned before they discussed his condition. I thought that was such a lovely thing to do. It was unnecessary, but it was really kind. I didn’t have to be involved in the discussion, but he is my brother and I love him to bits’.
Lyn reflects that Colin had become ill very quickly and, in light of the fact that he and Sue had only been seeing each other for two or three months, for him to be in that condition was ‘a heck of a thing for Sue to confront’. Lyn says, ‘Add to that all the medical conditions she had faced in her past. It was difficult for both of them I think. And it was at the Monash Medical Centre, which was tough for Sue because that was where Angelo died’.
As Colin recovered his health following the surgery, the couple’s relationship grew closer. While Sue was as busy as ever with her charity work and myriad business commitments, Colin’s presence provided a steady and gently reassuring influence. But the pair still maintained their own homes, with Sue based in Toorak and Colin in the affluent bayside suburb of Brighton.
Lyn relates her first experience of Heyington Hall: ‘Our first visit to Sue’s home in Toorak was to be on New Year’s Eve. But a few weeks prior, one Sunday afternoon, my husband and I got a phone call and an invitation to pop around for afternoon tea. When we arrived and I saw that Sue’s home was in fact a mansion, I realised that she’d invited us so we could get a look at the place and know what to expect on the night. We had afternoon tea and walked around the rose garden at the back. Sue showed us around and it was a lovely afternoon’. Lyn says that it was ‘a typically sensitive gesture from Sue. She has a subtle grace and is always very empathic. If I look at our relationship, it’s always been like that—Sue putting other people first and thinking about how other people feel. She puts people at ease. Somehow it’s natural, it’s just in her’.
Friends and family delighted in seeing the relationship between Colin and Sue flourish. Melissa Chavulak explains, ‘After Angelo had passed away, we used to see a few suitors appearing. When Colin came on the scene, it was just lovely. He is a very caring, loving, grounded and traditional man. There are a lot of other people who don’t have those qualities’.
In late 2004, during an overseas trip centred on a JDRFI conference, Colin decided the time was right for the marriage proposal he’d been contemplating: ‘We were on our way home from New York and stopped over in Los Angeles. We headed out to dinner at Laguna Beach and we arrived a bit early so we had time to walk the streets. We found a jewellery store and there was a ring that Susie admired, a kunzite ring stone surrounded by diamonds’. Later, Colin snuck out and bought the ring: ‘I hadn’t specifically planned a proposal but the whole trip I’d been thinking, “It’s about time we did this”’.
The couple was having dinner on a terrace by the beach when the moment arrived. ‘I went with it and proposed’, says Colin. ‘I was most offended when she said, “I’ll have to think about it”.’ He laughs with faux horror: ‘Most offended, highly offended! She made me wait a couple of hours! I could see her mind whirring. It was getting cold too!’ Colin, with his endearingly dry wit, remembers Sue duly considering the proposal: ‘We didn’t talk much, as I remember. And there’s only a certain number of waves you can watch coming in’.
Sue remembers the proposal as incredibly romantic: ‘That was beautiful, out of the blue. We were sitting in the most gorgeous place overlooking the Pacific Ocean. On the balcony it was a balmy night, as if he’d ordered the weather. And I didn’t know about the ring—he’d gone and bought it’. But she says she had to take stock before making a decision: ‘There was a lot at stake and I had to weigh it up. I mean, I loved him and it was beautiful, but I didn’t want to say something and then renege. And I needed to be sure this was a marriage proposal, not just an engagement. I’m not into living together. I’m old-fashioned—it’s either a commitment or it’s not on’. Sue abandons herself to an unexpectedly deep laugh: ‘He paid me back for taking my time to really think about it, for making him wait. When I asked when we were going to get married, he said, “I’ll tell you when I’m ready!”’
Colin North and Susan Alberti married on 5 March 2005, two days before Colin turned sixty. ‘So Susie could say she married someone still in his fifties’, he jokes. Colin is clearly devoted to his high-octane wife. He is as quiet and reflective as Sue is bubbly and animated: ‘Susie and I get along very, very well. We can talk about pretty much anything. She likes my sense of humour, which not everybody does—it’s a bit quirky. Susie says my sense of humour is very similar to Danielle’s’.
Colin is deadpan when he describes his wife as ‘five foot two, blonde and wears pearls’, then he laughs: ‘Sue is absolutely delightful in the way she enjoys life’. Sue’s husband always knows she’s enjoying herself when she speeds up her usual feverish pace even more: ‘Sue is a person who can engage at all levels, is tireless in her efforts, and exhausting, for causes that she has passion for. Fortunately, I believe in her passions. And I think she has learned over the years that I can be quite useful. Even in a shop I can be useful—I can find things!’
They both readily admit that Colin gets pulled from one event to another in Sue’s manic diary of activity. Yet Colin remains relaxed: ‘I stand in one spot and Susie moves around me, talking to everyone and connecting at every level. I’m happy just watching. But I won’t hold the handbag!’ There is no question that Colin is someone who draws a line when he wants to—but always with a smile.
Highly efficient and organised with her personal priorities and many engagements, Sue regularly accuses Colin of taking longer to get ready than she does. Colin takes it on the chin: ‘It comes from her background, from her childhood where you got yourself on the bus to school and faced the consequences if you missed it. Susie always knows what she’s going to wear the next day and has it out ready. If she has a big function coming up, she will start working on her outfit two or three months ahead of time’.
Also subject to such advance planning is the couple’s Christmas table, which is typically set and ready three to four weeks in advance. ‘Sue is used to organising Gala Balls, which you’d start organising fifteen months out’, Colin says. He adds that there is a degree of pressure for perfection. Leading up to one Christmas, with two weeks to go until the family lunch, the tablecloth ordered during an overseas trip some two months earlier in the Italian town of Sorrento caused Sue some anxiety as it still hadn’t arrived. Yet sitting alongside this extreme organisation is Sue’s down-to-earth attitude and relaxed manner after a silver-service function is over for the night. Colin says: ‘Sue will be the first to put the rubber gloves on and start clearing up. Or we’ll all sit down, get the Nespresso machine on and put our feet up on the chairs’.
Once the couple had married, Colin sold his home in Brighton and he and Sue searched for a place that suited them both, one that reflected their relationship and accommodated their future. They found a charming home in Mount Eliza on Port Phillip Bay, forty minutes south of Melbourne’s CBD—a single-storey bungalow nestled among trees at the end of a sweeping driveway, and only a short stroll from the beach. The main living area is warm and inviting, with large soft couches and a dining table that comfortably seats a dozen guests. The only hint of celebrity are the photos on the walls, many featuring Sue and Colin with dignitaries; several show Sue accepting formal awards. The main feature photo in each room is of Danielle as a young woman, with her beaming smile, bright eyes and soft, dark hair.
Sue likewise sold her beloved Toorak home, purchasing an apartment in that area for convenience. But as part of the sea change, some of the Toorak mansion followed the couple. A more formal sitting room at the front of the house showcases Sue’s taste for French furniture and antiquities: bronze statuettes, gold cushions, a candelabra with cherubs and gold candles, silk-covered gilt armchairs, and a marble fireplace. ‘It wasn’t originally going to be as much Heyington here as it has ended up’, reflects Colin. ‘But I said to Susie, “You can’t just give away all your stuff. You’ve created all this”.’ Colin speaks proudly and respectfully: ‘Heyington was a magnificent achievement. It must have been tough for her to leave after four and a half years of essentially turning a home into a castle. That project involved thousands of decisions’.
Another way in which Sue transferred some of her favourite aspects of the beautiful home she created in Toorak was to retain the services of her gardener for Mount Eliza. Sue is delighted by flowers, as evidenced by the way in which her driveway is lined with standard roses in pink, yellow, white and red, with poinsettias in Christmas colours of red and green at their feet. The house is also screened by a riot of colourful blooms—hydrangeas ramble under windowsills, alongside pansies, daisies and myriad other radiant petals. Nearby, a huge leafy elm sits at the centre of the driveway turning circle. Lana Jenkings, Sue’s niece, says that visiting Mount Eliza for the annual Christmas festivities held there is ‘like visiting the Botanical Gardens’.
With both Sue and Colin remarrying after the age of fifty, and each having lived alone for quite a while—Sue for more than a decade—a skilful approach to multi-family integration was required. On Sue’s side, her brother Richard, his wife Liz and their three children all welcomed Colin into the Jenkings mix. Fortunately, due to a courtship that lasted just over two years, there was quite a long transition period that also allowed Sue to get to know Colin’s brother Trevor, his wife Yvonne, as well as his sister Lyn and her husband Andrew. Most important to Colin was introducing his only child, Andrew North, and Andrew’s wife Birgit.
Andrew is good-humoured and forthright in saying that while he doesn’t always see eye to eye with Sue, he is very happy that she and his father found each other: ‘It’s a long time to be alone, so it is great that they have the companionship and the opportunity to do things together’. Andrew admits that things were a little awkward at first, but his admiration of Sue’s determination and dedication to her causes is clear. He says he developed a better appreciation of the struggles Sue faced with Danielle when his own child had an accident in 2016: ‘When Samantha was ten years old she broke both her arms in an accident that landed her in Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital for five nights. She had a bad fall and, when it first happened, I thought she had broken her neck, it was that bad. That experience with our own daughter and the multiple operations to fix up her arms really brought home to us what Sue went through losing Danielle. I can’t even imagine what that would have been like. When you hear that story, you try and empathise, but unless you’re confronted with something shocking that involves your own child, you really don’t know. And just because you may be well-off doesn’t mean you’re immune’.
During the last decade, the families have experienced both sadness and joy. Yvonne died of a chronic illness, and Trevor succumbed to Lewy body dementia after a difficult struggle. Birgit’s parents, Klaus and Marianne, also passed away in that time. However, the happiness of young children has added a new dimension to family celebrations. In July 2005, baby Samantha was born to Andrew and Birgit, much to the delight of all, including Colin (Pa) and Sue (Nana Sue). Samantha is the oldest child in the family, leading a healthy collection from Sue’s nieces Kate and Lana: Will, Sophie, Amelia, Michael and Lucinda bring the extended family tribe to six children under eleven years old. Welcoming a baby girl into the family was, however, an emotional act for Sue, a painful reminder that she would never have her own biological grandchildren, and bringing the loss of her own daughter to the fore.
Keen to maintain strong family ties, Sue delights in hosting an annual Christmas lunch for the combined families, where she gets immense pleasure from watching the children playing on the garden swing and swimming in the pool. Sue also involves the children in her football activities whenever she can, from coin tosses to meeting their favourite players—the Western Bulldogs remains her weekend passion.
Sue’s apartment in Toorak is the base for her many Melbourne city appointments. Conversations at the cafes of Toorak Village are regularly punctuated by greetings from passers-by, along with kerbside chats about football and the performance of Sue’s beloved Bulldogs. In winter, during the AFL season, these public interactions with ‘the footy lady’ are amplified tenfold and go beyond local borders. Sue recalls leaving the country for a much-needed vacation in October 2016, after an exhausting year and exciting times with her beloved Bulldogs: ‘We were in an airport after the grand final and I had people pointing me out as “the footy lady” and coming up to talk about the game. It wasn’t just in Australia!’
Sue’s diary tends to be jam-packed with meetings, speeches, lunches and presentations, which doesn’t allow much downtime. Elda Basso looks after that diary, gatekeeping the avalanche of requests and ensuring ample blocks of ‘Colin time’, as instructed by Sue. When she manages to retreat to Mount Eliza, Sue relaxes by walking around the garden: ‘I know everything that’s in our garden. I love watching things grow and change, seeing the bulbs come up. Sometimes I sit on the swing, just rock backwards and forwards on the swing just looking at the garden. I know that sounds silly but I just sit there and think, “Life’s pretty good”’. Sue doesn’t deny she enjoys luxury and the finer things in life, but says that while she appreciates nice things, she doesn’t need to have them—‘Unless it’s flowers’, she adds with a grin.
While Sue has her garden, her husband immerses himself in his hobby, an impressive model railway housed in a dedicated room. Colin explains that his fascination with trains came from growing up near a railway line in McKinnon: ‘As a teenager in 1960 or thereabouts, I used to go on train trips with a local friend who shared my interest. He had a better train set than me’. The hobby lay dormant until Colin built a model railway with his young son, which he brought out of storage after he and Sue had settled into their new home. Since then, the railway has been extensively rebuilt. Colin admits to three- or four-month ‘bursts of frantic activity’ with his passion, after which he emerges ‘to try and catch up with the rest of the world that I’ve left behind’.
An appreciation of fine objects and ‘pretty things’ is evident in the interior and grounds of Sue’s Mount Eliza home, in her designer clothing, jewellery and immaculate personal presentation. Indeed, it might seem that everything around Sue needs to be shiny and beautiful. But she is more grounded than her appearance and accoutrements may suggest. Carrie Keller, a close friend of Sue’s, whose husband shares Colin’s interest in railways, giggles as she recalls Sue relating a substandard motel experience after a public-speaking engagement in Adelaide: ‘She and Colin drove so they could see the countryside and check out a few places along the way. They used budget motels, and Sue was telling me about one of the rooms they ended up in. It had a coin slot next to the bed and mirrors on the ceiling. Sue and Colin thought it was hilarious. I remember her saying, “Each to their own I guess!”’.