Milliner to the stars, including Sigrid Thornton, JD Mannington is coming out of retirement to keep a roof over her and dog Misty’s heads. Picture: Ian Currie.
JD Mannington is coming out of retirement, but it’s not by choice.
Into her 70s, she was never expecting to have to get back to working as a care worker after decades providing support to palliative and dementia patients — or her lengthy career as a hat maker supplying the likes of actor Sigrid Thornton.
But last year she incurred $75-a-week increase in rent after her long-time landlord sold up and her and King Charles cavalier Misty had to move, leaving Ms Mannington to recommence applying for care work.
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“I’m very surprised at having to unretire,” she said.
Inspecting homes for the first time in a number of years had also left her concerned at the dirty, often damaged homes available for people with her budget.
And she’s worried she’ll wind up working full time to keep the decent home she did eventually find, if the rent rises again in a year.
She’s even considering reconnecting with some of her millinery industry friends, with her hats once regularly worn to the Spring Racing carnival by Thornton.
“I’m thinking I could make a half-dozen black and white hats for Derby Day, if I can find a shop to put them in,” she said.
Actress Sigrid Thornton wearing a hat by JD. Mannington at Derby Day during Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival.
Ms Mannington’s hats were regular features at the Melbourne Cup and Spring Racing Carnival.
Ms Mannington has been renting ever since selling her family home a few years after divorcing in the 1980s.
“And I have a few girlfriends who are in the same boat as me,” she said.
“We don’t own a home. Most are divorced. And most of us are living on the breadline, because the cost of everything has gone up.”
She’s not a whinger, and learned long ago that you’re better to just get on with it.
“I get up every day, because the dog needs to be fed and taken for a walk; I’m not one to be overwhelmed,” she said.
“But I have realised that in the most basic sense, I have no home. I don’t own a home. I have no super, I spent the last of it on a small car to get around with. And it’s made me very aware of my precarious place in the world.”
She is already going without past luxuries. This year is the first time since 2010 she hasn’t had a membership for her beloved Geelong Cats.
Ms Mannington calls herself lucky to have found the rental she has. Picture: Ian Currie.
While many are quick to say the Baby Boomer generation were lucky, she said those who had wound up renting were in a very different situation now — and government support for those who were now tenants could make a huge difference in letting them enjoy their golden years with dignity after decades paying taxes in their working life.
“In the past 10 years I have just felt that I’m not considered (by the government),” Ms Mannington said.
“But it feels like it’s got so bad, they don’t know where to start to fix it.”
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