Helen Perrottet is raising seven children, but that’s the least interesting thing about her | JordsBaker
Helen Perrottet’s first official date with the man who would become her husband was over coffee at the Hughenden, a Victorian mansion in Woollahra. The lanky young law student was so nervous, he didn’t eat. “He was such a gentleman,” she says. “So polite. My parents just loved him. My dad loved him.” She liked his intelligence and sense of humour. But something was holding Perrottet back.
Perrottet, 42, grew up in Centennial Park, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, as the sixth of eight. They were practicing Catholics but she and several of her siblings went to public schools, Sydney Girls and Sydney Boys High. Perrottet excelled at science and studied four unit maths, but lagged in senior English. Her mother enrolled her in HSC English at TAFE so she could study the same texts twice.
In the army, she did everything. She can’t go into details – the Australian Defence Force doesn’t like its inner workings discussed – but reserve training typically involves training in assault rifles and grenades, going on long marches in the bush, and studying the finer details of rocket launchers. “That’s when I realised, ‘actually, I’m entirely capable’,” she says. “Your capability is not based on gender. The girls I’ve met through the army are extraordinary.
But she stayed on in Canada when he went home, and it wasn’t until she returned, in 2003, that they had their coffee date at the Hughenden. She is a few years older than him , which doesn’t matter now but did then. “I thought I was a bit too cool at that point,” she says. A few years later, she changed her mind – “what was I thinking?” – and they became an item.
She’s developed mum hacks, such as to only ever buy one style of socks, so there’s no post-laundry pairing necessary. For friends’ birthday parties, “I bulk bought birthday presents, bulk bought birthday cards, bulk bought wrapping paper – bags, actually, never wrapping paper, that’s just one extra thing. You have to build these efficiencies into every day because there’s a thousand things.” And, of course, they have a people mover. “A Tarago,” she says. “That’s the worst part of it.
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