Select to expand quote
obct said..
Saturday Night - Having dinner with the children of the same people, in the same dining room that our parents gathered in 51 years earlier to share a meal and enjoy the excellent red that MR had selected for me to take.
For some reason this pic would not upload for me last night, so I put a date caption on it and it then it uploaded okay.
it was taken in about 1962 or 63, in a tiny dinning room in a house in woopi, every adult apart from one in that pic is long gone, as far as I know, my mum is the only one still alive today. She's in the foreground with my little brother on her lap, he's 8 years younger than me.
On Saturday night, 3 of us who's parents are in that pic, gathered in that same tiny dinning room along with a couple of partners, drank some wine, reminisced and then set up my ipad to record ourselves calling the only adult survivor from that pic, my mum. When I go visit her next and show there the vid, she's going to be well pleased.
There's probably so many other stories that photo could tell about the post war years in Australia and the impact it had on people, I wish I knew more of those stories.
what I do know is:
- at least 3 of the 5 men there saw service
- one was a POW in Changi for 3 years and eventually succumbed to his injuries in 1968, he was a remarkable fisherman, he would catch just one fish but oh what a fish that would be, I think that night we were feasting on a 30lb jewy he had caught that day.
- One was a Tivoli showgirl during the war and spent much of her time doing shows for the troops
- 3 of them spent the war years in a spring factory in Petersham making parts for tanks and whatever else needed springs
- One of them lived the life of a recluse in a tiny weatherboard shack on a farm beside Woopi creek, I used to love going to visit, it had just 2 rooms, the table cloth was just flattened out corn flake packets and all his possessions were for just one person and the sheds were full of old farming equipment, when the flies were bad, he would go out side and spray the cattle with areoguard.