I really wish that we had made more use of Morag’s car and been more particular about where we stayed and what we looked at. I loved London and returning there almost fifty years later didn’t change things. But I am always a lot more interested in the landscape and the seascape rather than the…
We had not planned on Scotland. I’ll say that again. We had not prepared. For seasoned travellers it is probably beyond comprehension that one could travel from Durham all the way to Inverness and still claim not to have gone to Edinburgh. But that is the truth. My first actual recollection is that we stopped…
We were in a bit of a pickle. If I didn’t find some work then the money would start to run out. I spoke to people here and there and the general feeling was that the need for a work permit was a good idea on paper but that when someone needed a person to…
Life goes on. The children grow up. Robin marries and she and her husband go to Ethiopia. He is a doctor. I marry and move on. David marries and moves away and so does Fiona and so does Michael. This series is specially directed at my two grandchildren and so it is my story from…
I have tried to be honest and the truth is I spent the years after the accident concentrating on rowing and school and girls and study all in that order. School was one of those places where sport was compulsory and even to this day I don’t know what David did. I do know he…
How did mother cope with the injuries she suffered? Initially she was withdrawn and depressed as very few of us could have imagined. I will mention some incidents rather than try to work it all together. I will leave you to do that yourself. Mother had the very best neurosurgeon in Melbourne. But every great…
In the family the whole incident and all the ramifications is known simply as The Accident. In the writing and the recalling of it I have begun to think of it in a different way; I will explain that later. I am fully aware of how I coped. I have absolutely no idea how anyone…
As I told you earlier Dad was offered a teaching position at Caulfield Grammar School where had taught before we went bush. The process of selling the farm and moving to Melbourne and buying a house was made a little easier by Robin going to Adelaide to complete Matriculation and by my spending a year…
It was 1957 and I was at first year High School. Back then in South Australia Primary School went to year Seven. Just across the border in Victoria Primary ended at year Six. I don’t remember much about the first year of High School. Some things only. The first thing was a nasty teacher who…
There are many incidental things that I could mention but it is time to move on. After ten years in the bush Dad got a letter from an old University friend. This fellow was now the Headmaster of the school that Dad had left earlier. There are still questions to answer and all the people…
Both of the houses that our parents built had a similar floor plan. At one end was the kitchen/living room and then sleeping rooms. At the far end was Mum and Dad’s room. Then the little ones Fiona and then Michael. Then it was the boys’ – Me and David and then Robin’s room .…
There is no non-venomous snake in the area where we lived. This means that any snake we saw was venomous. And if not treated quickly it could be fatal. We lived a fair way out of town and we had only old cars and therefore we needed to be very careful. As the years went…
I don’t think my father and mother sat down at night and discussed things that they intended to teach us. But they woke up in the morning and got on with the day to day things that needed doing. Now and then we were learned things without actually knowing what we had been taught. If…
It would have been a Friday when I first saw him babbling and raging in a language I had never heard before. Fred Finley was the first and the worst raving yelling hand waving drunken man I have ever seen. I never overcame my fear of him even when I got to know he was…
A comment from Shubha Athavale from yesterday was, “How nice is setting the table…..there were no dinners in front of the TV then! First of all TV didn’t arrive in Australia until 1956 and even then had limited coverage, and anyway we didn’t have electricity for the whole time we lived ‘in the bush’. But…
John's Storybook 
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