Dorothy's war

With ANZAC Day approaching I thought I'd write about my grandmother, Dorothy Wyllie.

Dorothy was a teenager, a young woman, at the start of World War 1. She lived with her parents in rural Victoria at South Ecklin near Cobden and she had a lot of relatives in Western Victoria as well, her mother's siblings and their families.

In 1916 Dorothy married Allan Wyllie and moved to the Wimmera area of Victoria where Allan was a farmer.

Dorothy Wyllie nee Taylor

So how is this relevant to ANZAC Day? Dorothy didn't go to war but a lot of her relatives did. Some came home, some came home injured, some didn't come home. She, and many other women like her, waited at home, worried, wrote letters, joined the Red Cross and organised packages to send overseas and ran a home and raised her family on the farm.

This is a long list of Dorothy's close relatives who served in World War 1 and World War 2.

World War 1

Brother: James William (Bill) Taylor. Bill served in 2nd Australian Machine Gun Battalion in France and returned to Australia 1919.

Brother: David Edgar Taylor. David served on Gallipoli and France and was killed in action at Pozieres, France 5 Aug 1916.

Brother-in-law: William Angus Wyllie. Angus served in the Middle East then France with the 58th Battalion. He was wounded in action and sent to England for treatment to a gunshot wound in his shoulder. He rejoined his unit in France, was wounded a second time and again sent to England. He returned to Australia 1919.

Cousin: Francis George Brown was a private in the 9th Light Horse. Served in Gallipoli, France (wounded in action) and the Middle East. Returned to Australia 1919 an invalid. Two half-brothers (Jack and Gordon) also served.

Cousin: John Henry (Jack) Brown. Jack was a private in the 60th Battalion and served at Gallipoli and in France. He was killed in action at Fleurbaix, France on 19 July 1916.

Cousin: Lindsay Gordon (Gordon) Brown, Jack's brother. Gordon enlisted under a false name using his mother's surname, Cooper. He was a private in the 29th Battalion and served in France. He died in France of influenza on 27 November 1918, just after the war ended.

Cousin: William Herbert Maskell. A private in the 14th Battalion. He enlisted in 1914, served in Gallipoli and the Middle before being transferred to France. He was sent to England suffering from shell shock and was sent home to Australia in 1917 an invalid. He was Mentioned is Despatches for bravery at Pozieres, France in August 1916.

Cousin: Stanley Gordon Maskell, William's brother. Stan was a private in the 58th Battalion. He served in France and was wounded in action (gassed), wounded a second time (gunshot wound to a knee). After being transferred to a hospital in England he was invalided home to Australia in 1918.

Cousin: John James (Jack) Brown. Jack was a private in the 38th Battalion and served in France. He suffered from trench feet and was eventually sent back to England to recuperate and take furlough before returning to France. He was shot in the arm and was sent back to hospital in England. He was sent back to Australia as an invalid.

World War 2

Brother: Leonard Allen (Allen) Taylor. Allen was a sapper in the 2/16 Army Field Company and served in the Middle East and Asia.

Son: James William Wyllie. Jim served in the Middle East and South-east Asia with the 2/1st Battalion in northern Africa and the south-west Pacific.

Son: Angus John Wyllie. Angus served as a Corporal in the 101st Motor Regiment before volunteering to transfer to the 'Z' Special Force for covert operations in New Guinea and the Indonesian islands. He specialised in communication. Invalided to Australia with tropical dermatitis.

Brother-in-law: Charles William Fraser. He was a Corporal in the RAAF, a motor cycle driver. He served in Darwin.

Cousin: David Edgar Brown

Cousin: Geoffrey William Brown. Geoffrey was a Private in the 2/21st Infantry Battalion, captured and held as a Prisoner of War on Ambon. He was executed (beheaded) there in 1942.

Cousin's husband: William Harry Tasman (Bill) WHITBREAD. Bill was a Corporal  in the 2/29th Aust. Inf. Batt. POW on Burma-Siam Railway.

Cousin's husband: Albert William Hampson

Cousin's husband: David Llewellyn Roberts. In the 2/3rd Infantry Battalion. Served in Greece. Captured in Crete. Prisoner of war at Stalag Hammelburg 13C (XIIIC), working on railways. Flown to UK 10 Apr 1945 and returned to Australia in May 1945.

And, as well, several family members including her brother-in-law Angus Wyllie, served in the Citizen Military Force for the duration of the second World War.

Heywood Presbyterian Church picnic

Church Picnic 1969

My parents, Angus and Mavis Wyllie, were dairy farmers near Heywood in Victoria's Western District and this photo was taken on their farm in 1969.

The farm had a number of paddocks for the diary cows and hay production, there was a creek running down one side of the farm, and bush on the other. We kids didn't properly appreciate at the time just how special our farm was but mum and dad did and they were proud to share its delights with visitors. This is one such occasion.

We rotated around three churches when I was young because our local church, the Ettrick Presbyterian, only held services each fortnight. On the alternate Sunday we would go 12 miles into Heywood Presbyterian church or travel the half hour to the Portland Church of Christ attended by our grandparents and then spend the day with them.

This is a church picnic on my parents' farm in 1969 and it's the congregation of the Heywood Presbyterian church. I see my dad has towed a trailer-load of wood by tractor up the track to a spot near the creek and a table has been set up for the picnic. Presumably they had the fire going so they could barbecue some meat, or to keep warm. I see that some smaller fires have been started on the other side of the track - always a certain form of entertainment for children, especially town kids. There's no way this was a summer event because nobody lights a fire in the bush in an Australian summer.

My mother is in the photo but not dad so he must have been the photographer, but in order to get this photo he would have had to climb a tree.

After lunch mum and dad would have taken everyone down to see the beautiful creek and the fern-lined gully. We called the prettiest spot McDonalds Bend but I have no idea why - maybe it was already called that when we bought the farm in 1951.

Thankfully this bush is still the same today because mum and dad cared for it and then sold it to a young couple who put an environmental protection covenant on the title.

Sepia Saturday: Creative play

The Yulunga float

It must be about 1959 or 1960. The place is my parent's farm near Heywood in Victoria's western district.

I was very very lucky to have two neighbouring families who had girls my own age and parents who let us wander freely. It was a different time and we never did anything naughty or got into trouble. We appeared home for meals after spending countless days bike riding, walking in the bush, playing at 'secret clubs' (members were girls only but that rule was not really challenged because the only boy our age around was my younger brother), rabbit trapping with ferrets ... and dress ups.

On this occasion we must have decided to create a float for a street parade, but it was all pretend because we never actually paraded. We commandeered my dad's trailer and raided mum's garden for flowers. The green tunics are school sport uniforms. That's me at front right, with Betty Field at left. Behind her is Wendy Bannam and her sister, Gloria Bannam, is queen of the float. My young sister Anne is in the yellow dress and my other sister, Kaye, is in the green dress at right. I wonder why we called the float 'Yulunga'. I have a faint memory of it being one of our school's sporting house names.

So many great memories.

This blog is in response to the Sepia Saturday theme photo of a 1930 photograph of the Swan Maiden's Carriage at the Grace Brothers Ball in Sydney, Australia. You can float over to Sepia Saturday's webpage to see more bizarre photos from earlier times.

Mt Macedon

We recently visited the Macedon area in Victoria. Neither of us had been there since we were children in the 1950s so it was time - such a beautiful spot and only and hour or so from home. The first European to climb the 1000 metre mountain near Macedon was Major Thomas Mitchell in 1836. He named it Mt Macedon after Phillip II of ancient Macedonia.

Some of my family visited the area c1947. It looks like they're in a garden which isn't surprising because Macedon is famous for its beautiful private gardens. Dorothy and Allen Wyllie are my paternal grandparents.

Family picnic, Macedon c1947: (l-r) ?, May Rose and her sister  Dorothy Wyllie,
Dorothy's daughters Barbara and Dorothy, and her husband Allen Wyllie.

Some of my husband's family visited the area before the war, shortly after a large cross was erected on top of Mt Macedon. On a clear day you can seen Melbourne and Port Phillip Bay to the south.

This large cross is one of the most significant war memorials in Victoria. It was built in 1935 as a memorial to soldiers who served in the 1914-1918 war by a wealthy resident, William Cameron, whose son had died in the war. It's 21 metres high, is faced with terracotta tiles and embellished with a large bronze sword. The cross was restored in 1995 because it had been damaged by storms and a devastating bushfire in 1983 known as Ash Wednesday.

Phil at the Memorial Cross, Mt Macedon.

Phil's uncle, Gibson Phelan, with friends and family
at the Memorial Cross, Mt Macedon in the 1930s.

Memorial Cross and gardens c 1935 [Museum Victoria MM045589]

Memorial Cross and gardens after the bushfire in 1983 [Sydney Oats, Flickr]

Memorial Cross, 2014

We discovered a lovely cafe at the top of the mountain, delightful gardens and natural bush as well as walking trails and a memorial to a plane that crashed into the mountain in 1948. (It was a DC3 ANA flight, he Captain and his First Officer were killed, the hostess and 19 passengers survived.)

ANZAC Day: William Angus Wyllie

On a personal level we remember family members who served in war. My husband and I remember these grandparents and great-uncles who voluntarily enlisted in WW1. Two were killed in action.

William Angus Wyllie
Thomas Henry Smith
David Edgar Taylor (KIA)
James William Taylor
David Ray Leed (KIA)
William George Leed
Robert John Daniel Phelan
William Thomas Alford

Today I'm highlighting William Angus Wyllie (known as Angus), my grandfather's brother.

Angus was a farmer at Carron, north of Minyip in the Wimmera district of Victoria, where his parents, Robert and Jeannetta, had created a prosperous wheat farm and built a home.

In July 1915 Angus enlisted at Ballarat. He was 30 years old. His initial training was a Castlemaine and Broadmeadows in Victoria.

On 1 April 1916 he embarked on HMAT A23 'Suffolk' and sailed to Egypt and the Middle East. In June he was transferred to France via the port at Marseilles and joined the 58th Battalion there. He was appointed Lance Corporal in December 1916. In February 1917 he was wounded in action, a gunshot wound to the shoulder, and after several weeks was transferred to Cheltenham and then the 3rd Auxilliary Hospital at Dartford in England. He was five months recuperating from his injuries and was discharged from the hospital 16 July 1917 and transferred to the training brigade at the Sandhill Camp at Longbridge Deverill, Wiltshire.

On 10 November 1917 he left for France via Southampton and rejoined his unit in the field 18 November 1917. In August 1918 he was promoted to Corporal and then a month later to Sergeant.

On 29 September 1918 he was again wounded in action. This time it was a gunshot wound to his left leg. He was again sent to England, to the Chester Hospital. The war ended in November and on 9 December Angus appears to have been transferred to AHQ at Hardcott in London. He was granted two months leave with pay and subsistence (21 April until 21 June) to attend a motor mechanics course at the Mansion Motor Training Garage in York St, Westminster.

Angus' maternal grandparents, William and Mary Ann Cook, migrated to Victoria from Plumstead in Kent in 1852. There must have still been some contact with relatives there, maybe his mother's cousins, because we have this photo of a visit. Angus is seated at right.

In July 1919 Angus departed England on the 'Demosthenes' and disembarked at Melbourne 14 September 1919. He had been in the AIF for four years including several long periods in the field of battle in France.

Like many diggers Angus had formed a relationship with a girl while he was in England and after the war he sent her money to join him in Australia but she never came. But all was not lost in love and war. In September 1921 he married the teacher at the school near his farm at Carron, Dorothy Cosstick.

Australia was at war again when Angus was in his 50s and in March 1941 Angus enlisted in the army again. He was 56 years old. He served three years as a guard at Queenscliff on the coast of Victoria and he moved his wife and daughters to nearby Point Lonsdale. He was discharged in April 1944 because of his age and medical condition (he had arthritis in both knees).

Sepia Saturday: Venus Baths

The theme photo for Sepia Saturday this week features people sitting on rocks. So I selected half a dozen photos to post ... and then decided to just go with one.

My parents, Mavis and Angus Wyllie, are in the photo - dad standing with his hands on his hips and mum sitting at his feet with me on her knee - as well as dad's mother, his two sisters (Barbara and Dorothy) and mum's sister, Betty, with my cousin Rex on her knee. So it's easy to date the photo to 1950.

Wyllies and Smiths at Venus Baths, Grampians 

The location is also easy. It's Venus Baths near Halls Gap in the Grampians, Victoria. Here's a modern photo taken in the same location.

Venus Baths, Grampains

For over a hundred years the Venus Baths has been a very popular spot, a short walk from Halls Gap and very pretty. I've been there lots of times because the Grampians mountain range has always been a family holiday and day visit spot, and a walk to the Baths was often included. In 1950 all of the people in the photo were living in and around the Minyip area of the Wimmera, an hour or so to the north. Later we all moved from Minyip but were still living close enough to visit the Grampians. We loved it and so did lots of other people. It's now a very popular National Park.

Nature has given the Grampians a bit of a battering in the last few years - several major fires including one a few weeks ago, and a severe rainstorm that damaged a lot of the major walking tracks and infrastructure. Venus Baths was also a casualty. The rock pools themselves were unscathed but the course of the creek was changed by rockfalls and slips, there was a lot of erosion and the track and footbridges were extensively damaged. The track was closed until everything could be repaired. I haven't been there since it was reopened but is on my list of things to do, and when I go I must remember to sit in the same spot for another photo.

Voyage to Australia: the ship 'Magdalena'

The ship Magdalena left Southampton harbour 23 May 1853, bound for Adelaide, South Australia. Captain Brenton was in charge and, apart from the crew, there was a surgeon superintendent, a handful of cabin passengers and about 360 government sponsored (assisted) immigrants. It arrived in Port Adelaide on 25 August 1853 after a voyage of three months.

Southampton docks

On board were my ancestors, William and Ann Wyllie  (or Wylie, as they were listed on the passenger list). William was 25 years old and Ann (nee Cranston) was 23. They had married three years earlier in Ann's home town in Muirkirk, Ayrshire, Scotland. Ann was about five months pregnant when they boarded and their first child was born in Black Forest, Adelaide about a week after they arrived.

I'd be interested to know how they travelled from Ayrshire to Southampton. Did they travel to Glasgow and then board a coastal ship? It's quite a distance. Why didn't they travel directly from Glasgow or Edinburgh? Even Liverpool is much closer. So I imagine there was quite a lengthy lead-in time to the actual departure, and we'll never know the reasons prompting them to make the decision to emigrate but I think it would have been economic. It wasn't gold prospecting because they stayed in South Australia for several decades before moving the Victoria.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the voyage itself. An Adelaide newspaper published a list of the passengers on board the Magdalena as well as the cargo she carried.

South Australian Register, 26 August 1853

South Australian Register, 26 August 1853

South Australian Register, 26 August 1853

According to the above report there were nine births and eleven deaths on board during the voyage. But another source states eight births and fourteen deaths. You can find a full list of the names (as well as a detailed passenger list) on the TheShipsList webpage but the cause of death is not known because the surgeon superintendent was inept at keeping accurate records. He was charged and convicted in an Adelaide court as detailed in the following newspaper report.

South Australian Register, 27 October 1853

There was also a small newspaper report of a lost item of luggage. I wonder how often luggage was lost or stolen after it was taken off the ship.

I have in my home a wooden chest that we use as a coffee table. We have no way of knowing for sure but I believe it is a chest that one of my ancestors used to carry their luggage on ship - and the Wyllies on the Magdalena are the most likely. My father remembers that when he was a child in the 1920s it was kept in the boys' bedroom and used to store clothes. 

And, lastly, a little anecdote. My Uncle Jim Wyllie told me that he met a man who told him that his father was on the Magdalena with William and Ann Wyllie, and he remembered William winning a raffle on the voyage. The prize was a case of apples which was shared among some of their fellow passengers.

Sepia Saturday: Allan Wyllie's moustache

Oh my goodness. It's the last day of November already. Sepia Saturday just snuck in with a theme photo for Movember, growing facial hair to raise awareness of mens health. He's sporting a fabulous moustache (or is it mustache or pair of moustaches?).

My grandad, Allan Wyllie never shaved off his moustache. I think he must have grown it from when he first had to shave because it's in every photo I have of him. He never used an electric shaver either. I lived with my grandparents for a year in 1965 and I remember him sharpening his razor on a leather strop he kept hanging on a cupboard with the mirror next to it, and lathering up. He was born in 1886 and died 1966 and was a farmer in Victoria.

Allan Wyllie

Dorothy Taylor and Allan Wyllie, 1916

Allan Wyllie

Allan (leaning on the car) with Dorothy and his Taylor in-laws, including his
 father-in-law Henry who also has a fabulous moustache.

Dorothy and Allan Wyllie

Now that I see all of the photos together I notice that Grandad looks very serious. He never was a man who smiled readily and openly, and his son, my dad, says that he was more likely to criticise than to praise. But I liked him.

And just for fun. This is a photo I found at a boot sale. I've no idea who it is or where it was taken but I like it very much.

Sepia Saturday: Naomi and Mabel

The theme photo for this week's Sepia Saturday

A lady standing in a doorway to have her photo taken. That should be easy. I should have plenty of photos to match that theme. Huh, famous last words. I found people standing on steps, on verandahs and in front gardens. But doorways? Only two!

Naomi Wyllie nee Milgate

My Grandfather's aunt, Naomi, was born in Jacobs Creek in South Australia. Her family moved to the Wimmera district of Victoria and it's there that she met William Thomas Wyllie, a farmer at Dunmunkle. They married in 1885 and had four daughters.

They moved to Melbourne and for a number of years lived in a house called 'Lilydare' in Burwood. There's a nameplate in the photo but it isn't quite clear enough for me to read it so I'm not sure if it's that house.

It looks like Naomi has been called out to have her photo taken and she hasn't even removed her apron, just like the lady in our theme photo.

Naomi died in 1945 at the age of 83.

Mabel Lydia Larkin nee Quick

Mabel Lydia Quick was an English girl who met an Australian soldier during World War 1. She travelled out to Victoria after the war and married him in Melbourne. He took her up to the hot and dry mallee country in northern Victoria where he had a farm. She is the mother of my husband's uncle, Jack Larkin.

This photo is of Mabel Lydia standing in the door of their home. There was almost no water so gardens and lawns were almost impossible. Heat, drought, mice plagues, very cold winter nights, dust storms, lack of water, unreliable crop harvests - what a shock for an English lass!

Trove Tuesday: in which we go for a record

In 1908 Sampson Smith wrote a letter to the Editor of The Argus. His parents, Ephraim and Elizabeth Smith, had just celebrated their diamond wedding. Sampson has done a few calculations and worked out that his grandchildren have four surviving great-grandparents (Ephraim and Elizabeth Smith and Edward and Mary Barker) whose combined ages was 339 years. And not only that, all four were shipmates when they migrated from England on the the 'Flora McDonald', landing in Portland, Victoria in Aug 1852.

The Argus (Melbourne), 18 Dec 1908

I too have done a calculation. My grandsons have four surviving great-grandparents as well. Nan and Pasy (Neil and Shirley Phelan of Kerang) are 90 and 88. Grandad and Hazel (Angus and Hazel Wyllie of Drysdale) are 93 and 81. That's a total of 352 years. But I'm cheating just a little. Hazel and Angus have only been married for 23 years - my mother, Mavis, died in 1988 when she was 61.

But isn't it interesting that diamond wedding anniversaries (60 years) and octogenarians (80 years) were considered worthy of comment in 1908.

Trove Tuesday: Vale Uncle Jim (1868-1937)

I remember the violin on a high shelf in our spare bedroom. And then we children wrecked it. None of us learned to play it, my parents couldn't play it. My mother played the organ in church, we had an organ and a piano (and the ubiquitous wooden recorders) and several of us had piano lessons, but we weren't brought up listening to classical music (or even fiddle music) so I don't ever remember thinking I'd like to learn how to play the violin. Somehow we were allowed to play with the violin instead, so gradually it was ruined.


I never thought about whose violin it was but now I know that it belonged to my father's great-uncle Jim. Dad's older sister, Dorothy, told me that Uncle Jim played with the Salvation Army band in Warracknabeal, playing on the street.

Jim and his siblings were born in South Australia and it appears that the family moved from Mt Gambier to the Horsham and Minyip districts of Victoria in the 1870s. There were four surviving brothers, Robert (my great-grandfather), William, John and James. James was born at Mt Gambier in 1868. He never married.

When he was about 25 James was working on a farm at Kellalac when he was kicked in the head by a horse. The result was a fractured skull (I was told he had part of his skull removed) and brain damage that affected him the rest of his life.

On 30 October 1894 James Wyllie was admitted to Ararat Lunatic Asylum and discharged 13 December 1894 as 'cured'.

PROV VPRS 7427 Nominal Roll of Patients (VA 2841) Ararat 1867-1906 Unit 1.

Ararat (Aradale) Lunatic Asylum, c1880
http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/pictoria/b/3/6/doc/b36233.shtml

About 30 years ago I wrote to Aradale to see if they could provide me with any information and was most surprised to receive a little package back. It includes the dates Jim was admitted and discharged and copies of the Victoria Police Reports generated when Jim was arrested. The reports are quite detailed and describe his address, sober habits, that his mania wasn't dangerous to others, that he was quiet in custody and not under restraint. The first report doesn't describe what behaviour precipitated the arrest but the result was his admission to the asylum at Ararat. It must have been a horrible place. I know little about its history but there were about 1000 inmates, male and female in separate wings, and up to 500 staff. It has since closed.

James was admitted again in 1905 according to this newspaper notice...

Horsham Times, 12 Sep 1905

... and again on 6 September 1908. This time he wasn't discharged until four years later, on 1 October 1908. This time the police report records that he led a sober and industrious life at Warracknabeal (where he worked in the flour mill) but was arrested because he 'says he is Jesus Christ, prays on his knees on the footpath and tries to impel others to do the same'. Whilst in the custody of the police he was excitable, shouting and praying and was constrained in a strait jacket.

My aunt remembers visiting Uncle Jim at Warracknabeal with her parents but when they approached the house he would disappear out the back so they would just leave the food and other items and just leave. Eventually, in 1937 when he was 60, the Salvation Army rang the family to say that he was in hospital. When he died he was buried in the Minyip cemetery after a service at Warracknabeal. His house was sold and the proceeds divided between his nieces and nephews.

Horsham Times, 20 Aug 1937

You know what? Now that I know his story I wish we'd treasured Uncle Jim's violin.

Sepia Saturday: A clearing sale

This week for Sepia Saturday we're asked to highlight a photo that is 'blurred, scratched, undefined, and plain boring'. Easy peasy, I thought. But then I had trouble deciding on which of the many blurred and scratched photos to choose. Not one of them is boring to me because each captures a little slice of time in the life of my family.

I've chosen just one. After the war my parents, Angus and Mavis Wyllie, married and lived on a wheat farm at Laen, east of Minyip in Victoria's Wimmera district. I was three when they decided to sell the farm and move south to greener pastures at Homerton north of Portland on the coast. Dad wasn't a wheat farmer any more, he was a dairy farmer, and he didn't need the wheat farming equipment any more. So he held a clearing sale in February 1952. For several weeks prior to the sale there were advertisements in the paper.

Horsham Times, 25 January 1952 [Sourced at Trove]

Clearing sales are usually held on the property and items for sale are laid out in rows on the ground as shown in the photo. The sales are usually well-attended by neighbouring farmers looking for a bargain. The photo is faint and blurred but I like that it records that event and that it shows how flat and dry the Wimmera is. The farm at Homerton was undulating, lush, with a creek running the length of it and incorporated acres of natural bush as well as pasture. Thirty years later mum and dad held another clearing sale when they sold the farm at Homerton and retired.

Wyllie's clearing sale, Laen, February 1952

You can see more blurry photos over at Sepia Saturday.

Sepia Saturday: A brace of photos

The theme photo for Sepia Saturday this week includes three men, braces, newspaper, jazz musician and striped trousers. I've chosen some family photos of people wearing braces (suspenders).

Uncle Jack, standing left in the photo below, was a crack shot. But in Australia there really wasn't much to shoot at in the 1930s apart from kangaroos and rabbits. Rabbits were in absolutely plague proportions and a complete menace to the environment and the farming community but in the depression years they were an important source of food. But somehow I think this photo is just for fun. The caption reads 'The Big Game Hunters' and Jack and his mates, Malcolm and Mick, appear to have shot only two or three rabbits. All lived and farmed in Kooloonong in Victoria's Mallee. I saw Malcolm several months ago at Jack's wife, Lena's, 90th birthday and he had quite a few yarns to tell. He probably left out the best ones.

The Big Game Hunters (with two rabbits), Jack Larkin (left), Malcolm Macfarlane & Mick Murphy
 at Kooloonong, Victoria

And this is Jack's father-in-law Ralph Alford. Everyone loved Ralph. He was a farmer at Mologa and in this photo he's wearing his work clothes. Maybe he was just home for a cuppa and one of his daughters said 'Stand there for a minute dad.'

Ralph Alford, Mologa

Another of Ralph's daughters, Shirley, married the kid in the centre of the photo below. Neil Phelan turned 90 a month ago so we had another party! And there's Neil's uncle Gib with him, wearing braces and a tie so I think they've probably been to church.

Gibson Phelan, Neil Phelan (b. 1923) and Ina Phelan at Mitiamo, Victoria

And here are Neil's brothers, Doug and Keith. This time Doug gets to wear the braces but he probably didn't have a choice. Mum would have told him what to wear.

Doug Phelan and Keith Phelan, Mitiamo

And lastly, this is me about 1950. My mum used to draft the patterns and sew most of our clothes, and there are a few photos of us kids wearing shoulder straps of various kinds. These straps would have been buttoned on to the skirt. It looks grubby and so do my knees so I hope I hadn't just got back from church!

Yours truly

You can read more jazzy blogs on the theme over at Sepia Saturday's webpage.