This first real post indulges in a bit of history to set the scene, and introduces Big Dave (born 1932)- an amazing bloke from Yorkshire who decided at the age of 17 that he didn't want to live in England anymore, and persuaded his Mum to let him go by himself on a bloody big boat and sail the seas to Australia. How times have changed- our kids aren't allowed to walk to school by themselves now!
So now meet his mum: Elsie Wright (nee Evans- born 1900), but I called her Grams. Anyways- her first child died of a hole in the heart at the age of 13, when Dad was 1 year, so Dad was essentially an only child. Yet she still let him go. When it looked like he wasn't coming back, she packed up a sea trunk (and that was it- gawd I can't go away for the weekend without a suitcase the size of a sea chest!), left Castleford in Yorkshire and followed him. She had already divested herself of a husband that had abandoned her and Dad in WW2. So incredibly brave when you think about it - divorce would have made her a social pariah!
Here's a photo of Grams- and yes she was as stubborn and strong as she looks....
Grams and Dad settled in Narrogin, Western Australia where Dad worked for 18 months at an oil depot (at the Vacuum Oil Company, which became Mobil). I can imagine they spent their nights eating bread and butter or boiled cabbage (she was a useless cook) and reading until the very wee hours. She would have read western after western, as that was all she ever read.
Along the way, Dad decided that he would become a teacher, and went to Claremont Teachers college in the 50s (this history is very hazy) before he took up a teaching post in the early 50s in Pemberton in Western Australia's South West. The local headmaster always hosted a get together before the start of the school year for his existing and new teachers to meet each other.... and that was when he saw her.... A beautiful, tiny waisted Sophia Loren looking young woman in a green dress and a silver belt.
Mind you, Dad really had some movie star looks going for himself as well!!
He decided then and there he would marry her.....
But first he had to get permission to date her from her very Greek and traditional parents.....
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