Photos, Memories and Time.

Life’s Amazing Family Circle – Part II

11 January 2012 by Lesley Dewar 2 Comments

Life’s Amazing Family Circle (continued)

Part one of this series of blog posts can be found here: Life’s Amazing Family Circle – Part 1

30 years after 1941, when my Mum and Dad had a typical wartime honeymoon of a single night before my Dad was shipped off into the RAAF on a troop train, my Aunty Rae and my Nana Nancarrow became part of my future life and the well-being of my children – in a way we have just shared – 41 years after the event.

On The Railways

Many of my Dad’s family worked in the railways: West Australian Government Railways (W.A.G.R.) and the Midland Railway of Western Australia (MRWA). This meant job security but many moves for the families as the men went from one railway station appointment to another, the children to one school after another and wives and mothers made the best they could of making new railway friends as they moved about. My Dad often says until the Nancarrow family arrived in the tiny wheatbelt town of Caron , there were not enough local children to warrant a school teacher being stationed there – but it soon changed with the brood Nana and Pop brought with them! Up until a couple of years ago, he would still go to school reunions with people from Caron and his old school teacher (Miss. Wilma Peacock, who married Bill Dawson the StationMaster at Caron and also Mukinbudin) used to come along too.

WJN-Nana-Pop-Marry-17-9-1917 — News report of Ivy Ridley and George Nancarrow being married in Mullewa 17 Sept 1917

Nana and Pop moved all around the mid-West with the WAGR; from Mullewa (where they were married), to Day Dawn, Geraldton, Caron, Mukinbudin, Collie and other small towns. One brother (Teddy) went to work for the MRWA; his final posting was at Walkaway and Dad’s sister Phylis married into the Midland Railway company, too, when she became engaged to and later married Keith Milner. After many years in the railways, Nana and Pop lived their final working years in Middle Swan until my Dad’s brother “Rusty” (otherwise B. E. Nancarrow) bought a house in Homewood Street, Cloverdale, in which he, Nana and Pop could live after Pop’s retirement. My Granddad died from that home in February 1962, as did Uncle Rusty years later in June 1980 and my Nana – in 1988.

Rusty spent a lot of time working away from Perth, including being in the Snowy Mountains tunnelling with my Dad or working in the jungles of New Guinea and Malaysia, mining. In fact, three brothers, Blue (my Dad), Rusty and Jack were all working on the Snowy Mountains Scheme at the same time and for a time, they were each supervising a crew – so there was a Nancarrow in the same tunnel twenty four hours a day. Jack and Rusty were working there first and my Dad got a telegram: “Catch the first plane. Money for shit” and so, he too went to the Snowy to work. There was tremendous competition between the brothers and their crews, and earlier, working two on one shift and the third on another, they helped set a world record for hard rock tunnelling over a six day period. They were hard taskmasters – we are told.

House sharing

Because Rusty was away so much, my Nana advertised for a married couple to come and share the house with them. She wanted the company and it was a relief for the family to have someone close on hand keeping an eye on both Pop and Nana – because by then, their family was spread across the country. Indeed, when the house was purchased, there were cows in the paddocks across the road – a dairy operated where the Belmont Forum was later built, so it really was quite an “out of town” location. The couple who came to share with Nana were George and Kathy Andrews – newly immigrated from Scotland; homeless, jobless and terribly homesick. They came to love her as if she was their own mother. Nana had a huge party to welcome them into her home and everyone who was within “cooee” came to meet George and Kathy. They became part of the family; shared celebrations of births, deaths and marriages and stayed with Nana Nancarrow for some years. While they were there, my Nana suffered a burst stomach ulcer and with her nursing experience, Kathy saved her life. We were all immensely grateful for her skill and for being there when she was needed – and Nana lived on to be 93, still in her own house in Cloverdale, to die on Anzac Day in 1988. She also helped nurse my Pop, who died Feb 1st 1962.

I remember going to visit Nana one day with my own Mum and Dad and I had my three young children with me before they came back to live with me, full time. Warren would not get out of the car. He was about six. When I finally coaxed him to tell me what was wrong, he said “No one can be that old and still be alive!” How his view has changed – now my Dad is already 93 and his Nana is 90. Another great-grandson is known to have gently stroked her arm and asked “Is that still skin, Nana, or is it leather now?”

With no children of their own, George and Kathy set out to adopt. They moved from living with Nana and bought their own home in Lockridge, then a new housing area being developed by the State Housing Commission. They were able to adopt two children: Michael and Julie. When Michael was only a few months old, Kathy had major surgery and Michael needed to be cared for until she recovered. It was my Aunty Rae and her husband Terry who took him in – and she says they both cried when they had to return him home to Kathy and George after a couple of months. He was a beautiful baby and they came to care for him a great deal. Nana regarded Michael and Julie as two more grandchildren – though how she kept up with all of them, I really do not know.

Family support

In mid-1971, my three children were returned to me by their father after a separation of several years and after being evicted from private housing (for being a single parent with kids!) I found myself living in Lockridge in a high density block of flats occupied by mostly single mothers with children – and very few of their parents working. After a few months as an Avon lady and selling more product than I could package and deliver, I quickly found a good position at Metro Motors in Morley. I needed someone I could trust to help me care for the children, especially after school and started asking around for a friendly “Aunt” or family who could help.

George and Kathy lived only a minute or two away in their new house; their adoptions were in progress and they were delighted to “take in” my three – to be supervised before and after school, because I was working from 8:30am to 5:00pm every day and every second Saturday morning as well. Since they were Nana’s great- grandchildren, it was all the more special for them, though Kathy would have done it anyway. Annette was only four and a half and had nearly a year to go before she could start school, so Kathy helped take care of her for the whole time while the boys were dropped off there before school and returned home to her house afterwards, until I could collect them after work.

It was a very special moment when Rae was visiting my Dad and me this week and happened to mention George and Kathy – to which I responded “Surely, that’s not the George and Kathy who looked after Annette and the boys when I went back to work?” In fact, it was and we were able to fill in a lot of blanks for each other about those years. The same day, we both phoned Kathy, (sadly George has now passed away,) and she still lives in the same house. I will be going to see her very soon and bring this amazing family circle even closer. I think I should take my Dad, too. What do think about that?

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(c) Lesley Dewar July 2012 to current.

Life’s Amazing Family Circle – Part 1

10 January 2012 by Lesley Dewar Leave a Comment

The Youngest and the Oldest.

Today, my Dad’s youngest sister came to visit – to see her only surviving brother after his short stay in hospital last week. I am not allowed to call her Aunty Rae because she is only seven years old than me; she is 18 years his junior and he really is her “big brother”. We talked about family, places and people we have known or not. Rae had to remind my Dad that she will never remember living in Elvire Street in Midland – because she hadn’t even been born then!

My Dad (William James Nancarrow aka “Blue”) was born on 26 March 1918 at Nurse Lloyd’s Private Hospital in Coolgardie Street, Subiaco and an online search this afternoon at National Library of Australia – Digital Newspapers found a copies of notices posted in the three major newspapers of the day. Rae, his youngest sister, was born in January 1936 and she is the last of my Dad’s eleven brothers and sisters born to Nana (Ivy) and Pop (William George) Nancarrow, who were married on September 17, 1917 in Mullewa. Rae was born at K.E.M.H in Subiaco; my Nana made the journey from Mukinbudin for the confinement and birth.

Boys Doing A Man’s Job

In April, 1936 aged barely 18, Dad was awarded a trophy for his cycling exploits in Mukinbudin – along with his friend Jimmy Stewart and in 1937 after his 19^th birthday, he left when Rae was just over one year old to go to work in Caron to work on Reid’s farm for a couple of months. They helped him get a job with the Farrell family on their property at Perenjori; he spent a season there seeding and after a few months, my Dad went to Cue to live with his Grandma and Granddad Ridley. In Cue, he spent time prospecting and dry blowing for gold with Granddad Ridley but he says they didn’t strike it rich! His spare time was taken up with cycling, football (where he was written up in the local paper as “Nancarrow has shown some improvement over his usual game” and cricket (with a career highest score of 78 not out).

In early 1938, he went to Beringarra Station to work for Mr & Mrs Wood, the station managers, as a station hand – and I smile when I think of my 15yo son, Colin, embarking on a similar career on Cherrabun Station in the Kimberley many years later. There is a difference though: my Dad went to work with the sheep side of farming on Beringarra while Colin dismisses them as “ground lice” and his work in the North West was fixing windmills and to help round up cattle that had been running wild for the previous year. I have never been to Beringarra Station and the closest I have been to Cherrabun was to find it on the map as a Greyhound bus sped me through the night from Kununurra to Broome – on the memorable day that St. Kilda and Collingwood drew in the AFL Grand Final.

Sporting Heroes Go To War

After a year on the station – much of it spent by himself camping out in the bush with only his horse, “Jimmy Boy” and his waterbag, with Mr. Wood coming by every couple of weeks with light supplies – Dad moved to Big Bell. Work was very scarce; hundreds of men were still unemployed as the depression was slowly receding and after three weeks of turning up every day outside the mine office along with other men, he was lucky enough to be selected – but not only because he was a skilled metalworker. His sporting ability was a key part of him getting his job – because the mine management was keen to see the Big Bell Football Team strengthened and go up against Cue, Reedys and Mt Magnet. In 1941, my Dad enlisted in the RAAF while still working in Big Bell; married my mother and left to go to Adelaide. It was a short honeymoon: they were married at 5:00pm on Friday in St. George’s Cathedral and Dad left on a troop train from Perth Central Station at 12:00noon the next day. My Nana, Nana Nancarrow, came down from Mukinbudin with Rae – then a little girl of five – to see him off. Nana went back Mukinbudin and my Mum went to stay with her own sister, Marian until she could sail to Adelaide under full wartime conditions, to be my Dad’s wife. Marian is now 99, my Mum is 90 and they are the only surviving children of their own family.

The Past Is The Future Is The Present

Nana-Robert-Jade — Lesley’s Grandmother on her 90th birthday, with Lesley’s Grandchildren, Jade and Baby Robert

Tomorrow – I will tell you how, 30 years later in 1971, my Aunty Rae and my Nana Nancarrow were involved in a critical part of my life and that of my children – something that I only discovered today – 41 years after the event itself. Like Dr Who, we keep bumping into our future as we live each day, but without a sonic screwdriver, we neither recognise it nor change it,.

Over 70 years, I can see Life’s Amazing Family Circle at work. I just love the way that life actually lets us tie up all the loose ends – if we will only listen. Instead of having a tangled web of discordant memories and perceptions – there is a great deal of unseen order in our lives.

The trouble is, we are too impatient to wait for it to reveal itself, or too unbelieving. It’s not karma – but I am becoming more convinced that we can take charge of mapping out of lives for better results – if we just have more faith that all we need will be provided. We need that sonic screwdriver of trust!

“Nice day, isn’t it?” said the bobtail. “Now, get out of here!”

6 January 2012 by Lesley Dewar Leave a Comment

Her: “Oh, it’s three o’clock already.”

Him: “I haven’t noticed it yet. I wouldn’t say it’s hot.”

That’s how it can begin: another interchange of misunderstanding, frustration and if you are not too careful, harsh words that come from the exasperation of living with someone who is deaf, especially if they have hearing aids and refuse to wear them.

My own experience of being deaf is limited indeed: pressure from a descending aircraft; a temporary blockage with the flu or, as recently, an oversupply of wax that was painlessly and quickly removed at the nurses’ station of my local GP.

The first time my ears were syringed to relieve deafness was five years ago and it elicited such a feeling of relief that I was moved to write and post in a old blog on MySpace:

Give a cheer! I can hear!
Yes, it’s true – I can hear!

Just a silly bit of wax
Stopped me in my tracks;
You can ring out the bell
It’s been seven weeks of hell

I can hear, I can hear, I can hear.

How well could I hear? At the time, I posted a picture of a bluetongue lizard I disturbed when I walked into my shadehouse that morning. He was having a drink of water and he growled at me to go away. I had never heard of a bobtail lizard growling before – but I heard him, clear as a bell!

For the previous seven weeks, my left ear had been totally deaf – it had been oiled, washed out and had more eardrops than you can imagine. Three separate Doctor’s visits failed to diagnose the problem. Finally, the nurse syringed it – and I could hear! In stereo – even!

The photo I can no longer find – although it will probably turn up again, archived away in one of the folders I continually create in my undisciplined filing! I did find a lovely picture of Teng Sing Tung sitting on the side of the pond – so that is a bonus. Having just wasted about 25 minutes searching a variety of folders looking for the picture, I am reminded of my three star words for 2012: Commit, Plan and Trust and the very first of those is that I am committed to becoming more efficient every day.

That does require some careful planning. In this post, do you think these are simply random threads of apparently unrelated thought – or is it that I actually had a plan and knew where this post would end?

Trust me – I always begin my posts with the end in mind! Every writer has to know how the story will end, before they begin.

I have attached some interesting information for those of you who would like to know more about Bobtails and other Australian critters. There are also some activities for kids to do, so feel free to share.

You simply need to click the link below, which is published in Adobe PDF format and will open in a new window. If you don’t have the latest Adobe PDF reader, you can download it here, free. (here)

Tell me about a Blue Tongue (Bobtail)

For me, I am now heeding the bobtail’s advice. “It’s a nice day, and I am out of here!”

About sharing this post:

Lesley Dewar is a well known blogger and workshop facilitator who writes regularly on Social Media, marketing and customer service in the category of Business Tips and she is the principal author at Stories My Nana Tells The attached document is attributed to its original author and no claim of authorship is made by Lesley Dewar.

Dark Words For A Dark Soul

6 January 2012 by Lesley Dewar Leave a Comment

“What can you say to pierce this dreaded black fog, when once it descends? No words prevail. Your hugs pain me as I seek only the agony of my solitude. Leave me. Let me lie, that I might ponder why I am worthy to live. To recall my unknown and unforgiven trespasses. To hear each breath as it flows in and out my imprisoned chest. My heart cold. My sun dark. Perhaps, this time, it will not pass – and then I shall lie peacefully forever in the arms of eternal quiet and struggle no more.

These are not words spun like a silken thread from the spindle of a writer. These are my own memories. Memories of dark days that haunted me – and I survived. Shared memories of my beautiful daughter, who did not.

Depression comes into our lives in different ways and not all can deal with it successfully. Once it has struck and covered you with its black fog, nothing is ever the same again.

A virgin sees the world differently after her veil has been rent in the first act of carnal love, for even the light of day will seem more bright and bent on exposing her painful loss of innocence. When depression strikes our loved ones, the pain of feeling impotent and unable to “fix it” is a pain of a different kind but of no less intensity.

If you want to know a little more about this, I urge you to read an earlier blog post Depression: What Does It Feel Like? which has links to some very helpful support groups in Australia, as well.

Photos, Memories and Time.

5 January 2012 by Lesley Dewar 8 Comments

Cats! A veritable lifetime of cats: Dim Sim, Muggins, Mao Tse Tung, Ten Sing Tung, Splinter, Amber, Lloyd, Kitten and others. Dogs! WACL, the black labrador, Choti the miniature dachshund and two Pepper dogs, (dalmations who were entirely different from one another) whose consecutive lives spanned more than 30 years.

There was Burt, a pink and grey galah who escaped after 27 years of captivity and who now flies free with the local flock at Warren and Lisa’s place.

Did I mention three children and their marriage partners, some stepchildren, lots of grandchildren, my parents and dozens of associated family members? There were cars, jeeps, tractors; a shade house, frogs and frog gardens. Two husbands, too.

Having never done it properly before, at the beginning of 2011 I decided to collate all my printed photos into a set of lovely albums. I bought a matching set of 10 photo albums at Things over the holiday break. These will hold 2,000 photos and postcards and I bought as many albums as I expected to need, so that they will make a beautiful display as well as keeping my precious pictures safe.

While I was at Warren and Lisa’s (cat sitting as usual), I started sorting those I had taken with me (mostly Bali) as best as my memory will allow. T-shirts are a good indication of photos taken at the same event, or the fact that one hotel had a swim up bar and the other did not. A good tip on sorting printed photos is to line them all up on one edge and sort them into groups of pictures of exactly the same size. Photo shops, especially in Bali, cut the pictures so they are just marginally different in size and it is quite easy to get all the photos from one film sorted from the others.

Once I started sorting them, three things became abundantly clear:

Lots of photos I wanted and remembered were not amongst the ones I had taken with me to sort out while I was cat-sitting at Warren and Lisa’s house, although I could not imagine where they were – since we had recently moved houses. Some of them I really wanted for my stories, too.
My idea of collating by topic was nowhere near as good as putting them into chronological order.
I needed more photo albums.

I also needed my old passport!!! Immigration and customs stamps are invaluable when you are sorting old photos.

Over the years, there had been five trips to Bali, with funerals, weddings and visits to the homes of our Bali friends; not to mention my white water rafting and para-sailing while Robbie held the fort and the beachhead. We had regular visits to Sanur, the volcano and the black beach with Jimmy and Mickey from the Bali Bagia, where they would take a day off from work and play “tourist” with us.

My own seven or eight overseas trips – including Hawaii, New Zealand, Las Vegas, Mexico, London and Sabah meant that somewhere I still had loads of photos to find. While there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of pictures on disc, printed photos going back to around 1992 need a good chronology.

I have committed myself this year to also cataloguing many of my father’s photographs of his career in the mining industry of Western Australia and tunnelling in the Snowy Mountains because he has hundreds that need his explanations; his memory is excellent and he is a living treasure of history in this, his 94^th year.

I have made the first start on his collection and we were lucky enough to espy a whole box of photographs from our earlier years exactly as I remembered them: stored in a bright gold gift bag – last seen in the shed at Stoneville when we had packed up one more time to flee a summer bushfire. This time, they are safely stored in a big plastic box in my little garden shed.

Last week, after spending about three hours with Dad, I chose the first ten photographs to begin creating a series of stories for this Nana to tell. I will keep bringing them out and putting them into their right order. I think I might need a few more albums, too.

I plan to write one story a week and trust that we will get them all done. To take notes while I interview him – even though the story may be written later – seems to be the way to go. Sorting our photos of family and work, my Dad and I, our lives spill out before us on the table – a patchwork quilt of memories. It is a good life. One that we can share with our families for many years to come.

About sharing this post: Lesley Dewar is a well known blogger and workshop facilitator who writes regularly on Social Media, marketing and customer service in the category of Business Tips

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