Margaret put down the letter she had just read.  It did not contain happy news.   One of her friends wanted to see her as she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and wanted to talk to her before she underwent palliative care.
 
Although her friend Coral resided some three hours away by car, Margaret promptly cancelled all of her appointments and made arrangements to visit her.
 
As the outer suburbs of the city were left behind, Margaret  began to ponder why her friend had never married.  She was always in the wedding parties of her mutual friends.  No matter how hard they tried to match her up with some of their male friends, she remained single.  ‘Dedicated to her career’ was the conclusion arrived at.
 
When Margaret arrived at her friend’s home, she was shocked to see how ill she looked.  The usual greetings over, they sat outside on the verandah and began to talk.  The usual news about both their doings were discussed and, in a lull in the conversation, Coral drifted into a sleep.
 
Margaret sat quietly and after a few minutes decided to look around the garden, when Coral spoke.  ‘Don’t go, I haven’t finished talking.”  So down Margaret sat.
 
Quite suddenly Coral spoke again.
 
“I know you all wondered why I never married.  So now I will tell you.  I met someone years ago I fell deeply in love with, so much so that he was never out of my thoughts.  We used to see each other at various functions.  Our eyes would meet across the space and I knew he felt the same.   It was a lovely affair, and I used to think what life would be like with him by my side for ever.
 
This affair went on for years, until I was diagnosed with this illness, and I knew I had to face truth and reality.  The man I had such deep feelings for was out of my reach and world.  I had kept up the fantasy, that one day we would be together, would happen.
 
I am also one of those persons that can love only once in a lifetime.  It wasn’t my career that kept me single, it was an affair of the mind.
 
You can tell our friends why I never married, because I know you all used to speculate why.”
There was  silence for a while. 
 
Margaret asked , “Who was this person?”and Coral replied “You really do not want to know”
 
Three weeks later Coral passed away, her secret with her. 

​
 
Shirley Roberts
December 2017

Early in the nineteen sixties, I was living about thirty miles out of Wangaratta with my husband and three small children, trying to eke out a living, on a small dairy farm, by selling butterfat.
 
Previous to taking over the running of the farm from elderly in-laws, we had been living in a rented house about two miles away.
 
When we vacated the hopuse it was rented by a family with small children.  About six months later I visited them with a request to keep their two dogs under control, as the dogs had mauled one of our weanling calves.
 
While I was talking to them I heard a child crying.  The child was obviously sick. With three small children of my own, it wasn’t hard to come to that conclusion.
 
I asked the parents whether the child was alright and they replied “She is sick, but has just been attended to”.
 
I then left with their assurance that they would tie their dogs up at night.
 
Three months later they were in court in a charge of neglect resulting in the death of a child.
 
I felt awful.   To this day I can still hear the weak, sickly cry of that child.
 
If only I had reported what I had heard that day and suspected, that child would probably have lived.
 
…….
Post script – A neighbour shot both of their dogs which they had not kept under control. 
 
 
Shirley Roberts,
December 2017

​At the out break of World War II, all persons eighteen years of age and older who were not in the armed forces or Land Army had to register at the labour exchange, or employment agency, as they are know known.
 
An ex-opera singer in her mid fifties dutifully registered and was sent to an institution for migrant children.
 
The children were the beneficiaries of her musical talents.  This lady had a penchant for round singing, so much so, on occasions they  even sang Grace in rounds. It must have sounded like the chorus of an Opera, though somewhat out of tune at times.
 
One day when the King of the Rifles, aka Mr Cannon, the Senior School Inspector, visited, Grades Five and Six were assembled and sang ‘Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree’.  Mr Cannon was so impressed an encore was performed.  The round was printed on the back of the next issue of the School Paper.  
 
This lady also organized all the school concerts, which were really musicals.
 
One child loved listening to her singing, especially her Opera Arias.
 
Advance in time to the present.   The child has now become elderly.  One night she tuned in to a detective drama.  The hero of the piece was playing a record of ‘One Fine Day’, an aria from Madame Butterfly she’d first heard sung by the opera singer remembered from her childhood.
 
Wonderful vibrations, not just good ones, she experienced. 
 
Not only was the program a good “Who Done It”, it evoked memories, good and bad, of when she had heard it sung so many years ago.
 
Needless to say she waited eagerly for the next episode, and was not disappointed.
 
 
Shirley Roberts,
October 2017

Shirley shared this story orally at the Northo in mid June - here is the written version.

One Saturday morning during the Great Depression, George Johnson, the undertaker of a country town, strolled to the centre of the next block to enlist the help of Bill Smart, the owner of the one furniture store.

George had had information that a resident of a small village thirty miles away had been found deceased by the local mailman, as bread and mail had not been collected for four days.

As Bill had a wife and five children to care for, he always welcomed means to earn extra money, as business was not very brisk.

When the store closed at noon, George and Bill set off in a horse drawn hearse to collect the deceased.  They arrived at their destination to find the body in an advanced state of decomposition, which made their task of placing it in a body bag very unpleasant.

The task completed they set off back to town, but George, who had a decided fondness for whisky, decided he needed a little help to make the return journey more pleasant.  His stay at the village hotel was a lot lengthier than he said it would be, and a very inebriated undertaker climed up onto the hearse.

Bill had decided it would be much safer if he drove the hearse, but after about three miles or so, George decided he would drive.  “Move over, Smart.  I’ll drive, or we will not get back till tomorrow”, was his comment as he took the reins.  The horses became decidedly quicker.

The road through the next hamlet was a lot different to what it is now.  On a descending slope approaching a bend and in a fast canter due to the urging of George, the horses failed to negotiate the bend and ended up halfway down the gully. 

George was knocked unconscious, so Bill had to free the horses and tether them to a tree.  He found a front lamp still burning, so used it to light his way back to the road.  Almost to the top he heard voices.  Six young people were walking to the local dance hall when they saw what they thought was an apparition emerging from the bush.   Uttering a fearful shriek they very quickly returned the way they had come.

Bill had a long walk back to the hamlet to get help to right the hearse.  He put the body and and the still unconscious undertaker into the hearse and made his way back to the town.

The coroner lived in another hamlet and was awoken to verify by a hasty sniff that the deceased had been collected.

Bill arrived back to from where he had started the day before at  5 am, admitted George to hospital, drove to the undertaker’s residence and left the body and hearse in the care of the undertaker’s assistant. 

A tired, hungry and relieved Bill returned to a worried wife, a good meal and a welcome bed, sleeping soundly until well past noon.

​
Shirley Roberts,
June 2017


We are looking forward to further Tales from the North East, Shirley.

On a very hot day on 6th January 1939, a small cargo ship, the Jarvis Bay, berthed at Station Pier.

Among the passengers embarking were a group of children aged between 6 years and twelve. They had left Southhampton as child migrants in mind November the previous year as winter was approaching and were dressed accordingly.

The temperature that day was 107 degrees Fahrenheit.  Their destination was the Lady Northcote Farm School at Glenmore, Bacchus Marsh.  The children were driven in cars owned by prominent Melbourne businessmen.

The object of this scheme was to make farm labourers of the boys and domestic servants of the girls.  What lofty ambitions for these migrant children!  As time was to reveal, they became pilots, accountants, nurses, authors, school teachers, a professor of English, diesel mechanics, a couple of business millionaires and radio experts, but all sent out as farm labourers and domestics.

On arrival, the children were placed in cottages of twelve in charge of a middle aged sppinster sent by the employment office, as all able bodied men and women were in the war effort.

​The regime during the school holidays was work in the morning and play in the afternoon.

Meals were very basic, but were planned by dieticians and we grew on that monotonous diet. We all thought we were badly done by, but from an adult's aspect we were not.

Cubs, Scouts, Brownies and Guides were available to us but not compulsory. An excellent school and farm library was provided.  A debating club was voluntary and concerts performed in the Marsh were always played to full houses.  Physical training had to be attended every morning, winter and summer, in bare feet.

Boys never seem to have appetites that can be satisfied, and the storeroom was raided a lot. The store manager was an elderly Scot who knew what went on, but he never reported the boya because the Principal, a retired Army Colonel who used to be head of a military prison, was fond of administering severe doses of the strap.

Middle aged spinsters should never be in charge of children, unless they have degrees in child psychology and child care.  Mental abuse is far worse than physical, as it leaves lasting scars.

As a closing note, the boys soccer and football teams and the girs' hockey and netball teams were never defeated.  Needless to say this did not endear the 'Pommie Kids' to the locals.  The teams were very fit as spare hours were spent catching rabbits which were sold to professional trappers.  There was a rabbit plague and catching rabbits earnt much needed pocket money.


Shirley Roberts
May 2017 

The time setting for this story is about six weeks before the referendum as to whether Australia was to become a republic or not.

I was living in Wangaratta at that time and was accosted by a woman with pamphlets advocating for a republic.  After listening for a couple of minutes, I then asked her to listen to my argument for retaining things as they are.  

I found out her parents migrated from Ireland not long after World War II ended.  I then asked her why people from republics wanted to come to a country governed by the Westminster system and that the Queen, at her coronation, took a sacred oath to serve her subjects and preserve their liberty.  I also pointed out to her she could express her views about the government and the Queen with impunity.  

After listening to what I had to say, she got up from her seat and said 'She's never done a day's work in her life' and walked off with her pamphlets.  I read the one I had, then put it in the nearest rubbish bin.  She obviously had a personal dislike, probably learned as a child, because people from the Irish republic blamed the English for a lot of their problems.  

They chose to forget that an Englishman, Sir Walter Raleigh, had introduced the potato to Ireland, and their Patron Saint, Saint Patrick, was a Romanized Briton.  It's a bit like the English and the French - prejudice implanted in minds are completely irrelevant in this day and age.  

I have a book called The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent.  An Irish history, it's not about what the English did to the Irish, but what the Irish did to the Irish.  I've always thought prejudice was not a good argument to change the status quo.   

I really did try but really felt I had failed dismally to get my point across.  

I consoled myself with the adage, 'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink'.


Shirley Roberts,
​April 2017

​I was a rather confused girl who, from the age of seven to sixteen, was in institutional care.
 
After some fifteen months of employment as a nursing aide in Ballarat, I answered an advertisement for a worker for a dairy farm about three miles north of Wangaratta and was given the job.  I loved animals so I thought things would be very good.  Things were very good and I even  had a horse to ride. 
 
But, oh dear, what a dramatic life style change.   Never in bed after 5 am, I began each day rounding up a sleepy herd of milkers. 
 
Before the Buffalo River Dam was built, the winter rains and the snow melt from Hotham and Buffalo would flow down the Ovens River and flood all the river flats at North Wangaratta.  That was when the horse had to swim to get the cows across the lagoon, to get them to the dairy to be milked.
 
There was a huge log slung across this lagoon and, if the water wasn’t over this, in preference to getting wet, I would get off the horse and walk.
 
One morning I had no option but to get wet as two rather irritable tiger snakes were occupying the only dry spots on the log.
 
Dealing with heifers with minds of their own and getting infections under my fingernails, the refrain in the morning was Lucy Jessy s**t.  Oh, I hurt my fingers.
 
One Easter the afore mentioned heifers had to be driven by horse from Londrigan to the home farm.  That pair of flighty heifers travelled the whole trip, head down, tails waving in the air.  While trying to stop them from returning from where they had been driven, the horse slipped, came down on my foot and I ended up in outpatients with a badly sprained ankle.
 
Another time I had to bring a billy of hot tea and sandwiches to the men operating the stationary hay press.  Unfortunately a falling branch made the horse jump sideways.  Hot tea was splashed on her neck and I and the provisions landed on the ground.
 
Another time the horse got a fright and instead of letting go I was dragged along a fence’s top row of barbed wire.  I still have the scars to this day, though they are a lot fainter.
 
When one of the horse’s foals was being broken in, my boss let go of her lead.   Off she ran, between a fence and a row of feeders.   ‘Stop her’, yelled the boss.  I tried, but she galloped over the top of me.  All I suffered from that time was a torn finger.
 
My favourite horse was a gentle giant of a Clydesdale called ‘Apples’.  I harnessed Apples every day to a furphy to go to the local butter factory for skim milk to be fed to the pigs.  Apples had to be tied up  because she would drink the milk till she bloated.
 
All this happened years ago, but it did not stop me from marrying a dairy farmer.
 
Shirley Roberts,  March 2017