Memorial Weekend

My father-in-law Robert Featherston passed away on 16 February 1992 and my own father Ian Cruickshank died eight years and one day later, on 17 February 2000. Coincidentally my father was eight years younger than my father-in-law, so Bob was 74, Dad was 75 years old when they died. It's quite a long time ago and not something I often think about, but there it is. I've blogged about both of them numerous times previously, here, here and here in relation to my Dad, and here, here and here in relation to Bob for example, so I'm not going to do any more than post a couple more photos of them that are vaguely on theme with our Sepia Saturday prompt photo this week, which shows a number of young swimmers standing on or hanging off a diving tower at a Brisbane pool.
There is a similar tower at the Eastern Beach swimming enclosure at Geelong, which also features in my last link, entitled Swimmers with Arms Folded. I don't have many photos of either Bob or Ian clad in their swimming costumes, other than the one of Bob in that post, but here he is relaxing in a river somewhere in 1947.

And here is my tall slim Dad strolling along a sandy beach in the 1960s:

        RIP Bob and Ian. We'll raise a glass to them both.

Now here are a couple of family snaps of children pretending to be on diving towers, which seems to have been a popular thing to do in our back yard when the paddling pool came out on a warm summer's day. I'm standing with a friend in the first photo and then apparently defying gravity in a tussle with my brother in the second one.

And one more of my brother and sister up a different kind of ladder, the slippery dip at our local playground. Hopefully they did not try to jump off! This was in Canberra in the 1960s. Now we live in Victoria, where slippery dips are rather less imaginatively known as slides, but I'm doing my best to teach my grandchildren the 'correct' term.😀

                      Anyone fancy a slippery dip?

For more blogs possibly featuring towers ladders, swimmers and related subjects, please visit Sepia Saturday #406.

On Yer Bike!

The theme for October is "From Here to There", and the prompt photograph shows a group of lady cyclists out for a ride. My first photograph shows my Aunty Pat and her brother Ken 'riding tandem' on their tricycle in about 1925. They must have been aged around 4 and 2 respectively. Young Ken had a lovely head of hair back then! Both Pat and Ken have featured in my blog a number of times, in particular here and here, but in this photograph they are simply young and innocent children having fun together on their tricycle.  

That tricycle was to last through four more children in the Morrison family. Below is young Derek taking his turn, followed  a few years later by Graeme and Peter, on this occasion riding it in the snow. I don't have a photo of my mother riding it, but I'm sure she would have also had her turn.

Uncle Peter above was exactly fifteen years older than me, as I was born on his fifteenth birthday. Here I am getting a dink from my Dad on the handlebars of his bike in Cambridge England in 1954, where bikes were and still are a very popular mode of transport. No child seats or safety helmets back then, but somehow most of us survived.

Back in Christchurch NZ as a 3 year old I regularly rode my smart 3 wheeler between home and my grandparents' house, Uncle Peter was still living there with his parents, but the old family tricycle beloved by him and his siblings had probably been given away by this stage.

I'll finish with a photograph of a real tandem bike. I've ridden tandem a couple of times and I can't say I enjoyed the feeling of not being in control, but here is Sergeant Pilot Bob Featherston, looking relaxed and carefree as he rides on the front of a tandem bike with a similarly uniformed friend in Bournemouth, early in World War 2. Bob had enlisted with the RAAF and was serving with the RAF Bomber Command. It cannot have been very long after this ride that the Lancaster of which he was in charge was shot down during a raid on Berlin. Bob was promoted to Flight Lieutenant whilst imprisoned in Stalag V111B, in Lamsdorf, Poland, where he was interned under harsh conditions for over two years, from January 1943 until the end of the War. I'm glad he was able to have some fun beforehand. 

The photograph comes from my late father-in-law Bob Featherston's collection of negatives. Another friend must have taken the shot for him.

For more blogs on this month's theme, just hitch a ride, any way you can, across to Sepia Saturday #344.

A friendly breed

The prompt this week shows two privileged little girls with their pet dogs outside the family mansion. We've had dogs as a photo prompt before, and I've previously included a few photos of them here, but I still managed to find a few more in my mother's and my father-in-law's collections. I think there is something about cocker spaniels in particular that always makes them look more good-natured, cheerful and endearing than some other breeds. I don't have photos of sisters but I do have them of siblings with dogs, although not together.

This first photograph is of my mother Jean as a young child, c. 1936, when she and her mother Mona Morrison nee Forbes [correction: Jean was not with Mona but with her aunts Flora and Bess. See explanation below] were visiting Mona's older sister Ruby and husband William Berry. They lived in Dunedin and no doubt young Jean enjoyed the journey down there from Christchurch and hanging out with her aunt and uncle and her cousins Ruth, Doug and Jack, not to mention the fun of having a dog to play with for a few days, as she didn't have a dog at home.

Next in line is Shortie, another spaniel, who was likely owned by Jean's childless paternal aunt Ethel and her husband Jack, whom Jean visited in Wellington for Christmas in 1938. 

The next photograph shows Graeme, one of Jean's younger brothers, clearly very happy to be cuddling what might be the same dog a few years later. It looks to have the same spotted colouring on its forelegs, but I'm no expert, and perhaps that kind of colouring is common in the breed. Alternatively this spaniel may have belonged to uncle Stanley Herbert Morrison, who also lived in Wellington, and whom Jean and Graeme visited together in 1942, when Graeme would have been around 13.

My other three photographs are from a collection of negatives labelled "Afternoon tea at Aunt's", by Bob Featherston. Taken on the same day, they show the same dog, being petted first by Bob and then by his younger sister Dawn, about whom I wrote a short tribute not long ago that you can read here.  It was a sunny afternoon in 1947 and Bob, his mother Grace and sisters Jean and Dawn had taken Bob's English bride Mary to meet Grace's sister Edith, known to the family as Aunt Dulce. I'm sure Dulce's dog would have enjoyed the attention that he or she received from all the visitors that day.

 Edith Mary O'Connor, nee Calwell, youngest of ten Calwell siblings, had a rather sad life. She was aged only three when her father Dan Hogue Calwell died and she lost a baby when she was a young woman, in the same week that her mother died. Dulce married 10 years later but she and her husband Columba Alain Devereux O'Connor didn't have any children together and in 1940 he died of a heart attack aged 36, after only five years of marriage.

The obituary for Columba O'Connor, published in the Advertiser, 5 Dec 1940, per Trove web site. His wife Edith does not rate a mention.

Like Mona and Jack Morrison, Grace and her husband Joe Featherston were not a dog-owning family themselves, but the two sisters were very close. In 1942 Dulce was living in the very same street, just across the road from Grace in Little Myers St Geelong. By 1949 she had moved back to the home in Minerva St Manifold Heights where she previously lived with Col. No doubt both she and her pet would have been much loved by the extended Calwell/Featherston family. I met Dulce once, probably in 1972 or '73, but I don't remember whether or not she had a dog at that stage. She passed away later in 1973.

Bob's sister Dawn Featherston looking young and sporty in her short shorts. This dog also has spotted legs, but is definitely not Shortie!

At the home of Dulce O'Connor. Grace and her younger daughter Dawn are at the back, with daughter-in-law Mary and Grace's sister Dulce in the centre of the photograph. Currently I haven't identified the girl in the light suit or the two children, but I'm working on it. Dulce's dog had probably had enough of the limelight for one day!

That's enough smiling people and family spaniels from me, but if you take your dog (or mouse) for a walk to Sepia Saturday #298 I'm sure you'll find plenty more.

Correction:
It has recently been brought to my attention that the two ladies in the first photograph in this post were not my grandmother Mona and my aunt Ruby with Ruby's husband Will and my mother Jean, but in fact were Mona and Ruby's older sisters Flora and Bess Forbes, and that it must have been they who took their niece Jean with them when they went to visit Ruby and Will and family in Dunedin, while Mona would not doubt have been busy at home in Christchurch with her other 4 children at that time. The person who told me that this was not Ruby was her granddaughter Jacqueline. She also told me incidentally that the dog's name was Rex. Thanks very much Jacqueline for getting in touch and correcting my misconception about who it really was in this Forbes family photograph.
19 May 2019

Is it home time yet?

The prompt photograph for Sepia Saturday #287 features a group of very solemn looking students. Clearly posing for photographs was a serious business and smiling was not the done thing whenever this photograph was taken.  This made me think of my parents' school photographs taken in the era of the 1930s and 1940s.

This first photograph is of my father and his 48 classmates in Standard 1 at Rangiora Borough School,NZ, 1932. My father Ian Cruickshank is lying in the front row, 5th from left.  I don't know for sure if this is all one class but that was quite likely the case. The pupils would have been around the age of 7-8 at this time. The girl in the spotted dress in the 3rd row is smiling, and a couple of other children have the glimmer of a smile, including my father, but the great majority of the others are downright scowling and certainly look like they are not enjoying their school days at all. All except one have been identified by staff at the local Rangiora museum and their names are attached to the photograph, but I won't include them here, as I know at least 3 of them are still with us, now aged in their early 90s.

Ian Cruickshank aged 8

The next photograph shows a tall 16 year old Ian standing out 'above the crowd' in the centre of the back row in this Lower 5th Form class at Rangiora High School in 1940. A few of the students including Ian still have fairly serious facial expressions but more are smiling overall. That folded arms pose seems to be de riguer for the boys.

Two years later and it's a very small and seriously focussed class remaining in 6th Form, 1942. Only those wishing to go on to university would have stayed on to complete this final education year.  These days Rangiora High is a big school and no doubt there is a substantial group of students in Form 6, or Year 13 as it is now known. Ian was inspired to study science by his science master at Rangiora High, and after he passed away in 2000, wife Jean endowed an annual prize at the school in his name for promising science students. Hopefully Ian would have approved of this as a suitable memorial to his life and work as a research scientist.






The Rangiora School held its 125th Jubilee reunion in 1998 and my father attended the event, although  he really didn't enjoy it, as he didn't remember anyone from such a long time ago, having left the country in 1956 and having little or no contact with any of the other students since.  He appears in a photograph taken at the reunion, although his name was omitted from the identification list that comes with it, which perhaps confirms that other attendees from his year did not remember him either.

In the Jubilee photograph above, the unlisted 74 year old Ian is wearing a blue shirt and cream jacket on the far right of the second row. There are 14 of his former classmates identified in the photograph, but only one other gentleman amongst them, also named Ian, standing 5th from left in the second row in 1932, and 5th from left in the back row in 1998, and he is one of the three who to my knowledge are still with us. Of course some others may not have been interested or their whereabouts may have been unknown.  A number of the other people here appear younger and perhaps this group photo represents a decade of students. 900 old students in total attended the Jubilee.  At least most of Ian's cohort look happier than they did in 1932!  It's not too difficult to discover whether a certain individual has died in NZ, because if they were aged 80 or over, their name and date of birth then instantly appears in the historical death index. This means for example that from 2004 onwards the index will include the names of anyone born in 1924 who died at any date thereafter. On the other hand, the name of my uncle who died in 1994 aged 56 will not appear in the index until 25 November 2017, being the date that he would have turned 80.  Of course this doesn't apply to those few like Ian who left the country and never returned.




Here's my mother, Jean Morrison as she then was, aged 10  at Somerfield School, Christchurch NZ in Standard 4, 1936. Little Jeannie doesn't look particularly happy here, 5th from left in the second row practically being elbowed out by neighbouring girls, and those two standing above with arms folded masculine style look particularly menacing. Always a small child, Jean was victimised by both the teacher  and the other girls. Understanding that Jean was not enjoying school in these circumstances, her sympathetic mother Mona arranged for her to change schools.

Jean Morrison, 2nd row centre

 Jean was much happier at Cashmere School, even if she doesn't really look that way. Here in a combined group of Standard 5-6 pupils in 1937, she is seated second from left in the front row. The row of boys with arms folded generally look to be older than those in the back row. Smiles are more common in this photograph, but they are not yet universal. 

At Christchurch Girls High in 1940, being a member of the C tennis team was clearly no laughing matter, although Jean at far right looks slightly bemused all the same. She enjoyed playing tennis.

Now here is a photograph from my father-in-law Bob Featherston's collection, showing him with his fellow boy scout troop members, displaying a trophy they had won. Folded arms was the preferred pose here too, in about 1930/31. Bob joined the scouting movement in 1929 aged 12 and progressed to became a Queen's Scout.  Here he is standing on the far left at the back, trying his best to look stern and serious, as are the other members of the 1st Barwon Troop. 

Certificate of Admission as a scout

Robert Featherston, Queen's scout

Now for a troupe of a different kind, here is a postcard produced by W.H. Duncan,15 Anlaby Road, Hull, showing a rather unsmiling group of girls of all ages from a dance school with two of their teachers. I think the little girl in front, just right of centre, is my mother-in-law Mary Featherston, then Mary Olds. She's not the smallest member of the troupe, but almost. Mary herself is not sure, but perhaps someone can identify her from the sweet individual photograph below. She must only have been about 5 or 6 at the time, in about 1930/31, around the same time as her future husband Robert Featherston was engaged in his scouting pursuits. Mary modestly says that she was not very good at dancing, and only did it for a little while, until her father Frank Olds decided that there was too much travelling involved. Her mother Doris didn't drive, so unless the dancing school had a bus, Frank would have had to take Mary to perform at the various venues around the countryside. The family lived in Hull, where Frank worked in the Civil Service, Ministry of Labour.

Today as I write this, 8 July 2015, little Mary is 90 years young, and has had a very enjoyable time receiving cards, flowers, gifts and messages of  congratulations and well wishes. She's not up to dancing these days but is still smiling and still managing to live on her own in the house that she and Bob moved into in 1959. I've mentioned Mary and included other photographs of her and Bob in previous blogs, for example here and here. 

This photograph was taken today by her granddaughter Josie. Happy Birthday Mary! 

For more group photographs of serious people and otherwise, just take a trip over to Sepia Saturday #287. No smiling, mind!

Marching Proudly for King and Country, and for War Savings

This week the photo prompt shows a protest march in Russia during the revolution, and the participants look quite determined to make their points forcefully.  I've decided to concentrate less on the protest aspect, but more on the fact that it was a march.  

Here is a photograph from the collection of my late father-in-law Robert Leslie Featherston. Bob was an airman. He enlisted with the RAAF on 3 February 1941 and after training in Canada, flew with the RAF Bomber Command. The Lancaster bomber of which he was the pilot was hit by shrapnel on the night of 17 January 1943 and the controls were shot away. Bob and the rest of the crew baled out safely but were captured a few hours after landing, and consequently became prisoners of war. They were interned in POW camps from that date then until the end of the war.

Nothing is written on the back of this photograph mounted on card to indicate when or where it was taken, but it was clearly of significance to Bob. I think he might possibly be the man marching fourth from the front in the left row, although it's hard to be sure. 

A pressing clipping about Bob Featherston, taken from the Geelong Advertiser in 1943.

 The marching airmen may have been taking part in a parade that took place in Geelong Victoria, Bob's home town, on 7 April 1941. They are making their point simply by marching, and the crowd would have been in solidarity with them, whether cheering with approval or silent but supportive of the daunting task they knew lay ahead.  The purpose behind such marches was to encourage members of the public to support the war effort in a practical way by purchasing war savings certificates, as referred to in the article below.  

A report from the Argus, dated 8 April 1941, of a rally for the war savings campaign the previous day, snipped from the trove web site.

I also found the following photograph on the National Library of Australia's Trove web site, which might have been taken at the same or a similar march.

This photograph shows elevated views of parades in Moorabool and Gheringhap Streets with cavalry and foot soldiers.It comes from the Argus Newspaper collection of Photographs, State Library of Victoria. Date ca. 1940.

Moorabool and Gehringhap Streets Geelong are very close to where Bob and his parents lived in Little Myers St. If it was definitely 1940 it would be a little early for Bob to have been in uniform, as he did not enlist until February 1941. Perhaps he and his family were watching in the crowds. I like the way the office girls have climbed out the window and are watching the parade from on top of the shop awning, although this may not have been a very safe thing to do. They probably thought the men in uniform all looked very dashing.  The spectators are certainly dressed the same way as in Bob's photograph and the cars look similar too.  There are tram tracks in both photographs. Trams ran in Geelong up until 1956, when they were replaced by buses. I note there's also a tram track in the prompt image.  

I'll have to ask my mother-in-law Mary if she can give me any more details about Bob's photograph of marching airmen, although as she did not meet Bob until after the war, she may not know. 

 Incidentally, I wrote a blog for Sepia Saturday #254 last November  entitled Two Happy People, about another of Bob's photographs, but sad to say I have since discovered from Mary that contrary to our hopes, the couple pictured did not stay together. If interested, you can click here to see a 'post post script' that I added onto the end of the blog recently, just for the sake of completeness.

To see more marches, parades, protests, rallies, banner-waving and the like, just pound the pavement until you arrive at   

Sepia Saturday #268.

Swimmers with arms folded

 I know its still Movember, but this week I've decided to concentrate instead on the fact that the man in the prompt photo has his arms folded, because I really like the following shot of my late father-in-law Bob Featherston, left, and his brother-in-law Win Vail with his arms folded, taken when they were in relaxed mode, on the promenade surrounding the Eastern Beach Swimming Enclosure in Corio Bay, Victoria. 

Eastern Beach has been a popular area for swimming and family picnics since its establishment in the 1930's. According to the article below, the shark-proof enclosure was opened by the acting Mayoress of Geelong on Tuesday 28 March 1939. It includes a diving platform, a promenade level and a lower level for swimmers, with a children's playground and paddling pool nearby. Surrounding terraces, kiosk and dressing sheds, were designed in the Art Deco style that was popular around that period.

Robert Leslie Featherston and  Henry Winton Vail at Eastern Beach, c. 1946

Item from the Argus newspaper, 29 March 1939, found in Trove

                                                   

These two photographs from the State Library of Victoria show Eastern Beach thronged with crowds, c. 1939

I'm not sure exactly when the photograph of Bob and Win was taken, but I think it's likely to have been around 1946 or 47, when both men were aged around thirty. The smiles and casual poise of these two young men in their bathers belie a considerable amount of courage, bravery and life experience, with both men having not long returned from service in World War 2.

Winton Vail was a Melbourne boy who married Bob's sister Jean in May 1946, after serving with the Australian Army in Europe during World War 2. Bob Featherston was born and educated in Geelong. He was a young teacher at a small country school when the war began, and was one of the first to volunteer for aircrew. He obtained his wings with the Royal Australian Air Force, and was serving in Squadron 12,  RAF Bomber Command, when his Lancaster was shot down over the Baltic Coast on 17 January 1943. Bob was captured and held as a prisoner of war for over two years in Stalag V111B at Lamsdorf and Stalag Luft 111 in Sagan, Poland. When finally liberated by the Americans after surviving the Long March from January to April 1945,  Bob found his way to to England, where he met his English bride Mary. They were subsequently married in  January 1947, back home in Geelong Australia. Bob was always loathe to speak about his experience as a POW.

Just a year or so before enlisting, Bob had also shown considerable bravery when he had been involved in a beach rescue at Ocean Grove, a surfing beach on the Bellarine Peninsula near Geelong.  Here is a report of what took place on Saturday 6 January 1940.

Report published in The Riverine Herald, Echuca and Moama, 9 January 1940, found on Trove.

Sadly the body of young James Wilksch was never found. At the inquest the coroner complimented both Bob and Mr Hames for their prompt action in going to the aid of the boys, saying that if they had not done so, many more lives would have been lost.

Over the years the boardwalk around the Eastern Beach swimming area deteriorated and was in need of repair, so in the early 1990s  members of the public were invited to participate in funding its refurbishment, by sponsoring plaques to be placed on replacement planks for the boardwalk on which Bob and Win were standing. Bob's other sister Dawn Featherston thought this was a good idea, no doubt having happy memories of family visits to the beach, and she paid for plaques for her parents Joseph and Grace, and for herself and her siblings Bob and Jean. Dawn passed away in 1995, and neither she nor her parents have any other physical memorial.

Plaque at the beginning of the Promenade

The Featherston family plaques

Here is a relatively recent photo taken at Eastern Beach, showing some of the painted bollard figures that are to be found scattered all around the bay. There are 111 of them in total, all sculpted by artist Jan Mitchell and installed around 1999. Ms Mitchell did extensive research before creating them, and they represent various famous figures and local characters in period costume who feature in the history of the Geelong district. The group pictured is entitled the Town Baths Swimmers Club, and shows how men's swimming costumes developed. Originally when the beach inspectors weren't looking, the men would slip their arms out of their singlet tops and roll them down to the waist, as reported in this item found on Trove from the Argus newspaper dated 15 December 1937.

 

Neither Bob nor Win nor Dawn was around to see the bollards, but one of Bob's granddaughters can be seen posing with the figures above, and the boardwalk comprising hundreds of sponsored planks can be seen in the distance.  Jan Mitchell passed away in 2008, and appropriately a bollard depicting her has subsequently been created and added as the final bollard in the collection.

If you are interested, a large number of photographs of many more bollards seen around Corio Bay can be found on Flickr, and by the way, quite a few of them have moustaches!

Now click here for many and varied takes on the photographic theme for Sepia Saturday 205.