Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Chapter Two: James & Elsie Wotherspoon, Birth, Bowen


Chapter 2: James & Elsie Wotherspoon, Birth & Bowen

Birth – Two Almost Three Years Old


There are times I wish I had the memory of Peter Skrzynecki, a man with whom I share two major aspects of my life.
Firstly, we were both born on April 3rd 1945.
Secondly, we both write poetry.
That, alas, is where the similarity ends, because Peter writes much better poetry than I, having had several successful books published (one of which is on the current set reading list for High School English in New South Wales).
And Peter Skrzynecki remembers being born.  If only I could remember my birth! Then I might know something more of my father.
My father, James Wotherspoon, died in August 1945, a little more than four months after my birth. The only half-memory I have of him is of someone who seemed to be a giant leaning over my cot, with the light behind him, saying ‘Snowy’, which is what he called me.
My father was an engine driver who developed pneumonia while driving trains in all weathers during World War II. He was 38 years old when he died. Penicillin would have saved him, I have learned, but it was only available for members of the armed forces. Another hidden casualty of war.
My mother, Elsie Florence Julia Wotherspoon (nee Stabler) was 35 when I was born. She had no children after me.
I came into a world with five older brothers:
James Arthur    (14 years)
Austin John      (12 years)
Allan Robert      (11 years)
Albert Edward   (9 years)
Leslie Baird       (1 year and 7 months)
I remember very little about Bowen, except I have been told we lived in a high-set house in Powell Street, with mango trees in the yard.
I vaguely remember Grandma Jessie Wheeler, and was told about an Uncle Jack who was a butcher in the town. My maternal grandparents lived in Mascot, near the Sydney airport. He was a retired baker, and Uncle Arthur, my mother’s younger brother, had taken over the business, in Darlinghurst, right beside Kings Cross. My mother was born in Charters Towers, and had two other sisters, May and Edna. (Edna, in her 90s, lives alone in Perth).
In 1969, on a business (???) visit[1] to Bowen, I went looking for my father’s grave in the Bowen cemetery.  This was probably the first time I had wanted to know something of my real father, so strong had been the influence of my stepfather, Ern Saunders[2] from the time my mother married him in 1947.  We moved from Bowen to Maryborough early in 1948.
For more than an hour I wandered around the desolate, almost derelict cemetery, in search of my father’s grave.  All I had to guide me was a grave number, which, I was told, was metal-cast atop a long flat spike that should be firmly set in the ground. The hot, dry wind constantly kicked up thin puffs of grey dust, as I walked around the unkept and unkempt burial ground. There were thousands of spikes with the numbers welded at their tops, but time, wind, erosion and neglect had uprooted most of them, and they lay in piles throughout the cemetery, like so much scrap metal.
I could not find my father’s grave that day, and it was the first day when I grieved for his loss.[3]
The only other events of note that I recall or have had recalled to me, are that, when I was about a year old, my brother Bert tipped me from my stroller when we were visiting relatives (???) in Kyogle, and that my brother Les fell from the running board of a car, I laughed uproariously, and consequently received the first of many beltings from my stepfather.
What I have learned of my father comes mostly from my late brother Austin, who was ferociously loyal to the man and his memory. My father was an uncomplicated man who worked hard and, when not at work or with his family, played and watched sport, particularly rugby league, cricket, swimming and boxing. He would probably have been horrified at the way in which his two youngest sons were raised, but that is for another chapter.



[1] As part of my stellar career in the tourism business – more when I get to 1969
[2] This man will dominate much of the next few chapters
[3] His grave is now marked with a plaque, funded by the four surviving brothers about ten years ago. My Brother Austin’s ashes are beside our father’s grave, marked with a similar plaque, and the legend ‘Always a Bowen Boy’.

1 comment:

  1. Also met Uncle Arthur at his bakery. Wore thick glasses as I remember. Very hard worker. Uncle Jack sold his Bowen butchery. His sons John, game and Leslie all went back to the railway. His daughter Lorraine married and lives in Mackay.Steve W

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