WINDOWS, DOORS AND DOOR KNOCKERS - MALTA

I was born in Acton, London, January 1944. My mother worked for the War Department. One of the houses where we lived in London, just escaped being flattened by a missile as the houses either side took took the brunt. We then moved to another place sharing with young couple and their child. My mother was at work when one evening she came home to see the street cordoned off. She thought the worst as the house had received a lot of damage, but thankfully we all survived. We left London just after the war ended. 

    1957 my mother applied to migrate to Australia on the ten pound assisted passage scheme.  We sailed aboard the P & O Arcadia, a journey of nearly six weeks, making our way to the port of Fremantle in Western Australia.

   I attended school for the first three months until attending a commercial college for a year. At the age of fifteen I secured my first job as a filing clerk in one of the large Trustee companies in Perth. Twelve months later having just turned sixteen and saved every penny I possibly could, I once again boarded the Arcadia this time making the trip back to England. I travelled alone.  It was an journey full of adventures and meeting and making some wonderful friends.

    After spending nearly a year in England and Scotland the time had come for me to return home. Friends of my mother said that they had always wanted to visit Australia, and offered to take me with them. All expenses paid. We flew out on the new Boeing 707 traveling to several states of America then onto Hawaii and Fiji. Three weeks later we arrived in Perth.

     At the age of eighteen I became the proud mum and by the age of 23 we had three boys and a girl. My husband was a member of the International Magic Circle. Consequently I was frequently sawn in half, hand and head in a guillotine and locked in trunks.

    In the early 1960s we managed a 250,000-acre sheep station, cooking mustering and general dogs body. 

     Over the years I obtained licenses for all land-based vehicles. As secretary of the Western Australian Junior Rugby League, I had the privilege in 1978 of chauffeuring the English Lions Rugby League team around Perth in a 42-seater bus.  Before departing they presented me with a photo signed by the team, of which I am very proud.

     My interest in photography started at the age of sixteen when my grandfather bought me a Circa 1958 Box Brownie. Over the years I have had several 'point and shoot' cameras. But it was not until returning to England in 1994, that I bought my first Olympus DSLR.