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Descendants of Adeline and Claude Alison Cathleen Ball (nee Wisdom) Wisdom Volume, Part 2, Chapter 5 This the Fifth Chapter of Part 2 of The Wisdom Volume in the larger family history titled “Getting It All Together: The Lives, Family Stories, Forebears and Progeny of Adeline Emma (nee Day) and Stephen Claude Wisdom”, written by Alison Ball (nee Wisdom) and founded on the research of Adeney Webb (nee Wisdom), plus contributions of other family members. May 2017. Descendants of Adeline and Claude ‐ Alison Cathleen Ball (nee Wisdom) Getting It All Together Wisdom Volume ‐ Part 2 ‐ Chapter 5 Page 2 Descendants of Adeline and Claude ‐ Alison Cathleen Ball (nee Wisdom) Table of Contents Death of My Dad ‐ The End Of Childhood ..................................................................................................... 5 Born After Family Tragedy ............................................................................................................................ 6 To Number 8 Bazley Street And Kerry’s Birth ............................................................................................. 10 1939 Kerry Born While Family Living at 8 Bazley Street ............................................................................. 14 1948 Leongatha High School and the year my Dad died ............................................................................ 38 1949 Grant’s Birth and Second Form at Leongatha High School ................................................................ 43 From Leongatha to Melbourne ................................................................................................................... 48 Birth of Velma and Harold’s First Born ‐ Kaye ............................................................................................ 52 In 1951 ........................................................................................................................................................ 55 1952 To “Stanhope” and to MacRobertson Girls’ High School ................................................................... 63 Teenage Earnestness .................................................................................................................................. 71 Growing Up ................................................................................................................................................. 80 In 1954 the Queen came to Australia ......................................................................................................... 87 1955 at Burwood Teachers’ College and still living at Stanhope ................................................................ 93 1955 & 56 at Burwood Teachers’ College ................................................................................................... 94 Engagement at End of School and College Years ...................................................................................... 106 Table of Figures ......................................................................................................................................... 119 Getting It All Together Wisdom Volume ‐ Part 2 ‐ Chapter 5 Page 3 Descendants of Adeline and Claude ‐ Alison Cathleen Ball (nee Wisdom) Figure 1 Family of Alison Ball (nee Wisdom). Getting It All Together Wisdom Volume ‐ Part 2 ‐ Chapter 5 Page 4 Descendants of Adeline and Claude ‐ Alison Cathleen Ball (nee Wisdom) Death of My Dad ‐ The End Of Childhood Your father’s dead”, she said. I felt my shoulders drop a few inches with the relief as I thought, “Thank heavens, there’ll be no more rows on Saturday night.” I was, as usual, glued to my mother’s side as we had come up the passage to answer the front door knock. It was the neighbour who told her; the only neighbour in the street who had a telephone and who, for months had rung a loud hand bell to alert my mother to come up to her house to answer calls from the Repat. Hospital in town. But this time she’d come down to our house. It was October 31st 1948 and I was 11½ years old. It was funny that that was my first thought because there hadn’t been any rows for all that last year he was alive. He’d mostly been in town and when he was at home after he had to stop working, he’d been too sick anyway for having rows ‐ or at least too sick to drink any more than the occasional eggnog my Mum would make him ‐ laced with something to cheer his heart. The rows had always started after he came home from the pub on Saturday nights. Those were the days of the “six o’clock swill” before the pubs shut for the night. In spite of his drinking seeming to dominate my early memories, he probably did only go to the pub on Saturdays as after work he had to come straight home to milk the cows ‐ as we all did. She’d taken us down to Melbourne the previous weekend to see him. It was Derby Day and he’d picked the winner. Comic Court won but I think my Dad had his money on another – Rocket Gun. Kerry always remembered which one it was but it wasn’t what had stuck in my mind. I could only remember standing at the end of his bed after we’d walked along the miles of duck boards to find his ward, and then, as we were about to go she’d said, “Give your father a kiss.” I could hardly believe my ears. Kiss my father! I’d never kissed him in my life. I was terrified of him. But there he was and I always did what my Mum said especially when my Dad was around. Like at the table when I didn’t want to eat and she was going off about how my father didn’t go out to do hard work just for me to turn up my nose at good food. All he’d need to say was “Did you hear what your Mother said?” and I’d pout no longer. I wouldn’t dare give him any cheek. So there I was in the hospital with both of them there. I went up to him and gave him that kiss on his cheek. Maybe she knew it would be the last time we would ever see him. His body was sent home on the train; in a lead coffin she said, sealed because his body would have “swelled up” but meaning we couldn’t open it up to see him dead in it. The funeral was on Melbourne Cup Day. He’d have liked that. She made sure it was early enough so that everyone could be back home in time to listen to the Cup. That’s what he would have wanted. It was pouring with rain all through the burial. She told us then and there, “Never again. I’ll be cremated and you can take me down to Springvale. I’ll have the grave sealed. Filthy wet Gippsland weather! I’ll not have everyone putting up with that dreadful red volcanic soil getting over their shoes when I go!” My Mum was always practical. No nonsense with her. My Getting It All Together Wisdom Volume ‐ Part 2 ‐ Chapter 5 Page 5 Descendants of Adeline and Claude ‐ Alison Cathleen Ball (nee Wisdom) young brother had got an elbow in his ribs in the little funeral parlour when he’d dared to start to shed a tear. I knew better and anyway I didn’t even feel like crying. And I wouldn’t have wanted to cop my Mum’s scathing contempt that she later directed at the foster sister who had lived with us for a couple of years. “Trust her to make a show of herself in public.” It had always been the same. For years, over and over again, I’d heard her say, “I did all the crying in the first seven years I was married. Then the doctor said to me. If you go on like this you’ll have a breakdown. Stand up to him woman! ‘So I did!’, she’d say.” And that was her excuse, I suppose, for the rows. She was standing up to him. And that was long before I came along so I only ever did see her shed a tear a couple of times in my life. “We are a non‐ demonstrative family, and… proud of it”, she’d say. Only after I had long left home to go to school in Melbourne did I start to give her a kiss on the cheek. Once when I was home from school she sat me on her lap. It seemed ridiculous. I felt utterly uncomfortable. It was just not the sort of thing you did in our family and anyway, even if I had been interested, I was much too bitter. If I’d been able to put words to it then perhaps I’d have said, “Why didn’t I get it when I was little enough to need it. Now it is too little, too late.” It wasn’t that my Mum didn’t love me. I know she did. Being non‐demonstrative was just the times; that’s how it was for many people and how she was. She was scornful of any of that “soft soap” and I followed her. Like when I heard the new Methodist minister’s kids call their Mum, Mummy. “Mummy!” “They call their Mum, Mummy”, I told her and got the response I expected. A snort of contempt. Born After Family Tragedy Though all that above was later, it signalled the end to my childhood. I was the 5th child ‐ “a mistake”, born on May 15th in 1937 at St Mary’s Hospital in Leongatha. It was later called the Bush Nursing Hospital and that was the name when, at the age of 8, I was admitted there with rheumatic fever. The hospital was on the road down toward the cemetery and Inverloch. Well before 2010, the site was built on with accommodation for elderly people, Woorayl Lodge. My sister‐in‐law, Irene, had worked cleaning there many years later. At the time of my birth they were living in “Perry’s House”, in Roughead Street, Leongatha which was the rented house that our family moved into after they had been burnt out in Lillimur earlier on January 28th 1935. And it is notable that in July 1938 my Mum’s much loved father died less than 14 months after my birth and I think for my Mum that would have represented another tragedy. The photograph below of the family and relatives was taken in the same year, on Christmas Day December 1935 well before I was born but where the family still lived when I was born. Our Mum loved this house but it was later demolished. And blessings upon my sister Adeney who had clearly asked our mother to identify all the people in this photograph. Getting It All Together Wisdom Volume ‐ Part 2 ‐ Chapter 5 Page 6 Descendants of Adeline and Claude ‐ Alison Cathleen Ball (nee Wisdom) Figure 2 Christmas Day 1935 at Perry’s house in Leongatha.

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