A bit of my past

My parents were born the same day in 1939, my Mother in Aylesham, Kent, England and my Father in Newhaven, Edinburgh, Scotland. They met as children, relatives of my father lived in the same street as my Mother, and my Father's family would fruit pick in Kent in summer as a sort of working holiday.

They didn't like each other much. As a teen I was able to ply many of my Mother's childhood friends in Acacia Ridge (aka Little Aylesham) with drink and ask them questions. No-one knew how they came to be married (there was strong drink involved) and not one of their friends could work out why or how they stayed together. My Mother was a strange child, and to use the words of one old friend "always a bit of a space cadet".

In their teens and early 20s my Parents ran with the Teddy Boys. My father and his younger brother Mac had a reputation as hard men and had spent some time as smugglers. My uncle remained outside the law throughout most of his life mostly as a moderately successful somewhat violent petty criminal. I suspect my parents' decision to take up the opportunity to become assisted immigrants to Australia had a certain amount to do with fallout from my Father's less salubrious activities.

In Australia they lived in an assortment of cheap inner city Brisbane properties before settling down at Whynot St in West End for a couple of years. It was at this time I was born at Brisbane's Mater Hospital. A year later they bought a house block and hard a weatherboard house built on the Lettuce Farm Estate at Eight Mile Plains. They moved in, in exasperation, to an unfinished house, which took my Father some years to get around to finishing the ceilings in some rooms.

The part of Eight Mile Plains they lived in was hived off to form the core of Underwood in the 70s.

Many adventures and 14 years later they built a house on 10 acres at Eagleby. Allowing my Father to fully indulge his love for Clydesdales.

They lived there nearly 20 years before moving to a smaller house on a suburban block nearby where they lived their remaining few years.

My Mother was a professional machinist, in both the industrial and sartorial senses at various times. So much of my childhood was spent in the daily care of her Mother and Father (who had Huntingtons Disease). After Jake died, Ellen lived with my parents for most of the next 20 years, she kept my Mother from driving me nuts, and got alone well with my Father, her least annoying son-in-law. My Mother and I didn't get along, so my Grandmother was the safe sane presence in my childhood.

My Father was a horse trader, figuratively and at times literally. He was a legendary figure in the Queensland construction industry, in the 60s as The Black Pom, later working in various aspects of the concrete industry. We once picnicked on the bank of the Logan River. During the afternoon dozens of boats stopped as people recognized him, many tying up and joining us. Enough people and boats that the Police arrived to see what was happening. Walking down the street in Brisbane CBD he would have people come up and greet him, builders and businessmen, bikers and politicians, police and street thugs.

Linkies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aylesham
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newhaven,_Edinburgh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia%20Ridge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Boy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Mile_Plains,_Queensland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwood,_Queensland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagleby,_Queensland