Alida's father was a hero. She knew this because they had written his name on a big wooden board together with the names of all the other heroes. She was only three years old at the time but she remembered it clearly all her life. Sixty years later she wrote to a regional newspaper far from where she lived. 'I am endeavouring to learn something of my early life in Western Australia and wonder if any of your readers can help' she began.
This is the story she found.
'Dream of Margaret River' tells the story of Lance and Chris Andrews and of Alida’s father Evelyn Wilton, their partnership in Komani Farm, their service in the war, their dreams of returning home, and the aftermath of the war. This account of their lives is entirely non-fiction and is drawn from original sources (letters, personal diaries, battalion diaries, government records, eyewitness accounts, contemporary newspaper articles) and, seven decades later, recollections by contemporaries. Penelope Ransby writes The story started for me when I read Chris's letters. His enthusiasm, his love of his new life, his plans for his farm, his hopes and plans for the future leap out of the page, even now, more than a century after they were written. I inherited his letters from my parents, Peter and Alida Ransby. They had been mainly concerned with finding out the story of Evelyn Wilton, my maternal grandfather, but as I read Chris's letters I found myself being drawn more and more into the lives of the Andrews brothers, Lance and Chris. They left no descendants to speak for them, so this is primarily their story.