I am a child of the post-World War II British diaspora. I am also a mine child. We lived a peripatetic life in small mining communities following my mining-engineer father’s work from South Africa to Southern Rhodesia, (now Zimbabwe), Tanganyika, (now Tanzania), the Gambia and Sierra Leone, interspersed with boarding school in England. In the five years between the ages of seven and twelve I went to six different schools in three different countries - South Africa then Zimbabwe then England then Zimbabwe again (two schools) then finally England again.
Thursday’s Child is the story of my childhood and teenage years.
Three young men started a farm at Margaret River when the south-west of Western Australia was being opened up to settlers in the early years of the last century. Life was hard in a pioneering community but Lance, Chris and Evelyn were optimistic and energetic and they loved it. Their future was full of promise. Then came the war. The Great War.
Evelyn Wilton was my maternal grandfather.
Dream of Margaret River is their story.