§3. Gilbert Voysey

William Charles Gilbert Voysey was born on 21st December, 1916, son of civil servant William David Annesley Voysey.

I remember my father with cropped dark hair, average height, strong build, ruggedly pleasant face, and deeply tanned by a life of outdoor work. Although his features weren’t in any respect overly exaggerated, his side profile marvellously resembled our continent’s outline - a troubling discovery, no thanks to the family atlas.

Pictured ~ Gil Voysey with daughter Janice Kay in 1939.

Gilbert (We use his adult handle “Gil” later on) was born in Archer Street, Chatswood. He never took to using two given names, William and Charles. The Voysey timeline was crowded with William this and William that. Even I am afflicted with a William. Nor, probably, did he relish being called a “right Charlie” when told what it meant. 

There’s another possibility. Doting guardian Aunts Emma and Doris - whom we easily see all day straightening his bow-tie, combing his hair, correcting table manners, and insisting he change underwear - were absolutely certain to have called him “William Charles.” I have no proof of that.

Similarly, his father dropped “Annesley” despite, or because of, its extravagant deployment amongst his forebears, to be known only as W. D. Voysey - referred to as “WD” hereupon. 

To relate the early life of a parent necessarily demands a portrayal of their parents in turn, in order to “set the scene.” We’ll find that Gilbert’s future was altered by an extraordinary run of bad luck in his father’s married life. WD’s first two wives died relatively young, World War One disrupted his (and everyone’s) life, just as the second great war adversely affected his son and daughter-in-law. A third marriage issued two more cousins, whereupon his little bands of offspring, sprinkled around Australia and New Guinea, drifted off into separate futures, for decades relatively unknown to each other.  

WD was a tall, hawkish man with a prominent nose. A sensitive curl of the lips and a slight squint softened that forbidding outcrop. His first marriage was to Elsie Janet McClean in 1908. On 17th March, 1913, his wife of six years died at their home in Bowen Street, Chatswood, aged 32. Via their son, David Oswald Voysey, the marriage gave me two distant cousins. 

Pictured ~ William David Voysey

From his second marriage young Gilbert ensued. A pressing question our family pondered is why our father was raised by two spinster aunts of distant relation living at Eastwood. I will try to answer it by laying out his father's movements from the day he married Gilbert’s mother until the day he arrived in New Guinea with neither wife nor children, to start managing a rubber plantation. 

Doing so requires the scant evidence of his movements to form the following timeline, and then to make a best guess at the decisions Gilbert’s father was forced to make that resulted in my parents’ destinies and that of their four children.

We find him in 1911, a 29 year old widower, working in Sydney at the “Telephone Branch” - to be precise: Postal and Electric Telegraph Department, General Post Office, Sydney - just promoted from Grade III to IV. His future and second wife, May Jackson, had worked at the same branch for 14 years, since her hire as a “switch attendant” in September, 1897.  

In August 1913 The Sydney Sun reported that a W. D. Voysey had complained to Mosman council that rubbish was dumped in the street in front of his house. Suggesting this was our grandfather, the Mosman address was on his marriage certificate two years later. 

In January of 1915, future wife May’s mother died at her home with the engaging address “Wae-Si-Si, Cooper Street, Strathfield.” 

A month later, 13th February, WD and May were married at Christchurch St Laurence, in George Street, just a tram stop from Sydney’s Central Station. A footnote this this union is a curiously officious entry in Commonwealth Gazette number 38 from 12th May 1915: “Services Terminated - Martha E. M. Jackson, Assistant, Telephone Branch, Sydney, forfeited office on her marriage.” As though she had to choose one or the other. Although it might be civil service-speak for “she resigned.”

When he married Martha Emma May Jackson, we find that she too had shed her first two names, preferring May. Discarding unfashionable handles was quite fashionable back then. 

Wife May was plain featured yet with a pleasant face and a ready smile. Her copious correspondence reveals an intelligent, well-educated woman. Of all the jagged, stilted handwritings I’ve suffered researching this family, May’s legible, perfectly cursive flowing penmanship evokes (graphologically speaking) a grounded empathic person, as does its content.

Pictured ~ May Jackson

Within 18 months, on 21st December 1916, in Archer Street Chatswood, William Charles Gilbert Voysey, the subject of this chapter, breached the divide and no doubt was warmly welcomed by his 34 year old father and 36 year old mother.

Two months later a notice in The Sydney Sun newspaper listed a donation by “Mrs W. D. Voysey” of two shillings and sixpence to the Tobacco Scheme supplying tobacco to soldiers or units on service, engaged in the war. This is faint evidence that in 1917 the Voyseys were in Sydney. A month later, on 31st March, 1917, May’s father, Charles Jackson, died in St Bernard’s Private Hospital, Burwood. Three days later he was buried at the Church of England Cemetery, Rookwood.

It was now late 1918. An anecdote appeared in the “Thumbs Up” column of The Sydney Sun from “W. D. Voysey, Wae-Si-Si, Cooper St Strathfield” - the family home where May’s parents were living when they died. 

I’ve found nothing that explains why two middle-aged civil servants starting a family in Sydney chose to become New Guinea plantation operators. But that is what their next move was.

As mentioned, the point of this painstaking pinning of down the family’s whereabouts is to determine why my father, Gilbert Voysey, became the permanent charge of two distant Aunts living at Eastwood, something I'd always wondered. Those three years of childhood before he joined them is recorded only by photographs at locations unverifiable. On the slimmest evidence my sisters and I understood he had been returned from New Guinea because it was an unsuitable environment to raise him, as was his younger brother, Lewis Voysey. And that he once had malaria and Papua would be where to contract it, as he’d otherwise never left NSW.

Pictured ~ May, WD, an Gilbert. Everything about this photo says New Guinea. But the timeline never permits it. Nor would they so dress in the tropics; WD was always in a pith helmet and shorts. 

It’s still hard to reconcile the family travelling to New Guinea any time in 1918 because Germany did not surrender until November. Activities and whereabouts of German raiders would surely be still subject to speculation and concern. In August 2018 an anecdote appeared in the Sydney Sun attributed to “W. D. Voysey, Dae-si-si, Cooper St Strathfield.” Maybe it was a delayed publication, but it tends to place WD in Sydney that year. 

Despite these slender threads, two photographs of a two year old Gilbert are labelled as taken in New Guinea, specifically dated “1918.” If so, we would assume this was WD Voysey with his family surveying plantation work in WWI Papua. But later, one of these photographs appeared in a different collection, and it was labelled “Bon.” This shows how the mind works on memory, and how memory can be influenced. 

I now believe that the family’s intent was to travel to New Guinea with the three year old child and, as fate decreed, unavoidably during his mother’s late stage pregnancy. It is likely they had delayed the voyage because the German commercial raider, Hilfskreuzer SMS Wolf, had sunk a Burns Philp’s boat, the SS Matunga, on 6th August, 1917 while en route from Sydney to Rabaul - one of the very vessels they could have been on should they have travelled north during the war.

In 1919, as the family prepared to leave northward, Gilbert suffered an intussusception (blockage) of the bowel, a life-threatening condition. It demanded an urgent operation. His fragility forced his parents to leave him in the care of Aunts Emma and Doris Zucker, May’s cousins. And since we believe that May was pregnant, possibly quite advanced, at this time, it’s reasonable to assume the plan was that Gilbert would be collected after his parents had settled in at the plantation, and of course when Gilbert had fully recovered from his operation. 

When May Voysey left three year old Gilbert with her two young cousins, Emma and Doris Zucker, it was with the greatest anguish and reluctance. A letter accompanying him, written at the last minute (and unfortunately not dated) during frantic preparations for the voyage, illustrates her anxiety in its attention to detail.

202 Ben Boyd Road, Neutral Bay, Friday Night, Dear Em,

I hope Billieboy will be good for you all. I will miss him terribly as he has never been away more than a few hours from me before. I am sending a piece of oilsheet and a thick piece of rag as he sometimes wets the bed. He generally disturbs through the night but I hope he will sleep better while with you. 

Billie (WD) will leave some money with you to buy him another pair of sandals, size 6 he takes. Also some money for extra milk as I like him to have milk as much as possible. One pint a day should do him. I generally give it to him for breakfast and tea, while midday he likes his fruits or vegetables. I don’t like him having gravy or meat and I know you will look after him for me. 

He likes the wheat-meal porridge also biscuits and junket. The latter I generally give him for tea, but not with fruit of any kind as it upsets him then. And Emma will you get 1s 6d box of liver powder from the dispensary and give it to him every morning as it digests the castor oil which I give him once a week.  

Pictured ~ Gilbert, at Eastwood judging by his fashionable attire. Aged perhaps six.    

I hope you wont mind me giving you all these directions, but I am very nervous about him, that operation seems to have left him delicate. Give my love to all the folk at home and tell Doris I will fix her up with the money as soon as I know the amounts. Hoping you are all well and to see you all soon. 

I am, Yours Lovingly, May.

PS: I am sending Billieboy’s war cotton singlets, if it gets cold he can wear a woollen one under the cotton. Also Billie is leaving an amount of money, if you will take Billieboy in to Rileys 241 Pitt Street and have his photo taken, about 17s 6d a dozen like Jess had, panels. I would be glad as I have not been able to take him. I hope I am not giving you too much trouble. Billie (WD) can call and get photos when finished. You just pay the necessary deposit. 

This valuable letter -  a rare thing to survive in our haphazard family - confirms a vital fact. That Gilbert’s separation was forced by circumstance, and that he had never left his mother’s side until then. It’s also the only document from his first 13 years. Though there are many photographs of his childhood, in none he appears aged more than about eleven years old.

After a brief stay at Neutral Bay, William David and May headed north by boat - road and rail connection from Sydney to Brisbane were still unformed - and ended up at Southport after disembarking at Brisbane due to May’s impending delivery.

Next we find May at Nurse Hardy's private hospital, Southport, on 317 Ernest Street, Watersleigh, giving birth to her second son, Lewis Moncreiff Voysey, on the morning of 29th January, 1920. 

May never left hospital. Two weeks later she was dead from an infection contracted during childbirth. 

William David Voysey was devastated - and in a quandary of distress and imperatives. He had lost a second wife to illness, his first son was in the care of distant cousins and still fragile after a life-threatening operation, his second son was right there before him just two weeks old. And he was halfway between his former home and his next, overseas, where a new job was waiting. 

He returned to Sydney with baby Lewis and May’s body to arrange the funeral. She was buried in the Church of England Cemetery at Rookwood, Sydney. May’s extended family came to the rescue again, offering a home and post-natal care to weeks-old Lewis. 

Baby Lewis was taken in by the Hicks family (Barzillai and Evelyn Hicks — he called them “Ben” and “Eva”). They had an orchard at North Ryde. Eva Hicks was a cousin of Lew’s mother, May. ~ Peter Voysey (Lewis’ son).

Pictured ~ Gilbert aged around ten, playing with a friend. There was normality in his childhood.

 WD had not only lost his wife, he had effectively lost his two young sons, for he would have known they were unlikely to ever join him in the wilds of New Guinea, where no-one could care for two motherless young children whose father was busy managing a commercial plantation. Nor, upon his third marriage five years later, would it have made sense to uproot both his children, to whom he was effectively a stranger, from their now permanent homes and families.

And so my father, a three year old who had never left his mother’s side, found himself amongst strangers in a strange house named Araluen.

In next reviewing the Zucker family, I am trying to determine their character and its effect on their charge, Gilbert. Because there is no documentary trail other than photographs to inform us what in the next decade happened to him. He was clearly well cared for, but how was he treated, how severe was discipline, what (if any) emotional traumas were inflicted? I also speculate that Emma and Doris (aka Em and Dorrie) lived with their parents at Eastwood, and that would have dramatically affected Gilbert’s upbringing.

The Zucker sisters (Aunts Em and Dorrie, as we knew them) were from a different time, when social constraints governed what might be said, and how it should be said. The veneer of civilisation was still intact. Their world was framed as properly attired gentlemen in hats and collars, and ladies with bustles and parasols, interacting within strict protocols. 

The father, Christian Zucker, was from the Victorian era - or should we say, the German Empire - and looked the part. He was a trim bandy-legged man with a ducktail beard and generous moustache, immaculately tailored when and wherever photographed, partial to white cotton suits. Christian’s country of birth was probably Australia, though he might have been German-born and travelled here with his father, Johannes Christian Zucker. We shall never know. The only significance of this is how ‘Germanic’ he was, and therefore what influence his character had on his daughters, and by consequence upon young Gilbert.

His wife, Sarah Gilbert, was born in Parramatta, as was her father, and liberty is here taken to imagine they were quite ‘Australianised’ and down-to-Earth people, as indeed May Jackson to all appearances was. By this I’m suggesting Sarah’s moderating influence on her possibly Germanic husband. 

The Zuckers senior raised young Emma and Doris at Chapman Road, Summer Hill, where all their school age friends addressed copious quantities of postcards. A surveyors certificate indicates the house at 6 Hughes Road (now Valley Road) Eastwood was built in 1914 or thereabouts, when they moved from Summer Hill. The elaborate furnishings of that house, and the Hughes Road address in both Sarah’s (1938) and Christian’s (1940) funeral notices, are some evidence that the Zucker parents moved to Hughes Road with their daughters, and were therefore present while young Gilbert grew up. 

Was the Zucker household responsible for my father’s severe disciplinarian approach to child raising? It was not only our mother's demands that he apply ‘the strap’ (that amounted to a whipping!) to his baby daughters, and later to me, but his explosive temper that often drove a harsh, humiliating, and very violent slap across my face when I uttered a child-felt opinion at the dinner table. It wasn’t a reign of terror, but my early interactions involved little more than him angrily shouting my name when he couldn’t find one of his tools, always within a day of his arrival home from a long absence (with some justification; I was fond of his stuff and moved it around quite a lot). I grew up fearing males and authority. Were the two aunts such harsh disciplinarians, or was it old Christian who similarly cowed young Gilbert for innocent childish indiscretions? 

And so to Araluen, the house at Eastwood.

To a child who had known only Spartan necessity, the Hughes Road house was a wonderland of splendour like no home I had ever visited. Ornamentation of elaborate beauty, graciously styled furniture, a glassed in bookcase of immaculate volumes, the dining room sideboard of mysterious treasures, those two forbidding bedrooms I dared not enter for more than a glance, drapery and flourishes - all around were tokens of comfort and culture that entranced this unsophisticated, unworldly little mind. At least, that’s how it seemed. To the observant it could have been a frayed, faded former prosperity. I don’t know, but the magic never waned during my twenty years of visits.

Gilbert would have been too young for such awe - and then it was all he knew. This physical and social time capsule was to be his formative home for the next 13 years - the details of which do not exist other than in photographs that show a smartly-dressed (perhaps overdressed) young boy in company with his aunts, often with their numerous lady friends and acquaintances. 

His life at Araluen can only be inferred from hearsay, descriptive fragments from our mother, and what we know of the lives and character of his guardian aunts. He arrived as a sickly toddler cruelly torn by circumstance from his now dead mother. He departed as a young man “mollycoddled by his two maiden aunts” and was, by our mother’s account, “a very innocent man.”

Emma was the elder, born in 1888, Doris in 1896. They were aged 31 and 23 when young Gilbert was received. Their parents, Christian and Sarah, were 64 and 66. Poor little Gilbert. Dorrie (as we knew her) was a soft touch, a kindly and genuine person. Emma however was a rather fearsome and humourless old maid who tolerated little. Behind her overarching presence, the two old folk were at that age, in such an age, when attitudes have hardened to intolerance for cheeky little boys. One gathers that little Gilbert got away with precisely nothing during his first decade with them. 

Emma was a well-schooled young miss who gained “first class” credits in general proficiency at Parramatta South Public School, and qualified as senior pianist at Sydney’s London College of Music. Dorrie was an accomplished concert contralto and applied her beautiful voice to “the Lord’s work” at Eastwood’s St Philip’s Church of England, where she also took Sunday school classes and was a parish visitor. Upon her death, an elegy in St Philip’s Church magazine, Torch, (March, 1971) said that “she and her sister came under the great spiritual ministry of the Grubb Mission and the days of Canon Vaughan at St. Andrew’s, Summer Hill.” Now, the Reverend George Grubb was a firebrand evangelist who roamed the world stirring the faithful and passing the plate to finance his… roaming of the world stirring the faithful. He got considerable and favourable press during his sermonising in Australia, drawing crowds of thousands and, as was often reported, across all denominations. This cosy Araluen cloister of religious fervour had little lasting effect on our father, who, though he wouldn’t tolerate swearing or any ‘dirty talk,’ never to my knowledge ever mentioned church or God.

My sister Jan knew our aunts quite well. She describes them thus:

“Cultured but simple, naïve women who'd been raised by their devout German father, whom I suspect was Lutheran. They went to church at least twice on Sundays. I don’t think the aunts attended a wedding in their lives (including that of our parents!). They led such protected lives and probably weren't socially desirable (in certain circles).” 

Of later years, after the parents had died and Jan was attending Hornsby High School, she recalls good times at the aunts’ home. The atmosphere was spirited and the living apparently quite good, according to one of her most cherished memories: 

I lived with them often, from a very early age, and used to attend church at least 3 times on Sundays. I have no idea about their income. As far as I witnessed, they earnt money by making wedding and Christmas cakes, crocheted absolutely exquisite embroidery - handkerchiefs, tea towels, table cloths. They were true craftswomen. They also grew flowers for the local flower shop. 

Dorrie would earn money by cleaning Henry Lykke's house and helping him with his invalid mother. Henry made string instruments and on Sundays between church services he would play the cello to us, with Em on piano and Dorrie singing Jerusalem (the holy city) in her contralto voice. 

We munched on the best meringues, Cadbury's milk chocolate, and almonds.  As a special treat we could go to the corner shop nearby in Terry Road and buy home-made ice blocks and ice cream cones. 

Henry Lykke wasn’t just any old Henry. Born 1882, he was a cabinet maker, musician, and violin maker. He made 90 violins, based mostly on Guaneri or Stradivari. Son of Danish immigrants, he learned woodworking at his father's cabinet-making workshop at Darlington in Sydney. He learned violin while quite young and played throughout his life. His workshop was at Eastwood. He died a year after Dorrie, in 1972. Jan adds:

There was a time when Henry wanted to marry Dorrie and the aunts were to move in with him into his even nicer house than theirs but Em wouldn't have it.

You mustn’t gain the impression from any critical reflections here that the old girls were housebound, as this article in The Albury Banner from May 1914 shows:

Miss Rene Maxwell is giving a concert in the Oddfellows' Hall to-night, when she will render "One Fine-Day" from Madame Butterfly. Others assisting are Miss Doris Zucker, contralto; Miss Nathalie Rosenwax,  pianiste; and Miss Maxwell's teacher, Mr. H. R. Meager, baritone; and Miss Clancy, violinist, both latter artists are from Wagga.

 While Gilbert was growing up it’s doubtful festivities such as those were de rigueur, but some of the tone must have leaked into the atmosphere, or burst out at times, particularly as the aunts were still quite young and probably much more fun, even if tempered by the parents’ presence.

Pictured ~ These two fascinating photographs capture one of Gilbert's birthday parties. The cake was undoubtedly prepared by Em and Dorrie - it was one of their crafts. Gilbert in foreground, Dorrie far right, Em second far left. The room is the back 'verandah' of the Hughes Road house.

While I can’t speak for Gilbert’s experience, and can barely imagine it, I can appreciate the home environment which was essentially unchanged in the 30 years between our childhoods. I was ‘dragged’ to that wonderland each year, from before I can recall until rebelling as a surly teenager. Most vivid were the pre-teen visits from Newcastle. The six of us crowded into my father’s utility - typically the sisters rugged up under the tarpaulin in the back, and possibly me too when I was big enough. At first I would stand in cabin for the four hour trip clinging to the dashboard, because it was full of gifts and food, or one of the girls.  The trip was over 100 miles (160Km) along the Pacific Highway which, in the 1950s, was a two-lane nightmare winding through the Hawkesbury mountains in long queues tailing the slowest vehicle, with no chance of an overtake. Police motorcyclists would sit behind these curves on their Triumphs (or Nortons) and triumphantly pounce on any vehicle that transgressed the double yellow line. One tended to hug those lines to avoid the pot-holed shoulder or, especially, the cliff edge .

The visit’s highlight was, naturally, the delicious Christmas Dinner. It’s price was to be first smothered in the aunts’ flowing summer linen dresses and perfumes upon arrival. Need I describe the traditional roast lamb (or an unlucky chook or two, recently happily scratching around in the backyard coup), potatoes and pumpkin, all cooked on the picturesque old Metters “Early Kooka” stove - one from the 1930s, as those models were the first decorated with a wonderful coloured Kookaburra on the beautifully-enamelled oven door.

Table manners were foremost, indiscretions punished by a casting out from society or even excommunication. It was in this atmosphere that our mother’s awareness of table-setting, table manners, and etiquette rescued us. There is a sequence to laying cutlery on a table, and iron-bound rules on how to hold those powerful instruments. Overriding all the above was the maxim that “children are to be seen and not heard.”

The highlight of these culinary delights was a magnificent plum pudding smothered in vanilla custard.  This was not a dish to be gobbled. Doing so was never considered, for good reason. Our ill-bred impulses were strongly moderated by promise of fortune. The plum pudding was peppered with threepenny pieces - tiny coins of high-content silver. Lots of them, and swallowing one by accident was in the interest of neither the giver nor, far more so, the receiver. 

I would amuse myself as the summer day dragged on, perhaps as my father did until he was reprimanded, by running back and forth along the curved brickwork enclosing the front verandah. Then I would browse the book collection through the glass and wonder what adventures lay behind those gold-embossed leather spines, slide up and down the chaise lounge, lift the piano lid and imagine pounding those ivories for the mischief of it, and most carefully - in fear of life being immediately extinguished - fondle the most expensive of those exquisite ornaments lining every inch of horizontal surface. In particular, very particular, two pink opaline “pineapple holders” ringed by wondrous crystal pendants.

Having inspected the household furniture and finding it unchanged since the year before, out into the backyard and its eternal magic. A latticed fernery, bricked pathways, moss-covered stonework, rows of roses, a manicured crabgrass lawn, European doves cooing in the cooling dusk, the stubby old date palm and, endlessly entertaining, chooks, doing life in the lock-up at the back fence. I think the aunts starved them for several days so that they would keep us busy, if not amused, feeding them all day.

This annual pilgrimage was a sort of Groundhog Day, particularly as it concluded. Never ending hugs and farewells as their beloved Gilbert, all grown up now, herded his little family into the old Morris truck. We kids did our duty and acted in the goodbye ceremony, sufficiently well, we hoped, to hide our secret delight that the trial was over. Our parents did their separation duties, which always implied a possible between Christmas visit. Most genuine of all, of course, were the aunts’ sad smiles and choking valedictions to ensure we felt at least a modicum of guilt for leaving them with such ill-disguised glee. But I don’t speak for Jan, who naturally had a very soft spot for the old dears.

Pictured ~ Em, front left, serious as always. Dorrie far right, dreaming often. Gilbert wondering where all the men are.

What I have described, a little flippantly, resembles what I imagine was the world of Gilbert Voysey from age three until his working life began at seventeen. It is still uncertain if Em and Dorrie’s parents lived with them at Eastwood. When that house was built the aunts were in their twenties. It seems unlikely their father built the house just for these two unemployed daughters to occupy, and in such relative luxury, unless he was very wealthy. There’s no indication of that. I shall, in the end, just rely on both funeral notices that state Christian and Sarah each died at “[their] late residence, 6 Hughes Road, Eastwood.”

Once again, the point of agonising about whether the aunts lived with their parents is the large effect it would have had on a young impressionable Gilbert. And since we have no idea how his life progressed, such speculation is unfortunately moot. Similarly, we can only guess about the largely undocumented next and final phase of his growth.

The first written document in the tattered collection of his papers that follows May’s letter to the aunts is dated 5th March 1933, a character reference from St Philip’s at Eastwood. It reads very much as faint praise - as coincidentally does mine, that I wrangled from the virtual stranger of a Methodist minister who was mercilessly assaulted by my classroom of precocious rabid atheists, as I quietly sat watching him suffer their excesses. 

“Gilbert Voysey has been known to me for the past 7 or 8 years, during which time he has attended St Philip’s Sunday School and Church. I believe him to be a boy of good disposition who will prove conscientious and faithful in the discharge of any duties or responsibilities entrusted to him.”

A month later the Principal at Fort Street Boys’ High School gave his second-hand assessment of young Gilbert, who for reasons of finance most likely was being forced to leave his education at intermediate level: 

Gilbert Voysey has been a pupil of this school for three years. His various teachers report favourably on his ability, work and progress. He is a very well behaved lad of good moral (…undecipherable) character.

Would greatly appreciate a translation of that second last word. 

On 26th of April, 1933, Gilbert began his apprenticeship in patternmaking with the NSW Department of Road Transport and Tramways. My mother told me that Dad wanted to be a doctor. Three years at high school and guardians of little means precluded that career path. Watching him for over forty years, I gathered his thinking and memory worked as imperfectly as mine. He would have been a terrible doctor.

During his apprenticeship with the department he attended Sydney Technical College, and three years later, on 7th December, 1936, received certification as a patternmaker… in the “B” grade. Considering his perfection throughout his working life, and demonstrable abilities in carpentry, plumbing, cabinet making, tooling, signwriting - in effect the full spectrum of what are nowadays specialist trades - that B grade was no indication of ability. 

The next consecutive document is an odd little letter in 1937 from Murdoch’s Limited, to say “Dear Gilbert, congratulations old chum on your 21st birthday… and 21 years is the limit to Club Membership.” Murdoch’s were a major department store at Park and George Streets, Sydney, whose specialty was “Men’s and Boys’ Outfitting.”

What the teenager got up to in his spare time is now anyone’s guess. A good one is that he hung out with a motorcycle gang. A group photograph shows them to be an eclectic assortment of “chums” of diverse ages and even more diverse attire. They do, however, present as a mature and decent bunch of coves, so he kept good company. And only our Pops would wear a coat, collar and tie on a motorbike outing. The aunts taught him well. 

Several clues point to that being my father’s motorbike in this 1937 photograph. He’s wearing the goggles. He’s centre stage. The guy next to him,who might own it ,already has a helmet. Dad’s beaming with pride. Also, it’s a cherished photograph, carefully framed and preserved beyond need for any casual print. We also know Gilbert owned a bike, as our mother told Jan that he “kept it in his room to keep it clean.” Lord knows what the Zuckers thought of that. He never mentioned motorbikes to me or showed any inclination to own another. Maybe his one tradesman deficit was with combustion engines. He preferred to throw the Victa lawn mower about the yard in fury when it didn’t start, rather than clean the oiled-up spark plug. 

Despite all this, my father became a master craftsman at signwriting, ranging from small business signage on doors and windows to massive billboards and commercial trademarks on structures. I marvelled at his patience and precision. A specialty was gold leaf on glass set within painted lettering. I watched him do that for hours. The little books of gold leaf were kept well out of my reach.

But before that was to be his life, bachelor days had to end in a marriage - one that had but a brief moment of happiness before six miserable wartime years ground down the young couple’s hopes and dreams.