Love is in the air

When you’re 17 and in love you think you know everything. School was over and I was earning my own money, so it seemed like a good idea for my boyfriend and I to move into a flat together.

My mother ranted and raved about me becoming an unwed mother. My life would be ruined, she said. I told her she was being irrational, given that she knew I was on the pill.

My father told me not to tell my Nanna as the shock of it all would be too much for her. She was still fragile, he reasoned, after Grandad’s death six months earlier.

But I had to tell Nanna something. Every afternoon she walked across the street from the nursing home to cut the deadheads off the daisy bush in the back yard. Once her chores were done, she would came inside my father’s house for a chat and a wee sherry. My father was usually absent, so I took up drinking sherry when I was 17. It wasn’t my drink of choice, but I would do anything for my Nanna.

I grew up on a farm with my parents, siblings and grandparents. My mother was a teacher and in her first year she was sent to Merredin. It was the 1960s and in country towns throughout WA local farming lads always took great interest in the new female teachers and nurses. Before long, my mother and father were going out. Soon after my mother realised she was pregnant. They married and I arrived seven months later. When I was eight months old mum went back teaching two days a week, and my grandparents looked after me. Nanna and Grandad were already in their sixties but their love for me (and my siblings) was unconditional. We were very close.

Consequently, I had to tell Nanna something! I dreamed up all sorts of scenarios but when her beautiful blue eyes looked into mine I could not lie, so I told her the truth.

“I think it’s always a good idea to try before you buy,” she said with a sparkle in her eye.

Over the years I’ve wondered if I imagined she said that! It always intrigued me that Nanna was so liberal in her thinking. Long after she died, I came to be the custodian for all her treasured belongings; an amazing collection of photographs, slides and letters. Hidden within them are clues of a life she led before she became a wife, mother and grandmother.

Born in Boulder, Gwen studied to be a teacher. After working in the country for a few years she gained a position at Leederville Primary School in 1926. She lived in a boarding house with a group of young men and women, one of whom was a man named Hep. I don’t know if it was a serious romance, but they were obviously close. Alas, Hep disappeared from view without a trace.

In January 1929 Gwen and her best friend Annie were part of a convoy delivering a brand-new car from Perth to Carnarvon. For two young unmarried women to take such a trip with young men is remarkable. But the world had changed post WWI, and young women did many things their mothers would not have dared to dream of. 

Around this time a man named Bill was on the scene. It seems Gwen had hoped that maybe he would become a husband. In January 1930 Gwen’s father wrote:

well I was sorry & disappointed to hear that Bill & you had finished up, still it is just as well to be found out now before it is too late. Anyway, don’t let it trouble you too much Gwen, there’s not such a lot in being married as a lot of people think, great game raising a family. Cheer up old dear & don’t let them get you down. This old world is full of disappointments, but you never want to ‘look back’.

In the January of 1932 Gwen and Annie were holidaying at Caves House Yallingup. As luck would have it Syd Maughan and his brother were also holidaying there.

Syd wrote to his mother in England and sent some snaps of the holidays, including one of Gwen. Probably not this very familiar snap where Syd is feeding Gwen!

Syd’s mother responded in a letter:

what a happy looking companion you have in Gwen Jones. Is she going to be your special one? I’m so glad you had such a happy holiday in congenial company.

Soon after she followed up with another letter:

How are you feeling with all this, marrying & giving in marriage that is going on? …… certainly has set the balls rolling. You’ll have to follow suit or you’ll be left out in the cold.

Talk about pressure! Eventually Syd plucked up the courage and he wrote to Gwen’s father to ask if they could become engaged. In his reply of 30 September 1932 Gwen’s father said:

Gwen is old enough & has, I think, enough brains, to make her own choice, and so long as she has selected a decent fellow, capable & willing to look after her, I have no objection whatever to you becoming engaged to her.

Gwen was 11 years of age when her mother died, and although her father married again quite quickly, the two remained close. Gwen sought her father’s advice about many things, including men. In February 1933 Gwen’s father wrote:

I have no doubt that Syd has chosen you as one of the decent girls of the ‘old school’ in preference to one of those so-called modern girls, whom one sees so much on evidence these times, & whose past takes more unravelling than a fisherman’s net.

They are all wonderful letters and photographs but the most treasured letter I have is a love letter that Syd wrote to Gwen on 3 Sept 1934.

Well beautiful

I am just going to send you lots of love & kisses tonight as I haven’t any news. You know dearest it is just a week tonight since I left Kal & it seems like a thousand years. You ought to be coming down here for the holidays, you could get some practice keeping house for me & I would show you how to cook so forth & so on. Of course the cooking would be interspersed with a lot of loving & you would be thrilled to bits wouldn’t you beautiful. The potatoes would probably boil dry but we would not mind a bit. Then we could go & plan out the garden & grow all sorts of wonderful flowers. This might not be very good for the farm but it would be delightful for us. We would be carting the hay then & that is one of the nicest times of the year on a farm – gets a bit strenuous at times. The oats are growing really well & we will have some decent stuff to cut for hay this year.

My darling I can do nothing but think about you tonight & I do hope you are as happy as I am. I am beginning to count the months now & am just longing to be with you. I will make you happy beautiful as I know you deserve all the love that I can give you.

Goodnight beautiful & many happy days

Love & kisses

from  Syd xxxxxxxxxxxxxx