Rae's documents/Notes for JHW.doc

Notes for JHW

Early, known about, not remembered by me.

Tambellup each winter, stayed with relations on farm, cream etc after bad bronchitis.Later, remembered drill for children, easy deep breathing mostly, we also had drill first half hour at the Primary school. Farm at Quairading must have been bought early in marriage, seemed always part of life in early childhood, as was the regular attending for the choir practice for the yearly concert in Town Hall. Jim must have been the one to play all sorts of things on the piano, self taught, just the tunes, but we always knew all the old songs word for word and always in tune. No recollection of my mother ever playing, or singing, but dim remembrance of Father playing simple tunes for songs we all knew, the older children leading and the younger ones picking up the words from them.

When Herbert Road was hardly more than a gravel track, horse-drawn lorries would occasionally come and deliver kerosene cases of second-hand books, or reddish soil from somewhere near Guildford, or timber for some work my father was doing. He gradually put in all the paling fences, I remember the holes for the posts being dug, Father would paint the bottoms with tar and creosote. The swing he put up was there from my earliest days, I remember being given swings on it when too small to do it myself. When I was 9 or 10 he also put up, next to the swing, a horizontal bar for us to use. It is not surprising that none of us ever developed weak chests, we were all physically strong. Of course chopping wood also helped, when too young to chop would we did the kindling, later were promoted to being allowed to used the big iron wedges used to break down the pieces too large to chop with the axe. I was quite proud of the way I could swing an axe, things like that were never a chore like pulling out weeds which none of liked doing. My father read widely and we were always encouraged to explore, only occasionally being given a bit of advice. Plenty of classical stuff, from Homer to Byron and much in between. Waverley novels by MacAuley (one volume was missing, probably the reason why the set finished up in a kerosene case and so to our home). Stephen Laycock was an American humorist, Mark Twain, The Last of the Mohicans, a large number of books published in the Everyman editions which were small hard-cover editions of a large variety, essays, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, philosophy, as well as the many books given to my father as birthday presents. One that I used frequently in my schooldays was Crabbe’s English Synonyms, it gave clear explanations of the differences in meaning and use of words. Another thing my father did was to arrange for the monthly delivery from the newsagent of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopoedia. At that time I probably knew more about pre-historic animals than children of today who seem to have recently discover the world of the dinosaurs. I just missed out on the treat of being taken to the farm at Quairading, the older children went as soon as they were old enough to be of more help than hindrance to a man working long hours getting the farm established, it finally had to be sold which I knew was not my father’s wish, the proceeds were put into a company which had been started by my uncle and from then on Jim became a city worker. The firm had premises in Murray Street near Milligan Street, with frontage bearing above the entrance, C.M.Wilson Pty Ltd, in large concrete letters, and behind the offices the timber yard extended quite a long way south. My father managed the place and supervised the stacking of the timber, among other things, David Arklay kept the the books, Bill Fawcett was the salesman and spent most of the time travelling around visiting the various furniture makers and getting orders, Charlie moved to Melbourne in the early twenties but remained in charge, with my father managing mostly but Charlie always had the final say. The only other permanent staff at that time was the lorry-driver who was with them for many years, other help was casual.I have quite a clear memory of the place then, my mother had left me there while she did something in Perth (probably after getting shoes for me) and Bill Fawcett looked after me, I was quite small, he put some large books on a chair and sat me there in front of the typewriter, put some paper in and showed me the very interesting thing of producing letters, which I could pick out and watch them appear on the paper. Years later, after the business had moved to Troode Street in West Perth, my father took me in to help him with some book-work, long columns of figures to be added and transferred, some kind of stocktaking job I suppose, probably it was weekend, there was nobody else there. I was very interested in the beautiful veneers that were kept in a part of the office, veneers had been made and used for many years but this was a new style of attaching them to ordinary plywood, 3-ply was mainly used then, it was some years before they were able to make the kind of plywood used today which has been gradually improved. Timbers used were mainly Huon pine from Tasmania, Queensland maple, Oregon pine from Oregon in America, Spanish mahogany, with much smaller amounts of rough building timber, it was mainly timber suitable for cabinet-making. He had a bad heart attack when returning from a business trip to Tasmania, probably arranging contracts for huon pine. He was very well looked after and I remember he was most impressed by the number of young people who visited him and obviously cared about his welfare. This was the beginning of repeated angina attacks, Dr. Burns in Subiaco was looking after him told him there was no hope of recovery. Charlie of course insisted that he leave work completely which meant there was no income from his weekly salary, only the yearly dividend and this of course was a further worry for tim. However Dr Hislop, who was then a highly thought of and progressive young doctor, put him on insulin (which had been newly developed) and this gave him another five years before he died in 1942. Some years later I visited Dr Hislop (not as a patient, about another matter) and he showed me the file he had kept on Jim’s progress and the number of ecgs he had kept over the years and said that of course Jim should have died five years before.