“Our home is not the same”
There seemed to have been a baby born in just about every far western town in NSW: Brewarrina, Dubbo, Parkes - symptoms of a hard life, travelling to where the work was, and a slow and relentless drift towards the Big Smoke. To Sydney, in the early 30s, where the O’Neale family, parents and their six children, made their home at 81 Renwick St
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My own father was in India during the war - as he had aspirations to be an architect and his father was an engineer by profession, he served with the Royal Engineers, but he never talked about anything he did there. All we have is a photo album with many photos of the men building this and that, with the aid of the Gurkhas, for whom Dad had nothing but praise, calling them bloody good soldiers and extremely brave - and the elephants, which they used to help shift loads too big for the men...and we also have a sketch book full of water-colours !! My mother always jokes that he had a lovely war, compared to the rest of them back home, but I'm not so sure !!
He died at the age of 74, which is quite young in this day and age really, and considering his family generally are in the habit of living on into their 90s - but it seems that this is a very common life-expectancy for any one who served in India !! What happened to your relatives is an all too common story, I fear...
I hope you find out more about your family history - this is fascinating stuff - I really must do some research into our own family before the older ones are no longer with us !!
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Yes, yes, do some research while you can - it all fades away much too quickly. I wish I'd asked more questions much earlier on. Your Dad's story sounds fascinating, and too typical. So many didn't say much about their experiences.
My father also took lots of photos, and we used to describe his war service as 'Dad's World Trip'. But it was far from a laughing matter, so many of his squadron were killed on operations...it's actually a miracle he came home at all.
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