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Authors: Vivienne Dockerty

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BOOK: A Distant Dream
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*

As the Aldridge children grew into maturity, the four fine young men and three dumpling daughters, John was faced with a problem that he had never thought he would have. His eldest son, Samuel, who would be heir to the Aldridge hectares when his father died, decided he didn't want to follow in his ancestors' footsteps, rather he wanted to join the army and see the world a bit. His plea to join was echoed by his younger brother Joseph, who was seventeen. Then Albert and Thomas, twins who did everything together, voiced an opinion that living on the farm was boring, so they wanted a more interesting type of life. As they had been tutored at the local Bassett College which had produced a lot of academics over the years, they thought that they would like to continue their studies at a university.

John felt hurt and angry. In all the generations that had lived on the farm since William and Aubretia, this way of life had run through their very veins and he couldn't understand his four sons' objections to it. At first he tried to cajole them, then offered them a wage whereas before their labour on the farm had only attracted pocket money. He tempted them with a bigger say in decisions and offered them their own accommodation. Finally, he swore to cut them off without a penny as one by one – stubborn Samuel, then a strong willed Joseph – left the farm, leaving the twins to reflect on where their futures lay.

His daughters, he knew, would find husbands when they came of age and would leave the homestead, going off to support their spouse in whatever line of work they were employed in and the twins would eventually go to the city to live. None could have known that there would come a time when John would be grateful for his sons' lack of interest. When the years of the Depression hit the world's economy, it caused a severe strain on the finances, with hectares lying fallow and precious fruit dying on the trees.

Chapter Fifteen

It was after the Second World War that the Aldridges saw a resurgence in the family's fortunes. Financially that is, as Samuel was to die leading his platoon into battle and Joseph was invalided back to the farm. John and Hilda, getting on in years and now in poor health, but still holding on to what was left of the hectares that hadn't been sold to a small housing developer who had built a row of plain looking houses on one side of the Aldinga Road, did their best to market the produce from the dairy, the eggs from their poultry and a small variety of vegetables, as the twins had gone onto work as doctors at a hospital in Adelaide and many of their workers had died in the war.

Joseph, after enlisting early on in the war and losing an arm at Tobruk when a shrapnel wound became infected by gangrene, was still able to operate a threshing machine and drive a tractor once he had made his recovery. With a loan from the local bank, the family had tried to restore their prosperity by planting a hectare or two of grain. It also helped when Joseph, a good looking man and popular amongst the spinsters of the parish that he met whilst attending the Wesleyan church, announced his marriage to Maureen, the daughter of a man who had built an industrial site in the area. It was a depot where large amounts of produce could be stored in two large warehouses before its distribution via road or railway, now that the transportation of goods from Port Willunga had ceased.

Kathleen, the youngest of John's three daughters, was to remain a spinster, as many eligible men from the district had enlisted after the announcement on the wireless of the Second World War. Here was their chance to see a bit of the world, even if the returning soldiers of the earlier war had warned of the perils of hasty enlistment, which was bound to end in tragedy.

No, this time the war would be over by Christmas, said the new generation, full of fervour. Hadn't the
Boshe
been given a bloody nose last time they went to war?

So Kathleen, a plain faced, plumpish, brown haired girl, became heavily involved in a local branch of the Red Cross and was kept busy in those war years, stolidly knitting socks for the warring warriors, packing up boxes with food for the troops and making an appearance at any of the fundraising events. She worked tirelessly on the homestead, living with her cats in a farm worker's cottage, which had been kindly donated rent free from her brother, Joseph, now that there was less demand for permanent workers because of modern machinery. She helped Maureen with the children that the couple later produced and attended the local church on Sunday to pray for the welfare of the servicemen.

Kathleen had a keen interest in genealogy, though at that time she didn't know it by that name. Most old families then could boast a record of their family tree, with the names of those who had departed for their heavenly reward listed in the family Bible.

In that quiet time, after she had put her small nephews to bed, she would sit in the homestead parlour, reading her favourite gospels from the big black book, whilst saying a few heartfelt prayers for the valiant young men whom she had known from attending the village school. Most of them had joined the Australian army and were fighting in the Middle East. There were letters and sepia photographs of the Aldridge family in a small, wooden box, with lots of the photos having the names and dates of birth of the forebear written in pencil on the back. An unsmiling family of five stood outside the picket fence of one of the cottages, the girls in their Sunday best pinafores, and standing to attention were well scrubbed boys. Another was a photo of John and Hilda on their wedding day and some with various chubby babies taken throughout the years.

There was a picture of a farm cart piled high with hay and pulled by two patient looking horses and one of a solitary boy standing on the banks of a river, fishing with a stick. Behind him stood a little girl in a white, old fashioned looking dress watching. That is, it looked like a little girl standing there watching, but it could have been a shadow, as the early cameras were renowned for their cloudiness.

It was the letter, written on behalf of her Great Grandma Hannah by someone called Bradley, which had always held Kathleen's interest. It was a sad little letter, asking for forgiveness for not speaking up about the accidental death of a small child called Molly. She assumed that the girl had not been related to Hannah or the Aldridges, according to the lack of an inscription in the family Bible, but had been brought over from Ireland, from a place called County Mayo, along with Great Grandma Hannah. How that could possibly have caused guilt in the dear old lady, Kathleen was at a loss to know, but there again times would have been different in those days and all a bit of a mystery.

*

After the cessation of the Second World War, whilst rationing of food and shortages of housing still existed in the ravaged cities and towns of Europe and returning heroes found that their homelands were certainly not fit to live in anymore, many men decided to up-sticks and seek a better life for themselves and their families in a different land. Canada and America were favoured but many chose to migrate to New Zealand and Australia, tempted by the promises of accommodation and jobs.

In 1947, Calwell's great immigration drive began in Australia, re-population being the agenda of the post war government there. Once again orphanages and children's homes across the length and breadth of Great Britain and Southern Ireland, opened their doors to send their unwanted inmates across the seas, to settle in the new country as they had done in the century before. These were children like Patrick, a dark haired, undernourished twelve year old, whose parents had fled to Liverpool from Ireland to escape the slings and arrows of a narrow minded parish priest. A German bomb had fallen on the couple's rented terrace house in Bootle, leaving a bewildered Patrick lying injured in the rubble, whilst his unfortunate parents left this mortal coil.

He was sent to work on the Aldridge Farm, Kathleen having chosen him from the wan little group that had appeared in Willunga one day. The children were the product of a committee she had been serving on which had been formed to find a home and some work for the orphans locally, and would help in the re-population of the area in the future. Patrick, dressed in short, black trousers, a navy blue blazer and wearing a crumpled, grey cap, his knee length socks, one up and one down, clutched tightly to the only possession he had, a small, fibre suitcase which held a change of underwear and pair of striped pyjamas. He was to fulfill the maternal instincts that Kathleen, thanks to Hitler and the war, would have otherwise not had satisfied.

Inspired by her thoughts of Great Grandma Hannah, who had been Irish as the day was long like Patrick, she took up her new role with relish, teaching the child the rudiments of reading and writing, before sending him off to the village school.

*

In all the ups and downs and vagaries of the harvests that the Aldridges had withstood during and after the Depression years, their one constant had been their almond groves. The area had always been suitable for their production, but in the early 1950s, Joseph and his two sons who were nearly adults and Patrick who was treated as one of the family, set about increasing their growth. The demand for wheat had diminished once the world had found its feet again and countries began to work on their own production of the grain.

One evening Patrick, now more nourished and his once stick- like body growing more muscle with each passing day, walked along to the farm worker's cottage that he shared with Kathleen. It had been a hard day working as a tree shaker in one of the almond groves and he decided to sit for a moment on the grassy bank of the brook that ran alongside the perimeter of the farm. He had felt the urge to sit with his memories and ponder on the vastness of the oceans that separated Adelaide and Ireland, whilst wondering if he would ever be able go back to his homeland again.

He had loved those early years near Ballina, where they had lived in one of the fine row of cottages, which stood across from the farm where sometimes his mother had gone to work. Their cottage had lattice windows and a grey, slate roof. The walls inside were whitewashed and there had been a black range for cooking on. He had loved the sounds of the country as he lay in the warmth of his bed, waiting for his mother to call him from his slumber in readiness for the delights of his day. He would run down the track past the Giant's Tub, a pool full of clear cool water, where in the summer, he and the other small boys from the area would jump in naked as the day they were born, or they would sit as a dare in the eerie Round Tower that overlooked the River Moy.

He brushed back a tear as he remembered when the priest had come. He had been a fierce, authoritarian man, not like the gentle Father who had the living in Killala before. Patrick had been walking along the headland from the little school that he attended in Ballina that day and had wondered, as he cut along by the side of the farm yard, why the dog cart that Father Cronin drove around the parish in, was outside his parents' home? He saw his mother had been crying after she had spotted him when he came bounding through the cottage gate and she had ordered him, white faced, to his bedroom up the stairs. There'd been angry words between the priest and his Dada and the sound of his mother arguing tearfully with both of them, whilst Patrick shook with terror as he listened from his little bed. Then a few days later his parents had started packing, with the three of them making the long journey overland to the port at Dunleary, where they had sailed on a boat which was bound for Liverpool, where a bomb dropped by the Luftwaffe, had ended the lives of his beloved parents.Then had come the time he had spent in the hated children's home, where he found to his dismay that his accent was a source of amusement, causing him, to his distress, to wet the bed. The boys there had called him Paddy. They knew his name was Patrick Mayo, but seemed to find it funny to call him “Paddy Pee the Bed.”

*

There was a cool breeze coming in from the ocean, causing the gum trees above to rustle as Patrick pulled his boots back on after resting his tired feet. He sniffed the air in appreciation of the roast chicken dinner that was about to come. Kathleen was the finest of cooks and he would love the woman forever for choosing to take him in. Others, he knew, were treated far worse at their billets. One or two had run away and never been heard of again and it was rumoured that one poor girl had been sent to a mother and baby home in the city, though Patrick didn't know what she could have done.

The little girl who still hadn't gone into the spirit world, still hadn't laid her troubled thoughts to rest and had hung around the homestead for a century, watched from her place behind the trunk of an overhanging gum tree. Was this the boy that she had been waiting for? Was this the boy who had sailed across the oceans just to find her, his own kin, his own family, come across from Ireland to take her back again? Was he the one who would take her back to her homeland, back to the green
fields of her hamlet, the sparkling river that ran down the side of the hill and the little church which overlooked the crashing waves of the sea below? Would she meet her beloved sister either there in her native Killala, or in the spirit world of the dead?

One winter's evening, Kathleen and Patrick sat together on the sofa in front of a cosy log fire, curtains drawn against the chilly air, feeling full from an excellent hog roast dinner and all being well in their little world. Kathleen, curious about the lad's sad past, especially because his surname was Mayo, which she had learnt from the family Bible was the county in Ireland where Great Grandma Hannah had come from, hoped that her words wouldn't cause too much unhappiness as she asked him to tell her about his life in his homeland.

Patrick was seventeen now and a young man – a handsome, dark, curly haired young man with eyes the colour of cornflowers and muscles that rippled under his collarless shirt, the result of the heavy work that he did. He was happy to confide in her. From frightened child to a confident man, Kathleen felt she had made a good job of his upbringing.

He was hesitant when he spoke of his parents, though bitter that religion had caused the parting of himself from them. No matter how Kathleen had tried to coerce him to join her at the Wesleyan church, he had refused her, blaming all churches for their inflexibility. After all, it was the same God that all were supposed to be worshipping, so he didn't think that his parents had committed any sin.

Inspired by the stories that his father used to tell as a small child as Patrick had lain tucked up in his bed, he told Kathleen the tale of his seafaring ancestor, Bernard Mayo, who had run away to join a ship in Sligo in 1843. This Great Uncle Bernie had also travelled across the world as Patrick had
and
had found a little gold on his way, coming back to settle in Killala and living comfortably. There was also an aunt, the seafarer's sister, who had made a fortune across the sea in England, through buying land and property, but had given it all up for the love of her life, a man called Johnny. It was a romantic tale, one that Kathleen in her maiden state could only dream of and after that evening, she felt that she was closer to Patrick than she had ever been before.

*

It was in the late 50's that Joseph decided that changes must be made. John and Hilda, his parents, were now buried in the yard of the Wesleyan church, his sons were of an age when they should have been married and the patter of little Aldridge feet should have been heard around the farm. His thoughts were on the future and the young man with his feet under his sister's table would have to go. It was time that Patrick moved on.

Joseph saw his chance of making big money for little effort, spurred on by the increasing amount of city dwellers who were buying up the local land. Places like the nearby coast were within easy reach from the city as a holiday destination and Sellicks Beach and Aldinga saw a number of holiday shacks springing up above the shore as weekend retreats. Willunga, with its history firmly rooted in the past; its annual show, its Almond Blossom Festival, its quaint old buildings, creeks and native scrubs and the nearby proximity of the McLaren Vale wineries, had begun to attract those who wished to enjoy a quieter life. With this in mind, Joseph planned to rent out the farm workers' cottages, with their uninterrupted view of the Gulf of St.Vincent, that's if you climbed up a tree. Kathleen could move back into the more modern homestead, to share with him and Maureen. His boys could take up residence in the original house that had belonged to Aubretia all those years ago.

BOOK: A Distant Dream
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