Parents reunited after the war and New Guinea. Camperdown, in the Fifties particularly, was recovering from the war. Many men returned home shell-shocked and worse. Men mainly kept in contact with their war buddies. My father returned from a double stint in New Guinea keeping planes up in the air to find his beloved yacht in Melbourne had been sold off on him. My mother’s favourite brother, Bill, had been a war hero running out under machine gun fire and slinging a mate over his shoulder to get him to medical aid. He was killed shortly after when the Vichy French betrayed the Allies. It was a week before Armistice Day. He didn’t come home. My mother always kept the other half of the thr’pence they had cut in half with the household axe before he went off. 

My father, Bill and Jock Headley were best mates before and throughout and after the war. (Jock Headley  married a local girl, Inie Wright, who was my mother’s lifelong friend). It was Jock who had been in the Middle East with Bill Healy and he brought home a small jar of multi coloured sand from Beirut where Bill is buried for my mother and family. 

Much later on, I stood at the gateway to the Road to Damascus when I was  in Jerusalem and desperately wanted to follow it but it was too dangerous on my own with a young child.   My mother was like a natural therapist with my father. A very loving one. The friendships made were forged in hardship and loss and were unshakeable. The music from that era persisted in our lounge room and many others . I grew up dancing around to it up in our top room, away from the all the hustle and bustle of the house, sensing the drama and the romance of the time as well. My siblings and myself were “Boomers”. Things were positive. Music ushered in the new eras of Social change. The two World Wars broke the centuries old patterns of Life in Europe, The West and the Asian Countries. The world transformed. People were grateful for their lives. Someone like my mother, metaphorically, waved a huge Flag. It was emblazoned with the Word- LIFE.