At the library

I know the great value of the library, although I have not been to the local library since we moved home a year ago, but while studying for Families at War, a subject of the family history course offered by UTAS, I spent a lot of time at the family history part of the Wanneroo library. Where I was given access to photos that had not been sorted but placed in storage to be looked at at a later date .

I borrowed Many books about the 1st world war and sat and read articles that could not be removed from the library.

It was in the library that I read the sad stories about the great great great grandfather of 3 of our grandchildren.

I would like to meet

 

I have always said I would like to meet my great grand father to ask him who his parents were. But now  my thinking has changed and I would like to meet every one of my living relatives to interview them and record their stories before they become those whose stories are lots in time forever.

Some would have done great things and been many places others possibly think their story is not worth telling as no one would be interested in the little things they did. That is wrong because even the mundane is interesting when you look back.

This is part of what I wrote just a few weeks ago and I have thought a lot of this concept lately.

For life is a journey into endless time and we will be history some day!

So we have recorded, the stories we know, before they are lost on the way.

And we hope now you will do the same as you close at the end of this page,

Have you recorded your story? Or will your story be lost in the grave?

Yes I would like to meet all my living relatives and there are less this year than there were the year before as last year 3 first cousins died, they were siblings, and their stories were only partly written.

The family photo

We took a family photo at a reunion years ago

I’m so very glad we took it for life changes as you know

For in this family photo we’re all cousins smiling wide

Happy to be together in the Blegg family we take pride

But if we take another photo quite depleted it will be

For in 2021 5 cousins lost the fight

3 siblings from one family a girl and two boys

The boys had served in Vietnam and cancer was their plight

Two other cousins went the same it was a year so sad

We could not even meet up  for the funerals as we should

We stayed at home and watched the few who gathered at the church

Said our goodbyes by phone for email seemed quite cold.

Next time we get together if a next time is to be

We’ll remember those who have gone on Like Jan, Stan and Lindsay.

And we may take another photo maybe one with our kids

And remember oft with fondness the cousins that we miss.

Bleggy February 2022

In week 5 of 2020 I wrote about my father at Yarloop in WA this is a little more about it.

DAD AT YARLOOP

Before I was born, or mum had even met dad,

Noel lived at Yarloop, near where they chopped wood,

He owned a bicycle a rickety thing,

but it got him around, with no gears and no springs!

Sometimes when he rode it he ached with the cold

He had to start early for the mill he was bound,

He was told that the way to keep out the cold wind

Was to wrap up in newspaper put it next o your skin!

So although he rustled as he peddled along

He was much warmer and he’d get there on time,

In an old leather case with a handle worn thin

Was an old silver cornet with a dent in the bell,

For his cornet he told me had come from a shop

Where the owner had pawned it and never gone back,

It was slick and ‘‘twas silver and he made it shine,

And for 50 odd years that cornet played fine,

But it never played better than it did at Yarloop

That tiny small place in the West and down south,

The parents were happy the kids came along

To hear stories of Jesus and sing happy songs

When Noel played to the kids in the hessians bag hut

From the photo I’ve seen the kids lapped it up,

The old man he wondered where are they today ?

Those who for a short while stopped in their play

To hear a young fella play his cornet for them,

And then turn his push bike back home once again.

Heather Denholm aka Bleggy

Written before 2012 revised August 2020.

 

I am a member of the West Australian bush poets and sometime we are given a challenge to write a poem using words we are given

on one occasion I was given.

His footsteps slowed as he walked the road ! 

so this is what I wrote

When dad was quite young he had just begun 

to preach and to visit his flock

Yarloop was his first it was close to his heart

 ‘‘twas a place to him meant quite a lot

His church was all bags, a hut in the Bush 

where he preached to an overflow crowd

Then when he retired he’d visit the town

 tell of weddings or folk he had buried

I never told dad  that Yarloop was no more 

That the place that he loved was in ashes

In Ballarat on that day my dad passed away 

his will said in yarloop spread his ashes

So we sprinkle dads ashes in the soot of Yarloop 

And someone beside me is walking 

For his footsteps slowed as he walked the road 

It was dad and to God he was talking.

Bleggy 2021

Close to home!
when I read the subject I for some reason thought of my dad, Noel Stanley Blegg.

When Noel was 19 he felt called to be a minister, so left his parents and the rest of the family in Tasmania and went to Melbourne to study for what he believed would be his life’s work and calling. He travelled from Hobart to Launceston to board the boat to take him across Bass Strait , on board with him were  his 2 mates Milford and Robert also travelling for the same reason.
After his study was concluded and he was ordained, he thought he may be sent back to Tasmania, but to his surprise he was told he was going to Yarloop in Western Australia. He knew nothing about the place he had never heard of it, he found it wasn’t a suburb of Perth and he would have another train journey to Yarloop a timber cutting town in the south of WA .  Traveling on the same train was another minister also going to the same part of the country also going to Yarloop.
Noel had been given the address of the house he would be living in, when he arrived it was a shed in the back yard of an old house with 2 bunks, a sink, and a small wood burning stove to cook on. It was January and really hot, and by the time they arrived it was rather late, but Noel and Wally were hungry and knew they had to find something to eat, they found some wood and set the fire in the stove, and the only food they found was rice, which Noel really liked, so that would do for tonight, they put some water in a big pan and threw in some of the jar of rice, they both decide that not having eaten since breakfast they thought they might need some more rice to eat so put in the rest of the jar, the rice quickly swelled, to they took some out and added more water, they did this 3 times they had half cooked rice in everything, so when the first lot was cooked they had some to eat, and then had to finish cooking the rest, fortunately they both liked rice so ate it for the next 3 days, plain and with milk and sugar for breakfast! Noel always loved rice, after hearing this story we wondered how he could still eat it!
For the time Noel was at Yarloop he held the church services out at the logging camp in a bag hut but mostly he said outside the bag hut, for music he played a trumpet given to him by his father many years earlier, that trumpet was passed on to one of his grandchildren many years later.

A few years later Noel married and when he was in any of the eastern states when ever  dad and mum had holidays long enough they would drive to Western Australia and they always went to Yarloop.

After they retired and came across to spend some time with us we of course went to Yarloop.
On one of these holidays we found the shed that dad had lived in and worked from, it was his office as well and everything else. It was very small to be called a house, but as most of the loggers with their families lived under canvas perhaps what they had  was better.

 

I have just written this on the Cafe Facebook page so thought I would add a bit and save it here.

My mothers step father was a preacher at a Pentecostal church in Richmond a suburb of Melbourne in Australia, and he usually preached only on Sunday nights, but the church was near the town hall that had a large clock that chimed the hour, it was very loud indeed, Mr E would watch the clock as he preached, not because he liked to keep his sermons short! But because a few seconds before 8 pm he would say in his very loud voice, are you ready to die, when the death Angel tolls the bell for you will you be ready? And at that precise moment the town hall clock would strike the hour. Of course this would scare any one who didn’t realise what was happening. The only sermon I ever had to listen to from him was one where his text was the joy of the Lord is your strength. He lived in our house and most unfortunately there was no joy of the lord in him, he was the most grumpy, bad mannered man I every had the misfortune to know. Fortunately my parents were different to him mum and dad were mostly very patient with his bad manners and disrespect for mum , so showed me the other side, of the joy of the Lord as he was her strength.

one day I came home from school to find that in the lounge room the old organ was not there, it had been left to mum by her mother, as it had been purchased for her by my mums father. It turned out that Mr E…. had sold it he said he didn’t like it so sold it and he kept the money , that was one time when mums patience got very thin, it upset her so much, to think he could do that.
I was nearly 7 when he left our house, he died, and his 4 very grown up sons who looked very rich and they were as they owned a chain of real estate agents on the other side of Melbourne, turned up to collect all his things, but by all his things they meant all the furniture and everything in the house, mum stood her ground as she had never seen them before they never visited their father nor did he visit any of them but when he died they wanted what they said was theirs. I was told years later that mum gave them his clothes his dirty linen and mattress, then told them to leave. But they wanted the lace mums mother had made, there was quite a lot of it, and them wanting it meant it must have had some monetary value. They didn’t get any of it as mum decided to tell them who some of her friends were, so she name dropped some very prominent people, including one high police official. They left..

About 18 months later mum and dad sold the house and we moved out of central Melbourne, when the new owners arrived to get the key, there was a big black umbrella still standing inside the front door, mum was reminded that it was there and to take it, her reply was, “No you can have it it belonged to my step father and where he has gone it is too hot to rain! “ And so we left the house that had so many good but some really bad memories.