Vernon Walter Henry Gard

He was very hard on the kids, and like most of them I got the cane often but not as often as his son Murray, he didn’t want people to think he got special treatment being the headmaster’s son. Yule Woolley, Molly, Iris Woolley, Ivor Lovell, Polly Brown and many others were at school with me.

We moved from Glen Huon to Peppn Street Bellerive where Bert and I started school again, but due to my hearing loss I had to repeat a few grades. Sometimes Bert and I with a few friends would wag school and go to the forte. We had to climb over a loft stone wall. Inside there were old fashioned guns pointing out to sea.

It was while we lived here Jimmy’s health started to deteriorate and was in hospital for many weeks. Before he went he would read comics to me as I couldn’t read, so while he was away I persevered and taught myself who to read, not fluently, but enough to understand. Mum worked at the Munitions in Hobart as the war was on in 1939, so the lady next door looked after Neil while we were at school and after school.

While Jimmy was still in hospital, Bert and I would go down to the waters edge, where many people left their boats, so we would borrow one of them and row across the Derwent River to visit Jimmy. Sometimes it was so rough and boat would take in water. Usually there was a container in the boat that we used to bail it out, Bert rowed and I bailed. Our next move was to Albert Road Moonah.

Dad was away at war, he enlisted when working at Woodstock, his number was TX 746. We didn’t see him very often before he went as it was too far from Woodstock to Moonah. We boys went to Bowen Road Primary School till I left in 1943 aged 14, not having had much education at all due to my deafness. We lived there for about 5 years. I remember walking a girl home, she was my first girlfriend. Her name was Ethel Banks. We even held hands. One day we were walking up the road and saw these two soldiers coming, but I didn’t know who they were. When I got home, these soldiers were there, I still didn’t recognise that one was my father, he was home on leave, and it had been a long time since I had seen him. Later on he told me off because I wasn’t walking on the outside of the girl, it was a courtesy thing to protect the girls from being splashed, as the roads weren’t sealed back then. I think her main attraction to me was my bike, she would take off and meet her girlfriends, and I would have to walk to find her.

I worked at various jobs, driving a wood cart, making tins in a factory, a butcher’s delivery boy, too many to remember. One job I had was classing dry dressed timber at K&D. I also worked in a timber mill in Creek Road Moonah docking off cuts into the firewood. I worked for Harris’s bakehouse baking bread. I had to leave after a couple of years as the flour affected my asthma. I also worked at IXL Jams in Hobart, not sure how long for. We all picked hops at Macquarie plains and lived in the pickers huts.

Bert was in the navy by now and dad was home from the war. We lived at Gratton St Glenorchy at this stage. Jimmy was home from hospital as the doctors couldn’t do anything more for him. So between us all we nursed him. It was October 1948 Jimmy was three months off 18, when one day while shifting him from the bed to the couch, he passed away in my arms. Although we new it was coming our family was devastated. Everybody loved our Jimmy.

Shortly after Jimmy passed I got my first hearing aid and life became a bit easier. I was still very much a loner and didn’t mix very well. One day I went into a shop to get a milkshake and when it started mixing, I was scared stiff as all the noise was in my head.

After Jimmy died, my parent’s marriage went to pieces so they separated then divorced. To earn money my mother took in boarders over a period of time. One man was Clem Mansfield who my mother married later on down the track. Clem and I didn’t always see eye to eye and I often shifted out and lived on my own. One time I went to work on my Uncle Max Watsons dairy farm. He is my mother’s brother. I lived with them for about 2 years. I was attending the Glen Huon Branch and the members were discussing the state of the chapel. I said why not build a new one, the suggestion was accepted and a new one was built. It was 1953 before it was finished.

I had already moved to Melbourne in 1949 so a whole group chartered a plane and came back for the dedication. Everybody went back to Melbourne and I stayed on at Grandma Watsons home for a week. I was the final speaker in the first sacrament meeting. I went back to Melbourne. Mum had rented a house on St Kilda Rd, St Kilda. My younger brother Neil was also there.

Over the next few years I had a few different jobs, in 1960 we opened a tourist guest house in the Grampions, so it was mum & Clem, Bert & Betty and myself. It started off well, but at that time a mini depression hit us and many others, so after a year we headed back to Melbourne. We went into another guest house, people lived there permanently or as they wish. This one was quiet prosperous. As well as helping out there I was also working at Marbut engineering, in sunshine it was while I was there I learnt to use machinery. I worked there for 10 years. Mum and Clem bought a poultry farm out Lilydale way. That was too far for me to commute so I lived at Canterbury Mansion in Canterbury. Later on they bought a home in Surrey Road Blackburn as they needed a signature from someone with an income. My name was added to it so I was a part owner as well.

I was a confirmed bachelor at this stage and intended staying that way, but even the best made plans don’t always work out. Clem had passed away by this stage. My life at 42 was about to do a big turnaround. At our church we had a singles group and I was a part of it. This night two ladies turned up I had never seen before. We were having a games night, we had two lines, lady, man, lady, man. We had a spoon attached to a long piece of string. The first lady had to put the spoon down her neck through to wherever and pass it onto the man standing behind. One of the new ladies I found out her name was Anne, was having trouble getting the spoon out and me being the gentleman I am, offered to get it out. Anne who was a new to the group was horrified at the boldness of this man. However after a few months I got to know her and her 2 children better. Peter was 11 and Lynn 10. We saw each other on a regular basis and 12 months later we were married on December 23 1971. I was later given permission to legally adopt the 2 children.

We lived on Surry Road Blackburn when 11 months later a lovely baby girl we named Kylie joined our family, then 12 month later our son Jared was born. In 1974 we decided to move to WA. Anne and I, with Lynn, Kylie and Jared drove to Port Pirie in our 1964 Dodge, which had a big roof rack loaded to the hilt. We put it on the Indian Pacific and took the train the rest of the way. My mother and Peter came a few days later.

We first rented a place in Gosnells, a suburb of Perth. We stayed there for a few months and then bought our own home on Walter Rd, Morley for $13,500. We were only there about a year when we moved again to Grand Prom, Bedford, where we spent the next ten years. In March 1976, Donna Leanne was born much to the delight of her older brothers and sisters.

In August of 1976 my mother passed away. She had been in the Home of Peace, a nursing home near us in Inglewood. She used to call it the ‘Home of Hell’.