Dai Jones had served in France during the Great War. Dai had suffered trench fever and mustard gassings in service to Queen and country. His doctors told him that should he choose to stay in his cold motherland, then his worsening illness would overcome him, and he would not have long to live.
The Jones family began their migration to Australia before Irene’s 6th birthday. Their travel began in 1925 on a ship called the Orama. They dined at great long tables where the plate started in front of you but ended up somewhere down the other end as you ate. They played the song ‘Ramona’.
The Jones’ were sent to “Sunny Australia” on the Soldiers Settlement Scheme to live on soldier’s settlement land.
“Swamp! You’d need to be a duck to live there! Our father gave away our galoshes, our raincoats. We were coming to sunny Australia, and when we got here we got nothing but rain. We left our 2 storey house to live in this tiny little 2 bedroom wooden little shack, you know”.
The land they were to call home, the cure to Dai’s condition, the journey to this sunburned country, was in Gippsland.
The Jane Jones story begins in a two story home in Whales, where she had become the fifth member of the family. She was born Irene Elizabeth Jones, 21st August 1919, 2 &1/2 pounds premature and was not expected to live. In those days her doctor came out to their home. She wasn’t bathed for a long time; she was simply wiped with olive oil.
Her father was David (Dai) Robert Jones and mother, Edith Mary. Irene had a brother, Wilfred, who was 8 years older, and a sister who was 10 years her senior.
Her father David came from a background of farmers, was one of fourteen or fifteen children, and worked in a solicitor’s office before the war.
“My dad was pretty learned. He had studied to become a solicitor and was no mug.”
Edith was a tiny lady of 4 foot 11” and was 1 of 9 or 10 children. She was brought up in a mixed business shop that was operated by her family. Irene’s mum had ability to sit down at a piano untaught and play a number. She sang at the welsh choir at the welsh church in Melbourne.
“Mum was a very caring person, she looked after us. Just a mum you wanted to love. All I can say about her is that she was a good mum. She seemed to be always there when you needed her. As far as I was concerned, she was the best mum you could have had. She did what she could for us in hard times. She was always there, she was a mum”.
When the Jones family made birth Australia they ended up out near Lara and stayed in a hostel. There grocery shopping was walk in to Geelong while being swooped by magpies.
They trekked on toward their new home.
“I remember this tiny little house down this muddy road, a channel running along the front and an unmade road beneath it, and then just clumps of Ti tree everywhere, occasionally a tree.”
It was a reasonable property and they made it their home for many years. Her dad grew corn that you could play in and get lost. The swamp was slowly becoming a farm. Dai had horses to plough and sink wells.
They had many animals including dogs, cats, horses, a boar and many more.
Irene started school from there which was 3 miles away. Her father bought a Shetland pony who was named Roger, so she learned to ride and did so to state school for eight years.
When Irene wasn’t wagging to compete successfully in a horse riding competion that earned an article in the local paper which was read by her teacher thus catching her out, she was a good school student who also played in the violin in school concerts.
She had a wonderful teacher, Bob, who is best described as very strict, “it wasn’t the first time I got a wham over the knuckles”, but very fair, and very cunning: some educational activities he devised to teach his young students about the world included: horticulture- making a garden and growing vegetables for his dinner, and Textiles- knitting clothes for his newborn child.
“We thought we were learning to knit. He was on a good racket J! He was a wonderful man, and brought the best out of all of us”.
The school was next to a big canal that use to take the water that came down from the mountains in the melting of the snow and out to the sea. If they were at school and there had been heavy rain and a high tide come in, the water had nowhere to go so the water use to wash over and break the banks and wash down all the sand roads until the word came out for the students to be rescued.
Soon after ’34 and three floods, the family decided to move to Rochester. Her father had scouted the area in advance and organised their trip into teams.
Dai would lead the wagon with a team of horses at the front and other horses tied around. Wilfred had the cart with bill the draft horse and other horses tied around. This wagon was laden with food for the animals. Irene headed the ginker (two wheeled cart) with Norma the pony, Roger tied behind and the cat under the seat.
Dai’s route followed the Princes highway up the Hume and the Calder while stopping at certain points to rest, such as Wallan. In their rest stops, Dai would get permission from local authorities to camp either in a cricket ground or football ground or camp site, or if it were bad weather to pull into a pub and stay in a yard where the animals could have some shelter. It took a week to travel from their Gippsland swamp to their new home.
They arrived at the property where their slow journey turning into a cart and ginker race to the colonial styled wooden house. It had a veranda that stretched three quarters the way around and it was up a bit in the front. There were pretty green plants that grew around these front steps and taking them for flowers, Irene picked and smelled the lovely stinging nettles, of which she learned quickly to stay away from.
“Here dad went onto a wheat and sheep farm. We had a couple of good years and then, droughts. Those days they had what was called wheat boards. There were wheat boards, egg boards, potato boards. Everything went into this big pool. They took everything and then they paid you back so much. You didn’t get the money in bulk. They paid you back so much every now and then.”
Dai fell ill again, the worry of the property and the war was threatening. His health had deteriorated to the point where he was back and forward to Bendigo for treatment. Every now an then he would travel to Melbourne to the Austin hospital which in those days was the hospital for incurable diseases.
Dai had passed before the end of the war.
“Dad was in Bendigo hospital. I have the last letters he wrote. They’re my treasured keeps. If he was in the mood of teasing me, because he knew I didn’t like the name, to annoy me or to brush my feathers up he’d say “come on Jane, let’s do this…” One of his last letters he’s got written in there ‘Dear Jane’. I use to follow him around like a shadow. I adored him.”
To be continued…
