© 2004 Copyright rests with the Author.
This Is My Life
Aileen Josie Edwards
1927
to 2004
The first
part of This Is My Life is dedicated to my Mum and Dad,
Ivy
Lillian and William David Ireland, who even though they were extremely poor,
never allowed us to go without a meal.
The second part of This Is My Life is dedicated to my sister,
Royaleen, who I miss so very much.
c.
1931
The
l. to
r. Aileen (5), Noreen (7), Royaleen (9)
Something beautiful, something good,
All my confusion He understood.
All I had to offer Him was brokedness and strife,
But He made something beautiful out of my life.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Page 4
My Family
Chapter 2 Page
5
My Grandparents
Chapter 3 Page 5
The Ireland
Chapter 4 Page 6
The Korsman Family
Chapter 5 Page 6
This Is My Life 1927
Chapter 6 Page 11
This Is My Life 1932
Chapter 7 Page 12
Things I Forgot
Chapter 8 Page 13
This Is My Life 1940
Chapter
1
My Family
Royaleen Mary married Kenneth Eric
Hawkins and they had 4 children. They were –
Thomas William, unmarried.
Margaret Joan married Kenneth Barr (divorced) had 4 children—
Kenneth William, Kylie Gae (married to Don Gordon), Grant Adam,
unmarried, Sarah Myee, unmarried but has 1 son called
Noreen May married Edward Tandy and had 1 child Lynette who
married Ross McKay and they have 2
boys—Nathan and Daniel.
Aileen married Thomas Edwards (divorced) no children.
Hollis married Joy Slade and had 3 children. They were Julie married
Wayne Francis, they had 1 child named Nicole. Julie
then
divorced and married John Williams
and they had 2 daughters—Lisa and Tracy.
Mark had 2 sons, Jacob and Kyle before marrying Jane Flannery and they
had 2 children, Stephen and ?
Jacqualine (known as Jackie) she had 1 daughter Crystal before marriage
and then married and had another 2 children.
Jenniffer married Brian Means and they have 1 son called Nathan.
Robin married Lynette Sneddon and they have 2 girls named Cherylyn and
Karen Ann. Both of these girls are unmarried.
Chapter 2
My Grandparents
Esther Mary Deimer was born on a ship
coming from
Joseph Hollis Korsman was born from Dutch Immigrant parents in a bark
humpy on
Esther and Joseph had 8 children.
Sophia Newman was born at Bungwal.
James Ireland was born in
I know of 8 children
from this marriage but I understand that they had more than that but they are
unknown to me.
Chapter
3
The Ireland
Edward married ?
Dolly married Mr. Bunt and then married Mr. Burdigan.
Ellen married Alfred Minor.
Lillian married Mr. Brinkwith.
Samuel died in the 1914-18 war.
William David married Ivy Lillian Korsman.
Amy married John Reid.
I do not know the details of most of their children.
Chapter
4
The Korsman Family
Esther and Joseph had 8 children. They were:
Ernest who married Annie Bradley and had 2 children
Mary and Joseph. Mary married Kenneth Robards and had no children.
Joe married
Mary married
Henry married Edith Lamington (known as Lammy) and they had Peter and
Joan.
Charles married Elsie McCracken and they had John (known as Bill).
Ceilia married Ellis Warburton and had William and Alfred.
Samuel was Ceilia’s twin but died when he was young.
Alfred married Pearl Banks and they had 4 children. They were Colin,
Lola, ? , and Brenda.
Ivy married William Ireland and had 6 children. They were Royaleen,
Noreen, Aileen, Hollis, Barrie and Robin. (Ivy was a twin to Alfred).
Chapter
5
This is my Life 1927
I was born at
Mayfield on
I was the 3rd
child of Ivy Lillian and William David Ireland. My grandmother, Esther Mary
Deimer, was born on a ship coming out from
When I was 10 days old
we went to our home on the
My parents were very poor—My
father was a fisherman and a timber cutter- his income was tuppence a pound (2
cents) for his fish and out of his pay he had to pay for his ice, fish freight,
his petrol for his launch and the wear and tear on his nets and the upkeep of his
boats, but he never owed anyone any money.
My mother made all our
clothes, mostly from old ones, knitted our jumpers and cardigans from wool
unpulled from old ones, these were unpulled and the wool was washed and then
reknitted into our garments, I can’t remember owning a pair of shoes until I
was about 8 years old. Having 2 elder sisters I always had to wear the clothes
that they had grown out of and I can still remember saying “It’s not fair, I
never get anything new”, but really that’s not true because my Aunt Elsie gave
the 3 of us a length of dress material every Christmas and Mum made us a new
dress every January but had to be kept for best.
Even though we were very
poor we were well fed, sometimes it was fish three meals a day. Sometimes we
had Kangaroo tail soup, Wallaby steaks and Wallaby legs which were soaked in
salty water and then baked in the camp oven (tastes better than a leg of veal),
we also had rabbits cooked to different recipes, water hens, redbills and wild
ducks which came to feed on the weed in the lake, my Mum kept chooks –we only
had chicken at Christmas time and she always had a good vegie garden—we had
fruit trees, plums, peaches, persimmons, figs and a huge grape vine.
We had a few cattle and a
pony which we either rode or used him to pull the sulky. He was a very
intelligent horse and always disappeared when he was most needed,
in the end we beat him at his own game as we put a cow bell round his neck. He
still used to hide in the swamp but eventually the flies would become too much
for him and he would shake his head, and so we’d hear the bell and know where
he was hiding and we pounced on him immediately.
We learned hard work as soon
as we could walk, gathering sticks to light the morning fire and getting fire
wood and even to chop the wood as well.
We had to help Dad sorting, cleaning and packing fish and clearing,
drying and mending nets, and it was nothing to be pulled out of bed at 4.a.m.
to attend to the fish before the sun came up, as they had to be packed and back
on the boat to be taken across the lake and down the river to Tea Gardens, to
be taken by truck to the market in Newcastle.
I guess the highlight of our
week was Sunday when the store boat which plied the Lakes came. To us it was
“The Shop” and our reward for the week was to have our very own penny (one
cent) to spend all by ourselves. My purchase was always 60 boiled lollies—I was
always one for getting the most for my money.
Now back to our house,
it contained 2 bedrooms (unlined) a large kitchen with a very big fire place at
one end of the room, a back verandah and a wash house (laundry and bathroom),
and our loo was about half a mile down the paddock which we had to “run down
the track” rain, hail or sunshine. I can assure you it was a real marathon
having to “go to the loo”.
My Mum was a terrific cook,
baked all our bread, made terrific meat pies (made from wallaby or rabbit),
made lovely sponges and her dampers were great, fried scones were lovely, but
on the other hand her plain scones were like rocks.
Our nearest neighbours were
about 2 miles away, on either side of our property, and some were much further
away. Our school, which consisted of one room and a verandah with a water tank
at one end, and the loo was about a mile up the
paddock away from the school house. When all the kids were present there was 13 of us-the
We really had a
great life even though we had to work hard. Each Christmas we loaded the boat
with our tent and all the necessities, and crossed the Broadwater to Mungo
Brush for the Regatta, to us this was a great event. Hundreds came from
Our meat was kept in the
meat safe which hung on the back verandah, and when it was extra hot, had a wet
bag placed over the top. Eventually we were to get an ice chest, the water was
a very precious commodity and even the water that ran off from the ice chest
was saved and put on the garden. The cream from the milk was hand churned into
butter and one’s arm almost fell off from turning the handle of the churn. The
butter was then put in a billy can with a lid, and one of my jobs was to run
down to the lake and hang the billy on a tree branch in the shaded water. Maybe
I should have kept count of how many times I had to run up and down the track
to either fetch the butter, or return it to the shady place.
The washing was boiled
in a 4 gallon kerosene tin which had the top removed and the jagged edges
hammered down to avoid cuts, and a handle was inserted to lift it off the
outside fire. The clothes were lifted out with a pot stick which was usually the
handle of an old straw broom.
Ironing was done with flat
irons kept in front of the fire place inside, and had to be wiped thoroughly
clean before ironing the clothes. Later
we rejoiced at being able to have a benzine iron, this had a tank on the front
of the iron and was lit to create the heat to go through to the bottom of the
iron. This was expensive to run and also could be very dangerous, as many a
time the fluid was spilt and caught fire to the ironing blanket spread across
the corner of the table. Lots of clothes were starched then dried and damped
down ready for ironing, I didn’t mind the ordinary ironing when I was 4 years
old, but hated to have to do the starched things as they took so long to iron.
We mainly swam each day
in the fresh water lake and only had to wash our feet before going to bed. Our
feet were dried on towels made from sugar bags (hessian), and bound around the
edges with coloured material which came from something old that had been
unpicked.
Our underwear was made
from unbleached calico which came from flour bags, and quite often we had
“Bruntons” stamped across our bottoms. This brings to mind the hilarious time
when we were picking mushrooms in our next door neighbour's paddock on the way
home from school, when a huge black bull chased us. We raced to our fence and
Royaleen and I rolled under the barbed wire, but my sister Noreen got hung up
on the barbed wire. We pulled her through just as the bull charged, but the
highlight of the episode was, there was the seat of her underpants hanging on
the barbed wire and she didn’t have “Bruntons” on her B.T.M. anymore.
We had a bath once a
week in a big galvanised round tub which was put in front of the open fire at
night. The three of us had to use the same water and then it was put on the
garden. After we went to bed Mum would have a fresh lot of water, and if Dad
happened to be home, he’d have to use that same water, and of course that water
as well was kept for the garden. All waste water, no matter what it had been
used for, went onto the garden.
We had kerosene lamps. I
always, and still do, hate the smell of kerosene. We learned to knit, sew and
crochet very early. We made mats out of sugar bags through which we punched a
hole through the hessian and passed the wool or lengths of material through,
making patterns as we went. There were some very strange and funny looking dogs
and cats turned out on those mats, I can tell you.
Our musical entertainment
came from a wind up phonograph. The handle was turned and it was wound up and then
the record put on, and the thing with the needle was put across onto the record
and the music was played. We had some lovely old time records.
Our one great asset was our
sense of humour, one really had to have a good sense of humour as when our cows
were dry we had to walk two miles to Aunty Elsie’s to get a can of milk, return
home and then walk the miles to school through water up to our knees, it was
just as well we didn’t own any shoes.
Chapter 6
This is my Life 1932
When I was six and a half, Mum
started to put on weight. Next thing she went on a holiday and returned from
Raymond Terrace with a baby boy called Hollis James, named after his two
Grandfathers. Dad had taken us to work with him at night and while he was
fishing with his nets we went to bed in the launch, and then each morning we
went home and then walked to school. It was awful being seven years old and
having this baby crying in the night and waking us up at all hours. We weren’t
too happy about it and I’m sure Dad's team of Beagle Hounds, used for hunting,
wondered what was happening.
When I was 8 years old,
Dad decided that we should move down to Tea Gardens where we could go to school
properly, this was my third trauma in my short life. What furniture we had,
plus the chooks and the dogs and us kids, except the baby, was loaded onto the
paddle wheel droger which carried logs down to the mill, and off we went to Tea
Gardens while Mum, Dad, the baby and the cat went in the launch with the net
boats tied on behind. Ma and Pa Kettle had nothing on us.
After about six hours trip
down the river, we duly arrived at
Tea Gardens at that time
consisted mainly of the Korsmans (known as the Kossy family), the Motums, The
Engles and the Holberts. We soon learned not to talk about people as the
majority of them were related, especially the Motums, Engles and the Holberts.
Eventually we moved over to
Tea Gardens into a two bedroom house. Friday night was the highlight of the
week because Engles store, which sold just about everything (
my first pair of shoes was real expensive 2/11) (just 30 cents today),
was open 'til
Saturday night, if we’d been
very good and done all our chores that week, we got three pence (3 cents) to go
to the pictures, and every now and then we went to the learner dances, which
cost sixpence (6 cents), and the parents taught the kids to do all the old time
dances. When we were tired we went to sleep either on the seats or under them while
the big people continued their dancing. We were then shaken awake and had to
walk home, I always felt that I was walking in my sleep.
When I was ten years old
another brother called Barrie William arrived. This caused the problem of not
enough room for 5 kids so we moved next door to a bigger house, still rented of
course. One brother, three years old and then another baby brother was a darned
nuisance, they had to be minded and they created a lot more chores. Life wasn’t
meant to be easy.
Chapter 7
Things I Forgot
They named me Aileen Josie.
My Grandfather was dying from cancer which was brought on by him being squashed
between the mail boat and the wharf, and when he knew that I had arrived he
said “tell Ivy to call the baby Aileen”, so I was
named Aileen Josie as his name was Joseph. I didn’t mind the Josie bit but I
never liked the Aileen bit. You see my uncles were the Korsman Brothers who had
big hawling nets, and their big net boat was called the “Aileen”. The boat was
a very big and wide boat and I was big and wide too. Really though I didn’t
take after the boat as my Dad’s sisters were all “big in the beam” and I had to
take after them. This inherited stuff isn’t really that good.
I could always, and still
can, see better in the dark than the daylight and when we visited our
neighbours and had to walk home in the dark, I was always the one that had to
go first as I could always say “there’s a stump there or there’s a tree across
the track here”, otherwise there was always some ouch and oh's because one of
the family had kicked their toe or gone down a rabbit hole etc.
We learned very early what
Dad’s hand signals meant when he took us into the bush shooting to get our meat
supply. Christmas Bells grew in abundance on the moor at the back of our property
and were very beautiful with their red and yellows. We encountered many snakes
and creepy crawlies but fortunately we were never bitten.
When I was about five
years old I was sent to milk Phoebie, the cow. She trod on my foot and so I
kicked her, and I remember my Dad giving me a belting
for being cruel to the cow. “You should never be cruel to animals” he said. It
didn’t matter about my poor foot, which was a mess. No doctors or X-rays etc.
in those days, you just shook yourself, put on a smile, and got on with living
regardless of the pain.
Chapter 8
This is my life 1940
Time went by quickly from
when I was ten till I was 12, I passed to go to high school but had to repeat a
year as my sister Noreen was at high school and my parents could not afford to
keep two of us away at the same time.
I was 13 and in January
1940, I went to live at
I remember while I lived at
As it was war time, we
were directed to a job, so I was instructed to work at the Lustre factory.
First I had to inspect the finished garments, and then I became a machinist on
an overlocker machine.
When I was 18 John
wanted to marry me but my parents said “no” and the reason was that he was
Catholic, so we drifted apart as the law then was that you had to be 21 before
you could marry without parents consent.
Then I met Tom at my
sister’s wedding and when I was 20 we got married (1947). It was o.k. to marry
him as he was a Methodist (some parents are strange aren’t they?). We could not
find anywhere to live as returned service men had first priority for housing,
so we lived with his parents for six and a half years, then we bought a house
at Sth Wallsend which needed to be finished, so I became a builders
labourer and Pop and I did the finishing of the house. We lived there for 15
months but Tom thought it was too far from the pub, so against my wishes he
sold the house, and guess what? We went back to his
parents again. From there we went to Mereweather, here he had bought a house
next door to a pub. To make ends meet, I went to work as a machinist at Speedo
in
It was soon after that
he decided to give up work. Where was the money coming from to feed us? I had
to go back to work again and went to the Shoe factory at Mayfield, but I had to
walk from Lambton as there was no direct transport, so I was leaving home at
5.30 a.m. to start work at 7a.m, then I worked it out that if I ran 3 blocks at
4.p.m, I could get the bus that came from the
I was out of work for 2 days
and got a job as a machinist at the Glove factory at Wallsend, which was about
half an hour’s walk from home. I was there for about eighteen months when I
became very sick and had to leave there.
During this time God had
come into my life and I had accepted Jesus as my very own personal Saviour.
This made a great difference in my life and I found that with God's help I
could cope with Tom's drinking and his compulsive gambling.
In 1972 my Father died
and I really missed him terribly, but life had to go on regardless. Not long
after, my Mother-in-law died and then things weren’t too good at home as the
drinking just got worse. Anyway, I thought about leaving home and it was then
my Mother became a very bad Alzheimer sufferer so I talked things over with my
family, and in 1977 I left Lambton and went to Tea Gardens to look after her.
This wasn’t easy as she would do things that a 3 year old would not think of
doing, but I looked after her for almost five years until she died, I became
very close to God while there.
During the time I looked
after her I painted the inside of the house, except the lounge room, masonited
the floors and put new lino down and then painted the outside of the house,
except the top 5 weather boards, built the front fence with my neighbours help,
and built new front steps with rails at the side so Mum wouldn’t fall (this was
with my brother Barrie's help).
During the time I was at
Tea Gardens I did Red Shield collecting and as I was “The Army” I was able to
help a lot of people, I continued this work till I left there in 1985.
In 1983 while I was still at
my Mother’s house, a visitor came to stay for a few days,
I wasn’t too pleased about his presence. Anyway, on the second night I was
drugged (this was put in my evening meal) and I was beaten up and raped. I was
in shock for 2 weeks and could hardly walk about and I really don’t know what I
would have done without my beautiful neighbour Jean, who cared for me like a
baby and there was only her and God who knew about it. Even after 20 years I
still get nightmares about it. This incident has made me very wary of men.
The house was sold in 1984
and God told me that I had to move to
In 1986 I put in to get
accommodation at
He discovered that my
thyrocin was three times higher than it should have been and he said that the
toxin that was in my body should have been enough to kill me. He was also a
teacher and asked me if I would let some of his students examine me and to this
I agreed and it was a very enlightening session with seven of his students.
After six months on tablets that made me very sick it came time for my
operation and then there was a hospital bed for me.
I came though the operation
o.k. and was allowed to come home after five days. My friend came to visit me
after a couple of days and found me unconscious on the floor. When I came to I
felt that my left eye was hanging down on my cheek and I had pins and needles
down my left arm. She rang the doctor at the hospital and he directed us to see
Dr Heymet the eye specialist at Mosman, so my friend and the S.A Corps Officer
from Dee Why took me there but he couldn’t find anything wrong, so I was taken
back to the Emergency ward at the hospital and after numerous X-rays and tests
and being examined by a Mr and a Professor and lots of doctors, they said that
I had Migraine and I was sent home again. I knew that it was not migraine but I
had to take their word for it, but I felt I was living in another world. One of
my friends from Dee Why suggested that I see an Osteopath and I went to see
Malcolm Jack in Fisher Road and the staff there discovered that my C1 was
dislocated and this was causing all the trouble. This treatment was very
painful and I thought that they would leave me with no head, but eventually I
was getting some relief, but it took a lot of visits and was very expensive.
When the doctor was told
about it he could hardly believe that they had not worked out what was the
matter. To this very day in 2004, I still have a lot of trouble with my neck
and it gets very painful at times but there is nothing that can be done about
it.
I lived at Cromer for 15
months and then I was asked to leave and the reason was that I had too many
friends, I was too happy and I received too much mail. The landlady reckoned that I drank alcohol
and that was the reason I was so happy, this certainly wasn’t true as I never
touched the horrible stuff. She told me to go in 2 weeks but I said that I
would go when I found another place. I searched everywhere but they were all
too expensive as I only had my pension, so I handed the problem over to the
Lord and it was only a few days when my niece came to tell me that she knew
where there was a place, but it was very dirty as there had been some druggies
living there, however the rent suited me and so the scrubbing started. My
sister came and helped whenever she could and eventually we scrubbed it clean
except the gas stove. I don’t think that I have ever seen a stove that was so
dirty, (the whole 3 years and 3 months that I lived there I never used the oven
as I didn’t think it was clean enough). When it came time for me to shift in,
the landlord had put new carpet right through the place. This was a lovely
surprise as he told me that he would not spend any money on it other than to
get the old furniture removed. It was very damp there and I had bronchitis most
of the time and it was wonderful in 1990 when there was a letter to say that I
could move to
It was sometime in 1978 that
I received a letter from a friend to tell me that Tom was telling everyone that
I had died and that he had our little old house in Lambton up for sale. I
immediately rang the Agent and the poor fellow nearly had a heart attack. I
told Major Jan about what was happening and she advised me to file for a
divorce, which was granted almost straight away, much to my relief. Shortly
afterwards the house was sold, but for very little as it was in disrepair. I
was pleased to be rid of the whole business so that I could get on with my life
without all these extra worries.
I still worked for the
Welfare on Mondays and Fridays and visited my sister on Wednesdays and
Saturdays, did League of Mercy visitation on a Tuesday, went to Home League at
the Salvation Army and went to Church at the Army on Sundays.
At the Welfare I worked
under 9 different managers and in 4 different locations, did the statistics manually
for years and then came the computer which I taught myself the data entry, and
then had to teach lots of different ones how to do it.
In 1998 I had a really bad
fall at the front of the office and still have a very bad knee in 2004 as a
result.
In April 2000 my sister went
into Plateau View Nursing Home and I still went to visit her mostly on Weds and
Sats. She contracted pneumonia in June 2002 and passed away in Manly hospital
on 17th June, exactly 12 years after her husband died. This was a
very sad happening in my life as we had been very close all our lives, and I guess the saddest time was having to clean out
and dispose of all her treasures.
I retired from the Welfare
on
It will be 14 years tomorrow (
I must have the
Saviour with me for I dare not walk alone
I must feel His presence near me and His arms around
me thrown
For my soul shall
feel no ill Let
Him lead me where He will
I will go without
a murmur and His footsteps follow still.
AILEEN EDWARDS