WALTER'S DANIEL

Walter and Lily had their first Australian child barely six months after their arrival and he was named after Walter's brother Daniel who lived in Edinburgh, Scotland. The family called him "Dan" and he was born in their rented house known then as 10 Stoneleigh Street Albion, but it was probably not until the family were at Kedron that young Dan first went to Chermside State School nearby. His children still have his Sums Book with Arithmetic and several Home Exercises dated May to November 1910. One that is of special interest was an exercise to write an official letter. Daniel chose to write to Department of Lands in Brisbane to ask about taking up land for farming and grazing at Dalby, so his ambition to own a farm began at an early age.

He probably left school at the end of that year - he was by now l3 and of an age to join the family work force full time, even though he had probably been helping Walter in the forge as soon as he was old enough to pump the bellows to keep the fire going. Like many others of his time Walter did not believe in this business of his children trying for scholarships to further their education - finishing fifth class in Primary School was quite enough schooling to his mind. It was a common enough attitude in those times and it condemned many children to be employed in poorly paid jobs for their entire working lives.

When the family moved to Enoggera, Dan was still working for Walter but earning no money and Ted says one of Dan's reasons for leaving home to join the Army was to get enough money to buy a razor!. Walter was very loathe to lose the major part of his work force because if Dan went there was only Joe left, so it took a lot of persuasion and a promise from Dan to be baptised into the Christadelphian faith, before Walter would sign the enlistment papers.

Dan joined AIF in 1917, his trade being given as blacksmiths striker, and he told his children, that having rarely worn shoes he didn't fancy joining the infantry and marching in Army boots. It seems that Walter did a bit of finagling and got him posted to a regiment that used horses. All went well with feeding and grooming the animals, until the time came to actually do some riding when Dan's goose was well and truly cooked. He was sent to another section in the engineering regiment and spent about seven months in Australia, before embarking for overseas.

Poor Dan was another Bailey with 2 rows of teeth, but the Army soon fixed that - they took them all out and gave him a set of false ones.

He spent Christmas 1917 with the family of his namesake uncle Daniel in Edinburgh and one of the family Gladys, who was l7 at the time tells a story about his visit. In his honour, Gladys' mother had used all the family's butter ration to bake some shortbread, which was carefully divided, so there was a piece for everyone. Daniel, as a visitor was offered the first piece, which he soon ate, but he didn't stop there and Gladys and the other children watched their treat rapidly disappearing, but they had to be polite and make no comment - no wonder Gladys who is now 9O has never forgotten that occasion.

Early in 1918, Dan sent a postcard from Brightlingsea, Essex in England to his half-brother Alf, saying he was off to France sometime in January, mentioning that he had seen his aunt Dinah in Cardiff, Wales and asking that all his mail be sent to Edinburgh, care of his uncle. Dan found his war experiences very distressing and would never talk about them at all.

After the Armistice, together with thousands of Australian troops, he was sent back to England, until enough boats could be found to bring them all back to Australia. Many English people used to have the troops to their homes for afternoon tea and it was while Rose Painter was helping out on one of these occasions that she met Daniel. He took his discharge in England in November 1919 and at one time was a grave digger, which was very hard work in the frozen English soil. The scent of jonquils brought back memories of this unhappy time, and they were always forbidden in our house. He and Rose were married at Enfield only a few miles out of London in April 1921 and after trying various labouring jobs, Dan decided England was not for him, and got a job as a stoker on a passenger liner, plying between England and Australia. Conditions down in the stokehold of Dan's ship and the meals provided for the seamen were so bad that the initials of Shaw Savill & Albion line, who owned the vessel were said by the ship's crew to stand for Slow Starvation & Agony.

Rose lived with her mother while Dan was away on his voyages and had two children in England - Joy in 1922 and Mary in 1923.

As soon as he could Dan left his boat in Sydney and got a job in NSW Railway workshop at his old trade of blacksmiths striker and he sent for Rose and the children to come and live in Australia. They travelled on the Ballarat and arrived in Sydney in August 1926 and for a while the newly re-united family lived in a boarding house with Dan, but Rose soon found the first of many rented houses in the suburb of Oatley almost on Georges River. It was a small 4 roomed weatherboard dwelling, with a lean to nearby with a copper and the bath and Rose found conditions very trying in the hot Australian summers. Mary and I spent our days in the river below the house, teaching ourselves to swim and using an old tin bath for a boat.

It was about this time that radio broadcasts started and Dan began a life long interest in building radio sets. His first radio was a crystal set and when he had found a station using the cats whisker, he would put the headphones over our ears, so we could listen too. Later, he graduated to short wave radio and the family became used to the squeals and crackles in the evenings, as he worked his way along the short wave band.

Sometime around 1929, we moved to another suburb and into a new brick house Dan was entitled to under War Service Homes scheme on a big block with over half an acre of land. He was delighted - here was his farm at last and he could grow veges and make some money selling them to nearby residents. Despite the fact that he worked six days a week and went every Sunday to his Ecclesia in Sydney, Dan managed to dig it all over with a mattock, but the soil was a very heavy clay and he soon found it was no good for veges. A fellow immigrant on the boat was a nurseryman and he planted a hundred florist's roses on the block so Rose could sell the flowers and earn a bit of money - she used to get one shilling and sixpence for each bunch of 12 stems.

It was probably about 1927 or 8 that Dan and the family made the first of many visits to Brisbane to visit their relatives. Because Dan worked for NSW Railways, he got a yearly pass for all the family - we could never have afforded the fares if we had had to pay for them. Our first visit was to Enoggera and it must have come as quite a shock to Rose as Dan used to tell some good stories and I often wonder what yarns he had spun about his family's "farm". Reality was an iron and timber bush shanty, no running water and lots of flies and especially sandflies which brought up big lumps on our tender English skins. Lily made up a basin full of bicarb soda into a paste, which we kept dabbing on the bites. The lack of water was the worst problem and Rose hated to use the same lot of water for washing up, and then washing ones hands, before it was carefully poured onto plants in the garden. I have no clear memories of the family except for Walter, whose waist length beard fascinated me, but not when I had to kiss him, because it was not kept very clean. The main thing that stayed in my mind was watching Aunt Jane, who every evening took down the bunches of gum tips hanging from the ceiling and put them into the fire, to kill the dozens of flies that were clinging to them.

As in Queensland, by late l930, the Depression was biting hard, and with Dan working only 3 weeks out of 4, and no money coming in for the fourth week, the house payments were too much, so we had to leave and it was back to rented houses. The last of our rented houses was in Panania, which when we first arrived was in a rural area, but after 1948, a Housing Commission scheme built dozens of houses around us.

Dan and Rose eventually bought the house, to which Dan retired after leaving NSW Railways, having progressed from blacksmith striker to machinist to crane driver. He lived there only a few years longer however, as he had developed, undiagnosed since his teen years, a tumour on his pituitary gland, so the bones in his hands and feet never stopped growing. The tumour grew and Dan became almost blind and eventually had a stroke and died in Sydney Hospital in 1958. Rose stayed on in the house for a few years but eventually had to go and live in the first of several nursing homes and she died in 1979 in Braeside Nursing Home at Stanmore NSW.

I worked as a clerk in various engineering firms until I enlisted in AWAS in 1942, serving around Sydney, in Bendigo Victoria and in Lae, New Guinea. After my discharge in 1945.I took up office work again, until I married a fellow bushwalker, Thomas Whaite in 1948. Tom got a job as a soil scientist with NSW Department of Main Roads and we lived at first at Deniliquin, near Victorian border, before going to Goulburn, where we settled to educate our 4 children. Most of our weekends were spent bushwalking and caving and when Tom retired in 1980 we bought a farm west of Port Macquarie on NSW North Coast and kept cashmere goats. Tom died in 1986 and I stayed on at the farm and still have the goats.

Mary did secretarial work for a large building firm in Sydney and married Ron Gillard, a clerk in NSW Public Service in 1946. They lived in Sydney and had 2 children and when Ron first retired they went to live at Werri Beach on South Coast. Later on they moved to Canberra, where Ron died from a brain tumour in 1993. Ron had been a keen sportsman all his life and held many positions in sporting organisations, whilst Mary has been active in community clubs, including historical ones. Her special interest is in All Saints Anglican Church in the Canberra suburb of Ainslie, where she is a volunteer guide.

All the places in the genealogy below are, unless otherwise noted, in New South Wales

14/[8.1] Daniel BAILEY b 27 Oct 1897 Albion Qld d 26 Jul 1958 Sydney m 3O Apr 1921 Enfield Msx Rose Caroline (Painter) b 22 Sep 1890 Tottenham Msx d 26 Jan 1979 Stanmore

[14.1] Family of Joy Lilian (Bailey) and Thomas Maitland WHAITE

[14.2] Family of Irene Mary (Bailey) and Ronald Eric GILLARD

[14.3] Family of Peter WHAITE and Petra (Mueller)

[14.5] Family of Douglas Colin WHAITE and Deirdre Brigid (Stevens)

[14.6] Family of Catherine Helen (Whaite) and Geoffrey John MILLER

All births at Canberra ACT

[14.7]Family of Patricia Mary (Gillard) and David Moreau PALMER

[14.8] Family of Barry Ronald GILLARD and Joanne Margaret (Quinn)

All births at Nowra

14/[8.1] Rose Caroline (Painter)

Joy Whaite has further details about this family

[14.1] Thomas Maitland WHAITE

Joy Whaite has further details about this family

[14.2] Ronald Eric GILLARD

Father Ronald Mervyn Eric GILLARD b 16 Feb 1901 Cobargo d 15 April 1984 Gerringong

m 17 July 1923 St. Marys Cathedral Sydney

Mother Norah Mary Eileen (Brunton) b 4 May 1902 Bega d 19 May 1991 Gerringong

[14.3] Petra (Mueller)

Father Peter Klaus MUELLER PGF Hermann MUELLER PGM Frieda (Schultz)

Mother Renate Brigette (Engel) MGF ?? ENGEL MGM Margarete (Jakisch)

All these people are from West Berlin Federal Republic of Germany

[14.4] Kenneth Robert GRATTON

Father Valroy Keith GRATTON Mother Jessie Margaret (Wilson)

Kenneth Gratton has further details about this family

[14.5] Deirdre Brigid (Stevens)

[14.6] Geoffrey John MILLER

Father Paul Joseph MILLER Mother Rose Montague (Brassil)

[14.7] David Moreau PALMER

Father Maxwell Moreau PALMER Mother Margaret (?van Bruegen) of Belgian descent, b New Zealand

[14.8] Joanne Margaret (Quinn)

Father Thomas James QUINN b Kiama Mother Barbara (Parker) b Hay

Mary Gillard has further details about this family