Theme: Favourite Photo.

This photo shows my Aunt Betty and my mother Vada d’Archy in the grounds of their home in Toowoomba, Queensland. It must have been taken soon after their father Dick d’Archy left to fight in the First World War. He had been managing a large cattle station in far North Queensland, where my mother was born in 1913. Their mother Lily Hunt was a gentle Englishwoman who not surprisingly took the girls back to her own mother and sisters in Toowoomba. They had a large house which was shared at different times with a number of relatives.

My aunt had a special fondness for the house, named “Redmarley” after the Hunt family’s ancestral village in Worcestershire. Many years later she made more than one trip to Toowomba to try and locate the house. Here it is in a second photo – with a number of relatives – my mother Vada is the little girl being held by – I think – her Aunt Margaret. My grandmother Lily is standing to their left, and Betty is in front of her mother.