Keeping tally on the waters of Purgatory

The house Laurie built 1950-1951, corner Sherbrook Road and Pulbrook Parade, Hornsby

"My life hasn't been a total waste, you know: I've built a few houses in my time. Wanna see the one in Sherbrooke Road today?"

Dying is a long and winding road.

Norm Ingram was the bloke who helped me build the sunroom on the back of Hunter Street, then I asked him to help me build on the block of land I bought down the bottom of Sherbrook Road. We only worked Saturdays on it: sunrise to sunset though, and I picked him up in the Bedford and delivered him home after. He lived on Pennant Hills Road just down from Pearce's Corner. Took us over a year but Norm agreed to be paid only after I sold it which was not easy being not long after the War and I'd only take cash. I got finance from Ray Aspinall who managed the Bank of New South Wales on the corner of Florence and George, just near the station.

Letter written by Laurie to his mother, Sylvia Irene Veronica Cole, October 1956 when he was building a house on the farm with my older brother, Barry, as his only companion. All six pages form this one letter.

Timber was hard to come by after the war: nothing second-hand, mind you. Not DAR but I insisted on newly milled. Had contact with this bloke with a lumber yard on the highway down in Roseville. Huh, I remember one darned day, when I loaded the truck up with 40 foot planks. They were so long, I couldn't just dangle 'em over the tray: the coppers would've bin onta me like the proverbial off a shovel. So, I had to reload them so they sat up over the cabin AND dangled off the back. That was tough work. Well, I was on me way back up the highway and I was over the rail bridge past the pub on the left and part-way up Pymble hill ... yeah yeah ... Jools see where that car is parked ... 'bout there ... when the bloody load shifted and the clatter was enough to get all the drinkers out from behind the bar to gawp at me. Bludgers ... they were muttering and frothing ... but a couple took pity on me and gave me a hand.

Not long after that, I was slaving away one day when the bloke who owned the block next door came and asked me if I wanted to buy it from him. I only ever did cash in those days: so I haggled with him a spell and ended up buying for 100 quid. I sold it about a year later for 200 quid. Didn't tell the Deputy Commissioner, though.

I didn't make much dough from Sherbrook road but gee, I got good experience from it.

What other houses have you built?

Well, the one on the farm, right? And the one in Denman: in Turtle Street ... ... ...

Left: Farm house built by Laurie during 1956 Right: House built in Denman by Laurie during 1962

And didn't you build one down in the Riverina?

Yeah, yeah the one for the Chaunceys: they came from out Myambat way. Geez, they were a funny pair. Never seen a father'n'son fight so much. They would go at it hammer'n'tongs: really belting into each other. Yeah ... I built one for them, too.

Never made much money outa building things ... ... ...


The letter bears witness to this: 300 pound - after costs - for slaving his heart out every Saturday for over a year.

Collecting: Family letters (3)

Written by my grandmother - Sylvia Irene Veronica - to her younger sister - Vera - on the death of Vera's infant son, Laurie Boots. Both Sylvia and Vera married men named Willl. Written in November 1922 when Sylvia was nearly 27 (with a 3 year old son, Gordon and a 1 year old son, also named Laurie) and Vera 25. Grandma was living out in Wetherill Park with just a horse (Dick) and sulky to get around. To come in to Drummoyne where her parents lived took most of the day.

The extreme religiosity of this letter takes me back: Sylvia was not a church-going woman in all the time that I knew her (1948 to 1984). She was obviously distraught about the death so early of her sister's son. In 1956 she lost her own 30 year old youngest son; and, in 1972 she lost her only daughter at the age of 43. This is but a photocopy, but it is interesting to compare the handwriting of Sylvia aged 15 in the previous Collecting post and this but a short 12 years later.

Taken in 1926 at Wetherill Park, Sylvia aged 31 jiggles her third son, Athol Reginald who was to die on a curb in London in 1956. Excerpts from Athol's diary (14 Dec 1949 to 17 March 1951)will take us on an altogether different journey. If Sylvia was 27 when this letter was written, and 31 when holding Athol, then her husband, Will (William George) aged from 44 to 48 over the same period. She was a workaholic; he a lazybones.

Collecting: Family letters (2)

The handwriting is very carefully formed, the manner deferential and self-effacing and the range of interests constrained and homely. We move on nearly fifteen years from the first "letter" announcing the birth of my grandmother, this next offering was written by her: Sylvia Irene Veronica Cole. This gem of a collectable was written in 1910 when SIVC was a whisker past 14 years of age; written from Tamworth, a small country town in the northern tablelands of NSW; written to HER grandparents. The watercolour gives me a thrill each time I study it. My older brother, who saw it for the first time this past weekend, was mesmerised.

Sylvia's mother was Sarah-Annie and HER mother married three times (Evans, Finch, Faull) all of whom were road-workers and Australian. Ma Cole was not highly educated and I surmise that her own mother was even less so. My guess is that in this letter, Sylvia is writing to her paternal Grandmother, Hannah Wilkins Cole, who remained in England and to whom her husband Steven, returned after a brief sojourn in the Antipodes.

A wee slip of a girl who was to bear four children to a man 17 years her senior; to lose the two younger children whilst continuing to live to 88 years of age. A grandmother who told me about her astonishment on her wedding night; who poo-pooed her garulous older spinster sister's pontifications about married life: "what would she know!" I adored her.

SIVC in 1916, aged 21; and, in 1942 aged 47, with two sons serving in the AIF in New Guinea.

Collecting: Family letters (1)

All the collectable documents I have are from the paternal line.

Taken in the late-1880s, the first photograph shows Great-grandfather, Charles Wilkins Cole - seated with the beard - with his first two sons at his knee. My Great-aunt Olive was born in 1889 and she is not present. This was taken at Jamieson in Victoria and I have the original. In the back row, the older gentleman is Steven Cole who is Charles Wilkins' father. He migrated to Australia from England on 19th January 1860 aged 25 for the princely sum of 32 pounds.


This note passes for a birth registration/notice. It is written by Charles Wilkins Cole and announces the birth of my grandmother. Gilgunnia is a very small town in the centre of the state of New South Wales. Once again, I have the original.


This final photograph - I don't have the original - shows Charles Wilkins Cole (Pa) and his family in 1924. He died in 1934 aged not quite 80. His wife - Sarah Annie (Ma) is still seated next to him - and they are surrounded by their seven surviving children, two having died not long after birth. Overlooking the young girl in the background, my grandmother is standing second from the right.