Grace

I had a cup of coffee with Grace yesterday, after picking bunches of bay foliage from a tree in her yard. I've picked there for 20 years, well before Grace moved into the house some years ago, when a son, concerned that she had too far to walk as she was by then in her mid 80's, bought a house in the main street close to the shops and bus stop.
Come Anzac Day next Friday, Grace will have lived in Gembrook for 66 years. She arrived on Anzac Day 1942, by train and bus from Melbourne. Her husband was in the army in the Middle East and Grace did not feel safe in Prahran where she rented a couple of rooms and lived with her three children aged 6, 4 and a half, and 18 months. The Japanese Imperial Forces were moving south, bombing their way through South East Asia, it was a time of great anxiety.
Grace asked the army where could she could go. Someone suggested Gembrook and she found accomodation sharing a house on Mt. Eirene Rd. She was to meet the people with whom she was to share the house at a specified time at the Gembrook terminal. There was a delay at Ferntree Gully station getting the pusher and luggage from the guard's van, causing her to miss the bus. She could have caught the narrow gauge steam train but opted to catch the bus as arranged, having already paid for the tickets. She waited three hours for the next bus. The kids were hungry, the shops were shut for the public holiday.
When she and the kids eventually climbed from the bus in Gembrook late in the day there was nobody to meet them. She asked directions and started walking, the oldest child taking the pusher while Grace carried the bags. It was a walk of perhaps four miles on rough gravel roads. Darkness enveloped them, there was no alternative but to keep walking toward the light in the distance which she hoped was 'her house'. She recalls the difficulty of this day every Anzac Day.
Grace settled well in Gembrook. She remembers in subsequent years taking the kids to school in a spring cart drawn by an old draught horse. She'd wait for the mail to be sorted then head back, often it being nearly midday by the time she reached the house, such was the slowness of the old horse.
In all the time he was in the army, Grace's husband sent not one letter, despite her writing regularly. He returned from the Middle east, and was posted to Queensland, but absconded regularly to come home, so there was little army pay. Grace says of him that he was a funny bloke, he became alcoholic an died reasonably young riddled with cancer. They had nine children in all, although one died within a month. Grace managed to find work in Gembrook and supported her own large family. She worked in the post office for a long time and was there when we moved here 28 years ago.
Grace never owned a car or home, paying rent for her lodging. In her retirement one of her sons who has done well in business has paid her rent, and now owns the house where she lives. Her children and grandchildren visit regularly and she talks of them constantly. As we drank coffee yesterday she spoke joyously of her most recent great grand child, a girl born at Easter two months prem. and weighing less than 1 kg. The dear little thing, not long ago on expressed mother's milk of 1 ml every hour, is doing well and should be leaving hospital soon.
Grace, who turns 93 this year, was shattered a couple of years ago when one of her sons died of bowel cancer. Nearly succumbing to the grief, she's slowly regained much of her spirit and I enjoy my talks with her, she being so willing to share her stories with honesty not commonly found.