Free Roundabout at Bangalow by Shirley Walker Page A

Yours Sincerely and is once again assailed by grave doubts .
    My mother is soon, as they said in those days, in trouble. Every agony aunt’s advice to girls in this situation was to tell your parents straight away, they will understand. I wonder how many did understand; how many ordered their daughters out of the house, or sent them away to an institution for unmarried mothers, where their babies were taken at birth and adopted out. My father recalls how difficult it was to tell your parents :
    I cant help thinking about your poor mother and how hard it must be on her. I will always have great respect for her for the way she treated me that day and all the time knowing what she did but really kid I dont think either of us are to blame for what happened for God knows we battled against it hard enough, more especially you.
    I can only imagine their anxiety at this time and my mother’s humiliation. Why their marriage is deferred I don’t know. It’s possibly because his mother, my Granny, refuses her permission; there are conflicting stories about this. But it’s at this time that he buys her a diamond cluster engagement ring, impressive even by today’s standards, which costs him the equivalent of three weeks’ wages, and probably puts him into debt for months. He’s always very proud of it.
    The only letter of hers to survive is dated 10 May 1925. She is now four months pregnant, in a panic about the wedding and possibly worried that his affections are waning. The letter begins: I waited up at the office from 11.15 till 12.30 for you to ring & was very disappointed; and concludes with a postscript: your letter was rather short. She describes her wedding outfit — a grey gabardine dress — grey felt hat — black shoes. Cash all ran out & I had to stop. Still have to get gloves & stockings etc. I came home from town with 1 / 2 d . Her main concern however is with the arrangements for the wedding:
    Well Mum saw Canon Seymour (C. of E.) & got all the papers to be signed. I sent one to your mother & asked her to post it back. Dad has to sign one & he says he wants £50 before he will. (Joking.) You have to fill one in when you come on Tuesday. I arranged it for 6.30. You must come down Tuesday night because we have to go down to the ministers & make an oath & sign some papers … You did not tell me who you have for best man. They asked me & I had to say I did not know. For goodness sake don’t leave it till the last minute & find you have no-one … Marj can be bridesmaid. Canon Seymour said it was necessary unless you called on two witnesses from the audience & that would not be nice …
    And so they are married on a Monday night, she in a grey dress and sensible black shoes, he with only one hour off work to get to Bangalow in time. It seems to me that this event, though unrecognised as such until later, is the central tragedy of their lives; it will take more than one generation to work it through. On the day of the wedding the rain sets in and becomes a flood. My Granny and her twin daughters, my father’s younger sisters, get a lift the five miles from Keerrong to The Channon in the pouring rain, catch a service car to Lismore, then a train to Bangalow, for the highway is closed. My mother now wears a heavy rose gold ring on her finger, a ring which will accompany her twice into the labour ward, into far too many hospitals and psychiatric clinics over the years, into a nursing home in old age, and finally to her death.
    God only knows how I stand this sort of thing
    Their correspondence in these early years is obsessed with unpaid bills and the struggle to buy furniture. Even a few shillings can be precious. Take this, for instance, written when she is staying with her mother five weeks after their baby is born:
    It makes my head ache when I sit down thinking about how I am to pay for it all … I am going to have everything ready when you come back if I can