"Holtieshouses"

Birchip

Birchip is a small Victorian Mallee town, we spent 18 months there when we first married, my oldest son, Alan, was conceived and born there so it does hold an important place in my story.

This was still a happy time in the marriage and the memories of adjusting to married life and a new baby are certainly happy ones.

At this stage I can’t find a photograph of the house and as it has since burnt down we may be stuck with only the written word.

Nathalia

Nathalia is also a small country town in Victoria, my Sister and her Husband lived there and operated a Garage with an International Harvester agency.

We formed an ill-fated partnership to run this business together, this only lasted for about 18 months as Pat and I proved to be incompatible.

It would be unfair to say that this move was a disaster, just an unfortunate experiment that didn’t quite work out.

Once we no longer had to work together we got along fine again.

Nathalia is the town where my Mum spent her last 20 years, we had many pleasant visits there, my kids couldn’t quite manage Nathalia thus the visits were to “Nanny Failures,” Mum never complained about the name, but one must wonder what she thought deep down??