I am not sure how the post card came into my possession. I think it was among some old photos given to me by my mother.
It is now 104 years old and the earliest photograph we have of my father.
He was born in Australia in 1888 into a farming family. As the youngest of six and the third son he had to purchase his own land, which he did in 1913 and set out to build all the boundary fencing of his virgin 2,400 acre property.
When World War 1 was declared in 1914 he had not finished the fencing, which in the contract was to be completed before he could leave it unattended.
So, it was late 1915 before he enlisted.
Arriving in England he was posted to Sutton Veny on the Salisbury Plain for training. Then sent to Belgium in 1917 where he was wounded by shrapnel in his lower legs. He was then repatriated to England for recovery.
When recovered, instead of being returned to the western front he was sent to Scotland for six months to work on a dairy farm because they were so short of labour, as their employees were still away at the war. In retrospect it may have saved his life. While in Scotland he met his future wife, Isabel.
In 1918 he returned to England to the Australian base at Hurdcott in Wiltshire which was now the staging camp for all the Australian soldiers waiting for transport back to Australia.
Photographers would visit the camp and take informal photographs for the soldiers to send home to family and friends. The photo post card is of my father standing in the middle back with three of his friends.
My father loved his naps, and he was rousted out of his cot by his friends for the photo. Not wanting to go to the trouble to dress in his uniform he just put on his great coat. You can see the pyjama legs showing under the chair!
His writing on the back is dated 7/8/1918. He must have included it in a letter home as there is no addressee.
The return trip to Australia via the Cape of Good Hope was a minimum of 40 days or longer if it was in winter crossing of the Southern Ocean and he didn’t reach his property until mid- 1919.
In 1920 Isabel came out to Australia, they married and had a daughter. With her second pregnancy she had a difficult delivery and both she and her baby died.
In the middle of the depression, in 1930 he married my mother, Lena, and four months later his daughter died of diphtheria while at boarding school. No vaccines in those days and medical care in the country at that time was minimal.
They had a son and a daughter and seven years later I was the surprise. My father was now 51 years old.
He never spoke of his time in Belgium but had many stories of Sutton Veny and Hurdcott. Unfortunately, most of these were told to my brother when they were working together on the farm, and he is no longer alive to pass them on.
Jean Mackinnon
