Neil's trip to S.A. Feb. 2013

Introduction

Sunday, to adelaide.

Monday. Mt Gambier & Mt Schank.

Tuesday, Mt. Schank.

Wednesday, The Mount,Adelaide & Bills.

Thursday. Big day, Dad's birth place, Jo Hartley's, Christines & Margaret.

Friday. Morphett Vale, Range Road & Victor Harbour.

Saturday. Kangaroo Island mob, Henley, Cherryville & Prospect.

Sunday, North Adelaide Baptist Church & Uncle Bill's.

Photo links

Introduction

I had noticed when doing some work on the family tree that Uncle Bill was going to be 88 this year, this came as a shock, it certainly didn't seem nearly 25 years since the David Badger Centenary Reunion in Mt Gambier. We had communicated regularly, if not often, over the intervening years and there was much that I needed to know and Bill was my last chance to obtain first-hand information. Additionally I ascertained that my mother's best  friend from 8 years of age would be 95 this year. I had promised to visit her for many years, and now the time has come. A convenient window of opportunity arose when my daughter, Julie, wanted me to do some baby sitting a week after my niece Sarah's wedding in Sydney and we were due to go to Melbourne immediately afterwards. So I resolved to leave Megan to drive back home after the wedding and I would fly to Adelaide.

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A hot shower sounded like a good idea, looking around I remembered it was a backpackers and I should have provided my own towel, aargh, undaunted I showered anyway and used my shirt to remove excess water. This served the dual purpose of getting me partially dry and the shirt partially washed. Feeling like a new man, I headed down to the bar with my phone and Ipad, determined to sort out the problems, or at least email all my contacts to advise them of my arrival and my communication difficulties. After two refreshing Coopers I had sent the emails and turned the phone off in frustration, I headed out for something to eat and watched the sun set over the gulf from the Glenelg Pier. Sunday night in Glenelg is very busy, back in my room it was still about 100 degrees and on opening the window, the local rock scene was blasting it out at about 150Db's. After a disturbed night's sleep I arose about 5.30 and went for a walk looking for some breakfast. There was a small goods shop that had a packet of  muffins  and a jar of Peanut Butter, ah heaven, back to the hostel and a breakfast of champions.
Just as I got back to my room it started to rain quite heavily, bringing some relief to the intense heat. I moved the car closer to the hostel, packed it and was on the road a few minutes after 7.

Tuesday,

Dawn breaks over the milking shed, fortuitously we don't need to be there,so Geoff and I shared an early breakfast as he had work to do and I had childhood memories to revive.Geoff headed out to feed the cattle and I ventured forth camera in hand.

The milking sheds lie idle, the tennis court abandoned, Geoff & Fran have added a couple of rooms beside the lounge and renovated the kitchen and they have flowers and natives surrounding the house, but apart from that little has changed over 50 years.
After a walk around the sheds, inspect the boat, the caravan and the Schank Hilton and a lovely lunch of smoked salmon, Geoff went off to dig some postholes and I went down to Port McDonnell. I went down the backroad and was surprised by the amount of irrigation in use in the area. The stench of rotting seaweed told me I was near the coast and then, there it was, the sea a magnificent shade of turquoise a stark contrast to the brown baked earth of the south east.
I headed along the coast looking for Lloyd and Thelma's holiday cottage, Geoff had told me it had been knocked down and a new McMansion built in it's place. It seems odd in the thousands of miles of coastline  that we need to knock down a house barely in its prime,
but I guess that is progress.
From there I proceeded along the coast to the old lighthouse, the coastline is unique and it is a mystery to me why we never looked at it on one of our family trips. There are also a number of museums and houses of interest in the area however I did't have time to investigate them.

I headed back up the main road to the Schank, I had wanted to reproduce the photo from the top of the tank stand, looking over the house yard to Mt Schank, however the pine trees are massive now and completely block any view.
Hence, I had decided to  climb Mt Schank and take the reverse photo. We had never been allowed to climb it as children, Uncle Lloyd said there were too many Tiger snakes, whether this was true or he just did't want to climb it we will never know. There is a path right to the top now with sodden earth filled steps of the steeper sections. Three steps from the top, with the view expanding before my eyes, I didn't watch the steps, tripped and came down hard on my artificial knee, visions of bits of steel poking through the skin filled my head as I imagined a night evacuation from the top of the hill. What wuss, a little blood a grazed knee and back to the hiking.

The farm from the Schank. A slight break in the trees for the driveway and a spot of colour for the house or a shed.

I headed back to the farm for a much appreciated baked dinner and the we settled down to read the story of Uncle Neil (Neil Thompson Badger) that Christine had produced. Lloyd had kept a box in his bedroom at the Schank until his death, children were not allowed to see it and I never heard my father mention it. This box contained all of Neil's flight logs and various letters pertaining to his Air Force career, hyperlink here. This information answered a lot of questions that had gone unanswered for many many years. I had always felt that there was a feeling that Neil would have survived the war if he had not flown with the Americans. In conversation with Uncle Bill after reading the info on Neil, he said that the American commanding officer had a policy that any F.O.'s coming under his command had to do at least one flight as co-pilot,

While there Bill suggested I should call in on Margaret Creeper (nee Farr) on my way down to Victor Harbour. He handed me the phone & said call her. This I did only to be told she didn't live there anymore and to try her sister Helen, but she added that Helen's husband Richard had just had a serious prostate operation. We tried to ring Helen, with no success so we presumed she was in Adelaide with Richard. Bill then suggested I ring Don Pritchard as he could well know Margaret's whereabouts as the Kangaroo Island clan were pretty close. This I did and after Don's surprise at hearing from me after nearly sixty years we had a nice chat. I then rang Margaret and again after a stunned silence for a few seconds we had a good chat and she offered me her spare room for the next few nights, which I readily accepted.

He also had me ring Jim Badger, Jim & I had been designated Family Tree perpetuators by our respective fathers at the Mt. Gambier reunion. We had both assisted out fathers in computerising their family trees. We were both fired with enthusiasm at the reunion, however, the cold light of reality set in when we arrived home nad little had been done by either of us until a few years ago. Rapid changes in computer technology and software had made the maintenance of our old records impossible and the prospect of restarting was daunting. Jim has managed to coopt his brother, Philip, into re-entering the 1400 names, whilst I had gone down this web-page path. Hopefully the two will come together in some way and become a meaningful resource for the following generations.

Set off reasonably early looking for Dad's birthplace, whilst avoiding the Clipsal traffic.

	I found the house and chatted with the owner who said the house was about 102 years old, which means it was less than 5 years old when Dad was wrapped in a blanket and placed in the fuel stove to help him survive his premature birth.
From there I went up to Kensington Park to see if I could  find the house over the road from the Penfold's place. This is a likely contender. Need to see if we can ascertain the Penfold’s actual address back then.

 I was due at Jo Hartley's place to meet Rosemary, Auntie Jessie's daughter and Margaret, Auntie Flora's daughter for morning tea. ( Mellors, sisters of Maggie Knox Thompson, David Magnus's wife.) . Not sure how Jo avoided being in this photo, she could have been one of the Worthley girls.

Rosemary was instantly recognisable, bearing the unmistakeable Mellor features.More photo swapping and yarn telling and then it was back to Bill's and up to Gawler for afternoon tea with Christine. On the trip up and back Bill took the chance to force feed me with more history.

Chris showed me her quilting workshop and many, many quilts and Keith arrived home from his second last day of work and we picked his brain on the means of establishing exactly which house had belonged to "the Aunties". We always say "the Auntie's" house although it was occupied by Uncle Charlie & Auntie Sis, along with Auntie Nance and originally when purchased Uncle Arch was going to live there as well, but he died just before they moved in.
I got Uncle Bill back home about 6.30 and rang Margaret to let her know what was happening. It turns out she was with Helen, just around the corner, so we agreed to meet at the corner of Wattle & Fullarton, ASAP. As I drove to the appointed spot I questioned our rendezvous technique, we hadn't  discussed what cars we were driving and we hadn't seen each other for about 50 years. When I arrived and parked about three cars from the corner on Wattle I noticed a message on my phone saying "on Wattle, white Commodore with roo bar". I looked around and could see no Commodore, so I sent a reply saying "so am I", and prayed there wasn't a Wattle street and a Wattle road not far from each other. I walked up and down the middle of the road trying to make it obvious that I was looking for someone and shortly I was rewarded with an attractive young lady waving to me from the safety of the footpath. It turned out to be Margaret and we repaired to a local hotel for a bite to eat. We filled each other in on the happenings within our families since we had last met which sadly included the death of one of Margaret's twin boys just prior to his 40th birthday from a brain tumour. Satiated, we headed back to Margaret's unit, which was the next block along from where I had initially parked my car on Sunday night in Glenelg. We talked until after midnight before hitting the hay.

On the way I was to visit the Morphett Vale church that was built by David Badger. In my father's book there is a picture of a church standing tall out in the countryside so I figured I would have no trouble finding it. Well that is not quite true, I didn't even consider the possibility that I would do anything other than drive straight to it. Morphett Vale is now the largest suburb in the state with a population of 23,000 and an area of 12.76 square kilometres and the church was nowhere to be seen, in fact I had trouble even finding Morphett Vale in the Adelaide - Mclaren Vale conurbation. My troubles were exacerbated by not knowing if I was looking for a Baptist, a Congregational or a Uniting church.

Suffice to say that I was not looking for an Innerware shop, and had no idea what an Innerware shop was, but was pleasantly surprised by what I found.
Eventually I found the church/shop, took a few photos and had a good chat with the shop assistant,  who was sympathetic to the plight of the church as her mother had been married there. The church is heritage listed and in need of repairs, the trees are gone and it is sandwiched between two motor bike shops.

From there it was on to McLaren Vale and beyond, Range Road at the top of the Willunga Hill. ( Quite a bit if history to go In here.lloyd, Neil , Thelma etc.)
I found the old Montarra Hall and the plaque to Neil  and down the road opposite is "Badgers Road".

A dilapidated  chimney on Range road.	Montarra Hall & the plaque.
Neil's plaque	Badger's road

On to Victor Harbour, found Auntie Joyce at home and we chatted for a few hours about my mum & dad's early days together. (Joyce had introduced them to each other  - probably as a result of her working with Dad at the Congregational Union in Sydney.) .
Don was a lay-preacher and was preaching one Sunday at Auburn Congregational Church and Mum set eyes on him and was very taken with  this handsome young preacher.
Joyce had gone to Lidcombe Congregational Church bur when she was 8 the family changed to the Auburn church where she and Olga became best friends. She laughed at the fact that she always made friend with tall people, Mum had a reputation, along with her sisters, for being tall slender beauties,. When I started dating, some of my early partners were Congregational girls and their fathers generally remembered the fabled William’s sisters of Auburn Cong. Joyce stood about 4 foot 10 and is even less now. Joyce ended up marrying a Congregational Minister, Gordon Branson who came from South Australia.
Their lives mirroring ours for many,  many years, each has one son & three daughters, all born within a few months of each other and two given the same names. Joyce did say that she questioned why Mum left school at such a young age and went to work as a seamstress, however I think it would have been for the money. I remember Grandpa telling me that during the depression he would walk from Auburn to the city every day looking for labouring jobs. We  had fish & chips for tea and then I headed back to Glenelg. This time Margaret & I  did not talk quite so late into the night.

	Margaret had arranged for the Kangaroo Island clan to meet at her place about 9, which they duly did. Kelly & Jill arrived at the same time and I wondered which was which, until Kelly smiled and I immediately recognised her from old photographs of us all together in 1959. Don could not make it as he had to work, well someone has to.
We chatted till lunchtime and after they left Margaret decided to come with me up to  find the Henley Beach house and then go up to Cherryville. With the help of Google maps, Max had helped us locate the Henley house just north of Marlborough St. on Seaview Rd. The houses on Seaview had been renumbered at some stage in the intervening 50 years.

We went back down to the old one room school which is still there and parked the car. We walked up and could see that the stone sheds had been converted into accommodation and a separate letter box to the main house, so we continued on to the main house. We knocked on the back door but received no answer but music could be heard for somewhere.

We went around the front of the house and found the owner, Michael in a state of deep relaxation listening to a Mozart opera in the shade of one of the old fig trees. He welcomed us warmly and after some discussion it was established  that  he was the same man I had met when I called in after the Mt Gambier centenary celebration for David Badger in 1990, 23 years earlier.

His son wandered up and he lives in the old stone sheds, which they call "the lofts", he is responsible for the gardens. Margaret was talking to him whilst Michael took me inside to see the steps to the cellar of which I have no memory. The kitchen, which I remember as being huge, was quite small and the steps down to the cellar took up a significant part of the kitchen.

I believe that the steps must have had a drop down door over them doubling the useable space in the kitchen. The kitchen door to the east entered a lounge room with access to the front door, I feel that this was a hallway when we used to visit.

To the right of the hall were two small rooms and similarly to the left with two further rooms beyond these into which we were never permitted to go. Michael felt that the ceilings had been lowered by two to three feet, and considering how cold it used to get up there it is not surprising.

There is a huge glass living room on the western end of the building now. The long drop toilet is long gone but the tennis court still remains.

We headed back via the Old Norton Summit/ Magill Rd., stopping to take photographs of the Governor's summer mansion at Marble Hill, destroyed in the fires of '54, along with the majority of David's cherry trees and almost burning his house.

As we walked back down to the car a young girl appeared and then her mother from No.31, the little girl passed us and looked at the gate into No.29 and called out  that it was open. I was near enough to her to comment that the gate was in fact open and followed up by asking her if she lived there. She confirmed that she did and I explained that our Uncle had built the house, she then called out to the lady from No 31, Dorothy, to come and hear the story.

After Uncle Gip's death the house went to Auntie Nance, she owned it till March 1953, about the time they moved into Henley Beach, at which time the house was sold to the Sandercocks, who in turn left it to Dorothy, the afore mentioned neighbour.

At the time that Uncle Bill lived there the 5 room house had :-
Grandma Annie Badger (Nee -McDougall), Gibson's wife.
Auntie Nance - Annie Gibson Badger - her eldest child and Uncle Gip's fiancée Uncle "Gip" - Richard Sedgewick Kitson, Auntie Nance's fiancée.
Uncle Charlie & Auntie Sis - Charles Burnside & Jessie Emmeline (nee Badger).
Uncle Arch - Archie Maxwell Badger & his daughters :-
Nancy Badger -
Helen Badger -
Dougla Brown - Uncle Bill.

From there we went to the next inter section and turned left, one block away was Prospect Primary School, where many, many relatives attended. A couple of blocks further and we were at 15 Vine Street, where Margaret & Kelly lived till they moved to Kangaroo Island.
Margaret out the front acknowledging what a good climber she must have been to sit on this fence.
The back o the property still has the 12 foot high stone fence that acted as the rear wall for the shack that the "little man at the end of the garden" lived in. Margaret could not remember who he was or why he was there, she just remembered that on Sundays they would take him down a plate of the Sunday Roast. She also recalled a mob of police charging through the front door looking for an S.P. bookie and disappearing out the back.

Five blocks further and we were at 1 Graham Place and the home of Auntie Jessie. Just as we pulled up I noticed a lady back out of the drive, I walked to the middle of the road and flagged her down to warn her that I would be taking pictures of the house. She asked why and I explained the relationship and she pulled over and parked and insisted on showing us through the house. Jeanette was especially interested as to what was at the end of the hall, she said that  when she bought it there was a hole knocked through the wall into the lounge room and it was used as a bar, she had filled that in and knocked a hole through into the kitchen and used I as a pantry, but she would love to know what it was originally.

	1 Whinham St. On the list but we can't remember why. Maybe Max Pritchard put it there.
3 Methuen , which is the same street as Whinham. Again not sure what it's connection is.

North Adelaide Baptist Church.
I cunningly arrived at 5 to 11 to avoid the service. The minister came out first and I chatted with him and checked it would be OK to take some photographs inside. There were many Badger and Mellor names on plaques and windows. As I was coming up the aisle to the last window a lady was going down and inquired as to my purpose, I explained that I was a Badger and a man a bit further up the aisle spun around and descended on me. "Mrs Badger sat in this pew here" he said pointing out her seat, " I know because I sit right here behind her and she has had to put up with my singing for forty years". The pews are all numbered so imagine my surprise when I saw that her pew number was 56. ( the number of our house in Epping Ave. and also the range of numbers visible when visiting Uncle Bill).
They then invited me over for a cup of tea and introduced me to a few people, one of whom had worked with Sir Geoffrey for 35 years. I then explained that I was also related to the Mellors and they pointed out a few of them to me.
When the minister introduced me to the congregation there was an audible gasp at the mention of the name Badger.
I chatted with one "Mellor" , Kathy Bawden , a descendant of auntie Jessie's husband Ken's brother , Robert (I think).
She asked after Rosemary and I was able to say that I had had morning tea with her on Wednesday and she was doing fine.   Kath Mellor of Cobb Cottage fame and kindergarten pre-eminence would be their auntie.

Below are two windows and an honour roll bearing the names of many of our ancestors.( 3 Badgers, 3 Mellors, a Brown & a Pritchard.)

I took my leave after an hour or so and promised I would return in the not too distant future and even make an effort to make the service.

I then headed back to Uncle Bills as there were a few things that we had heard that I needed to double check with him. After telling him the K.I. version of their Grandmother's death which was that their was an infection going around so they held the weekly church service outside to minimize the risk of spreading the infection, unfortunately the mosquitoes outside were even more deadly and many people became ill & died. Uncle Bill decided that it was definitely viral meningitis that had caused Helen Woodroffe's death.

Maggie's death is not so clear, Margaret remebers a conversation between her mother and my father whilst driving somewhere as a child that implied that she had died as a result of pregancy or childbirth. Jenny Badger has always been of the opinion that it was childbirth related, I must check with her to see why.

I asked him if people were not concerned about David travelling around with a woman that was not his wife and he said that it was quite common then for a man to take a housekeeper.

We chatted about Sir Geoffrey and it was generally accepted that he was a good bloke, however there was some concern over his wife. Uncle Bill showed me Sir Geoffrey's two books which Bill said had been meticulously researched.

Bill was keen to go with me and show me 15 Arthur St. & Watson ave , rose park.

Also the lower north road, ovingham, which is now Churchill Rd. this is where Uncle Charlie went after Arthur St., with the twins ?
He also drew a mud map showing how I could find the graves of Uncle Gip & Gibson & Anne.

After lunch of a cup of soup and a meat pie we realised that we had run out of time and I had to get back to glenelg to pick up my luggage and head for the airport. Just then there was an almighty roar and an F18 screamed overhead. The traditional opening of the Adelaide round of the V8's. I headed for the door and as I was leaving I pointed out an F18   circling to the south, it banked and turned and headed for the track going straight over Bill's unit. The whole village were out in the street watching and I made my way out through throngs of waving spectators and I reciprocated with a royal wave.
I wended my way back to Glenelg on now very familiar roads, collected my stuff, said goodbye to Margaret and headed out to the airport. I arrived at the departure gate with about three quarters of an hour to spare, so settled down to check emails and wait. After a while a flight came up on the board, but it was not ours so I just kept reading, quite some time later I realised that that flight had still not gone, odd, I was just heading across to the information counter to see what was going on when I heard myself paged (again), there had been a gate change, I was supposed to be on the plane three gates away, frantic rush, admonishing glances and I was in my seat and we were heading back east. Why they do not display a gate change at the superseded gate is beyond me, if I had missed that plane I would have been in trouble, as ,with the Clipsal now finished, the following flights would have been chockers.

There endeth my week in Adelaide, I had achieved all I had set out to and much more, I have a bag full of photos and stories for the web page and reacquainted myself with relatives that I had not seen for 25 to 50 years. My thanks to everyone that took the time to see me and I hope you can get as much out of my trip as I have.

Janice, Rosie, Neil, Christine - hardly aged at all in the 23 years since we had seen each other. Keith & Janices dining room & outlook. Now off to the Schank.

Keith & Chris guided me out there, little faith in the city boy from back east.

Nostalgic look at the old place, meaningful to those that have been there, a farm to those that haven't.

Dick & Dora at the Port McDonell beachfront house.

I left Geoffrey to an afternoon of fencing & I headed down to Port McDonnell to find the beach house and discover what the fascination was with Port McDonnell.

View of Mt Schank & distant Mr Gambier from the coast.

Heading back I decided to climb Mt Schank, we had never been allowed to as children, "Too many tiger snakes in the bracken:"

The next day, up early, final nostalgia trip, bit of a chat, then back to Adelaide.

Eventually I found it, sandwiched between two motor bike shops in an area akin to Parramatta Rd. in Sydney. I had no idea what an Innerware shop was, but I was very pleasantly surprised, although I doubt that the Rev. David would be all that impressed.

Then it was on to Range Road where David Magnus Badger had a farm at the start of the Second World War, where Lloyd met Thelma and the last home for Neil.