At She Oak Hill we lived a very basic life. There was no electricity in those days, but kerosene lamps. In the kitchen a big black urn sat on the stove with hot water for cups of tea or washing dishes. The water had to be carried by bucket from the corrugated iron tank in the yard.
A fire in the open fireplace kept the kitchen warm in the winter.
In the laundry the copper was lit once a week to do the washing.
My story starts 2 months before I was born when my father James was badly burnt when he caused an explosion in the garage – both his car and the garage were destroyed and he was badly burned. My mother Viola saved his life by wrapping him in hessian wool bale bags to smother the flames that were engulfing him, so my father was in hospital when I was born in November 1941.
I was named Heather Jane Mann. My second name Jane was a common name in both sides of my father’s family, the McKimmies and the Mann’s.
I was the middle child and the first daughter. I had an older brother and a sister who was born in 1944. My father who was born in 1873 in the Victorian era wasn’t partial to having daughters, however he was blessed with two.
I grew up in Yan Yean, attended the Yan Yean State School and later went to Reservoir High School.
Our father died in 1957 when I was 16 years old.
The next year I left school and found employment as a clerk & typist at the United Insurance Co. in Queen Street Melbourne.
When I was about twenty I trained as a mothercraft nurse at the Presbyterian Babies Home in Canterbury Road Camberwell.
I married in 1966 and had two lovely children who I love and am very proud of, Sophia and John.
My husband Dimitrios and I were the proprietors of several milk bars in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. We worked seven days a week together for many years, it wasn’t good for our marriage and after 28 years together we parted.
I enjoy my life doing Family History, am a member of the Knox Environment Society and work in their nursery as a “seedy lady”.
I also knit for charity at my local library and house and dog mind for my businessman son when he has to travel for work.
I am a member of the Whittlesea Historical Society.
I enjoy my life.
Heather Mann
October 2018
Image courtesy of GenealogyInTime Magazine www.genealogyintime.com
