FILLING IN GAPS
Readers of The Wonder of Little Things will know that Vince spent his early years on the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia. He was born in Wallaroo, which is north of the Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission where many of his relatives lived. He remembered moving back and forth between the two places. At the mission he often stayed at his Papa Joe and Grandma Maisie May’s home.
From Wallaroo to Point Pearce is a distance of about eighty kilometres, which these days takes about an hour by car. In Vince’s time though – in the late 1930s and 1940s when very few people had cars – it was often a horse and buggy trip that took a few hours.
Vince had only a few stories from this time. As he puts it:
“I have some small memories of us living in Wallaroo. Mum used to do cleaning work for a lady called Mrs Venning, and our house wasn’t far from a square in the town.”
See p 8 adult edition; p 8 young readers.
But he also had one big memory, which he tells at the beginning, of his nine-year-old brother Colin pushing three-year-old Vince in a small red pedal car. Colin pushes him so fast that Vince’s feet slip off the pedals and the pedals keep spinning and hit his calves over and over, scraping his skin.
Vintage red pedal car. Image sourced from 1stDibs vintage, antique and contemporary design
If you’ve read the book, you’ll know what happened when they returned home later that day. And if you haven’t read it yet? Well, Vince’s mum wasn’t very happy with Colin for not looking after his little brother properly.
When I asked Vince if he knew why they were living in Wallaroo at the time, and not in Point Pearce, he couldn’t remember. But he had another memory of that time which he also shares in the book, about how his mum told him that his dad died of ‘a broken heart’.
When Vince first told me that story, I was both sad and intrigued. A broken heart? What would have made a thirty-year-old man die from a broken heart? Again Vince said he didn’t know, although he wondered if it was because his dad was a professional runner and might have strained his heart running. But that was just a guess.
With Vince’s permission, I started fossicking around different archives. One that proved really helpful was Genealogy South Australia. Not only did I find birth and death certificates for Vince’s dad, Fred, and his mum, Katie, but in a stroke of luck, inpatient records from country hospitals dating back to the 1930s had recently been uploaded.
From these Vince and I we learned that his dad had been in Wallaroo Hospital twice in late 1937 and early 1938, the first time for 44 days and the second for 61 days. Then through the archived records of the Royal Adelaide Hospital, we discovered he’d been an inpatient for 20 days and then died there on 20 June 1938.
Fred’s death certificate said he’d had tuberculosis and a related condition called myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart. This echoed Vince’s memory of his mum telling him that his dad had died of a broken heart.
Bit by bit, Vince came to know more about his dad. Still not much, but each fragment mattered to him. He was pleased to be able to weave them into The Wonder of Little Things and pass on what he’d learned to others.
Vince’s dad Fred Warrior, in the Point Pearce football team in the 1920s. He’s in the back row, second from the right, wearing a cap. [Copley family collection]
For anyone researching their family and the times their ancestors lived in, these are good websites to explore:
Trove, where we found old newspaper articles that mentioned Vince, many from his football days, and also his grandfathers, Barney Warrior and Joe Edwards.
State Records of South Australia holds many historic government records.
Genealogy SA has records on births, deaths, marriages, cemeteries, churches, hospitals, ship arrivals and much more.
Other good places to look are national and state reference libraries and museums.
© 2024 This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Acknowledgement: Vince’s continuing legacy has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.