My mother Joy Pummeroy was born at
home in East Brighton on 24 January 1942, the second youngest of five children
and 14 years after her next oldest sibling. It was war-time, and things were
tough. Her two older brothers were away in the RAAF and the Merchant Navy
respectively, and she was only 5 when her next oldest brother died in an
accident in Argentina while ferrying South American horses to Poland.
Things didn’t get
much easier after the war. Though mum enjoyed school, learning Latin and guitar
and being a good middle distance runner, when granddad got sick she had to
leave school and earn an income to help support her family. She never finished
her matriculation, I think one of the reasons she was so keen to see her
children get a good education and so proud when we both graduated from
university, the first in our family. Her first job was
in the old Coles 200 store in Bourke St Melbourne, which stood long enough for
both of us to have fond memories of the mezzanine cafeteria on our trips to
Melbourne. After that she worked as a telephonist at Allens Music, but she had
a yearning to see Australia and left there to take up a position as a governess
on a station north of Mildura. It was there
that she met Dad and decided he was the one for her,and they were married at St Mark’s church
in East Brighton on 16 September 1967. Her two daughters soon followed.
Mum
always thought of her time on the station as the best of her life. But early in
1973, the station had to be sold, and Dad had to find another job, and so we moved to Moama.
Mum taught
us to love reading and learning and to go out and find answers ourselves on all
the topics that interested us. She
always took an active interest in our educations, helping out at school, volunteering
in the canteen, supervising homework, never missing parent-teacher nights.
Mum was
especially proud the year my sister and I were both chosen to lay wreaths for
our classes at our school ANZAC Day ceremony.
The event was held in the local community centre, and she and Dad both
proudly watched as we did our parts and laid our wreaths. All was going well until the last post was
played. Overcome with emotion, Mum began
to sob. The more she tried to stop, the
louder the sobbing became. Eventually,
she fled the hall. Unfortunately, we
were in a far corner, and she had to run the length of the basketball court,
still sobbing loudly, before reaching the exit and heading to the car to
compose herself. There she was later
joined by her outraged offspring, mortified by her behaviour.
Mum never
worked outside the home after we moved to Moama, undertaking childminding at
home instead, and over a dozen children spent their days being looked after by
mum. She followed the lives of all of
them as they moved through our home, and on to school themselves.
As she grew
older and her mobility decreased, mum’s life closed in. She went out less and less as movement became
harder and more painful, and she endured just over a year in hospital with an
infected leg ulcer and hip replacement.
She was only home for a matter of weeks before Dad’s final illness and
death. By now almost completely
housebound, while she occasionally felt the isolation, she still had her books,
puzzles and friends who called in regularly.
She even managed to continue volunteering for the library, assisting in
storytime and holiday program preparation. Mum passed away peacefully at Echuca Hospital on May 8th, 2015. My thanks to everyone out there for your support and sympathy.
