Who Needs a Chair?

My cousin John Beaumont, sitting on the footpath in front of his home at 43 Bridge Street Port Melbourne around 1943.

John’s father Freddie, after returning from war service in North Africa, was sent to Singapore, escaping from there when the city fell to the Japanese on 15th February 1942. Freddie subsequently was transferred to New Guinea and it was while attacking a Japanese position in July 1943 that he was shot in the chest and fell down the side of a steep hill. It took 12 months before my Auntie Marjorie received confirmation that her husband was no longer “Missing in Action” but was indeed “killed”. Freddie’s name is on the RSL Honour Board that is now in the PMH&PS collection.

Marjorie never remarried bringing up John and two older sisters alone. As the children grew, No. 43 became too small, so after the war they moved to the other side of Bridge Street to No. 52. By 1969, Marjorie’s kids had married and left home so she moved to Garden City and my mother and father bought No. 52, where they remained until their deaths.

I am surrounded by family memories every day of my life.

Glen Cosham