Sarah Ann told her daughter-in-law, Nellie, that noone would ever name a child after her, her names were so plain and old-fashioned. Nellie probably shared her point of view: certainly she did not pass on either name to either of her daughters. A pity that Sarah did not live long enough to see them roll back into fashion and popularity.

The same daughter-in-law regarded Sarah as a well-read woman, clever with words and fond of – and capable at – doing crossword puzzles. Some people looked askance at her use of long words: croquet players, for example, when she exclaimed at how her ball had "deviated"! That really was a bit uppish!

In my pre-school years our little weatherboard cottage was just across a paddock from the old stone house where Grandma and Grandpa Hughes lived. When my brothers and I walked across – it seems to me that we could do so freely and were welcomed – we would ask Grandma if she would "cut a pretty apple" for us. She would take a red-skinned eating apple, seat herself on a low chair, her long skirts down to the floor, and we would stand by her knee, watching her hands as she deftly cut a zigzag pattern around the apple. We would eat the pieces that were cut away and admire the appearance of the finished apple, the white flesh contrasting attractively with the red skin. I think we immediately bit into it and devoured all of it too, but it was a much more exciting process than simply being given an apple to eat.

In those days we were a mile and a half from the township of Laura to which the family travelled in a sulky with a quiet old chestnut horse if my mother were driving, in a buggy and pair if father were there; the two seats both faced to the front and the top was open. But grandma Hughes drove herself about in a hooded buggy with, it seems to me, two small darkish horses, she leaning forward to whip them up.

Grandpa was presumably busy with farmwork at the times we children visited his house, for he does not figure, then, in my recollections. He must, however, have cared about us, for one Christmas morning when I called my mother to come and see the lovely things Father Christmas had brought me, they included a big doll, which, she told me then, was not from Father Christmas at all, but from Grandpa Hughes. This must have been the Christmas of 1926, the year in which Sarah Ann had died.

Grandpa must have lived alone for a bit, but then Sarah's niece, Mollie, whom Sarah had brought up as a daughter after Mollie's own mother had died when she was only two years old, was widowed and came with her her two daughters, one a toddler, one a babe in arms, to keep house for him for some years. When Mollie remarried Grandpa came to live with us in Everard.

He was then old and grey, going bald. On a bald part of his head he had an unsightly lump like a small cup upsidedown. The family discussed the desirability of having it removed by surgery, but they, and Grandpa, had heard of someone who had one cut off and then many more grew! So Grandpa preferred to stay with the one.

He suffered too from an affliction which periodically made his hand and arm shake quite violently: apparently he could not control it but, after a while, it would quieten down and he would be OK again. At other times he would, with full control of his hands, shake the pepper pot so vigourously over his food that Mother took to buying black pepper instead of white in the hope that Grandpa would see how much he was using and desist. My brother privately told her that she ought to just leave the pepper pot empty – he just enjoyed the shaking ritual!

I think that practically riht up to the time of his death he was able, with the aid of a walking stick, to get up, dress himself, bath himself – probably a once a week job in those days – and walk to the lavatory, the little house way across the back yard; perhaps he had a touch of claustrophobia too, for he liked to sit there with the door wide open, much to Mother's disgust;

"Anyone going along the road could look right in and see him there!"

But with a mile or more between the scattered farmhouses there was not a lot of passing traffic, and between the lavatory and the road lay, not only the depth of the house block, but a fair sized paddock too!

For most of his day he sat in his Morris chair, read the papers and dozed. He always personally took the Salvation Army newspaper, "The Warcry", and Mother told me this was because he believed in supporting the Army because of its work among the poor, although he, like my parents and his other son, Ted, were members of the Laura Baptist Church.

When Grandpa died, in 1933, a motor hearse took his coffin from our place at Everard to Laura where he was to be buried. I do not recall any references to the cost of this, although it must have been considerable for that distance in those days when the country was still struggling through the great depression. I suppose that from the sale of the Laura farm his estate had enough money to cope with a proper funeral.

Mother was worried at the prospect of a bare hearse being seen on the journey. The only flowers she had were bright golden marigolds: she wondered if they were unsuitably brilliant, but decided they were better than nothing and fashioned them into one wreath to grace the coffin.

Grandpa's old house has disappeared. It is shown in the autobiographical book "My life story with experiences" by Ray Gum, although the photo is dark, either not a good photo originally or a poor reproduction. In the text of the book the author cites it as a place for a stopover on a long trip and commends the hospitality of Mr Hughes.