THE KNOXES--1820-1920

3. The first identifiable Knox is my grandfather Joseph who was born in 1845 in Omagh, County Tyrone, part of what is now known as Northern Ireland. In 1861, aged 15 or 16, he emigrated to Sydney, Australia, with his family. I have no information about Joseph's parents but there was one brother, John, and three sisters, Mary, Sarah and Margaret. The information from Miss Fearby gives no details of the lives of these three, except that Margaret "drowned at Hay (a town in the Riverina district of NSW)" and May "married McBarron and lived at Moss Vale (a country town in NSW)."
4. Joseph appears to have started work as an upholsterer when he arrived in Sydney and then switched to working in the grocery section of a department shop called Civil Service Stores in central Sydney. On 13 June 1870, aged 25, he married my grandmother, Elizabeth Jane Drew. On the Drew's side the links with Australia go back, through marriage, to the very early days of settlement there.

5. Elizabeth Drew's father (my great-grandfather) was born in Dublin and, according to Miss Fearby, well might have gone out to Australia as a soldier. There is no indication when this was. It must have been no later than the 1840s because Elizabeth was born in 1846 at Parramatta, a town a few miles outside Sydney. Elizabeth's mother, born Annie Reese (Rees?) (my great-grandmother), was also born in New South Wales, presumably in the 1820s. She was of Welsh descent and must have been quite a character. Great-grandfather Drew took himself off to California to join in the gold rush there in the late 1840s. Apparently he sent one letter saying that he would be returning to Australia and was never heard of again. Annie worked as a midwife to bring up Elizabeth and her two brothers. They lived in Surry Hills close to the center of Sydney. As she grew up Elizabeth worked for a dressmaker.

6. It was in Surry Hills that Joseph and Elizabeth set up home after their marriage in 1870. Grandfather Joseph seems to have prospered as the colony of New South Wales grew in importance and Sydney asserted itself as the main town in Australia. He used his knowledge acquired in the Civil Service Stores to set up his own grocery shop in Forest Lodge, still close to the city center. Miss Fearby reports "he must have done very well, as he bought seven houses in the locality and rented them."

9. This is how I remember my father's other brother and sisters all of whom, except Ivy, died in the 1930s or early 1940s. Ivy outlived my father who died in October 1949. She must have died in the 1950s.

John Calvin

Always known to us as Uncle Cal, he belied his puritanical name and was a gentle character. A school teacher in the public (state) school system he was assigned to country schools and was a rare visitor. I cannot recall his wife but he had one son, named Errol like my father. Errol was deaf as a result of German measles as a young child and had impaired speech. To my knowledge he had no children.

Lilian Violet

LilianViolet was the oldest of the girls and, I suspect, my father's favorite sister. She married a farmer called Fearby and settled in Uralla in northern NSW. She had a son, Alan, and daughter, Heather (who provided the information about early family history). Alan became a farmer and had children, at least one of whom also farmed in NSW. Violet was hospitable. My father spent holidays with her as a boy. My sister, Titia and I also went to Uralla for a holiday in the early 1930s.

Myrtle

Myrtle was a soft, kindly woman. She worked in an office in Sydney and until she married, relatively late in life, always bought weekly comics for Titia and me. Her husband was a minor civil servant called George Walker. On marriage she moved from our neighborhood and she and George lived in a small flat in the then respectable Kings Cross area. George loved Rugby League and until we moved to Melbourne in 1938 Titia and I occasionally had lunch with them and were then taken to a League match.

Renee and Ivy

Renee (I believe she had a flower name like her sisters--Acacia) and Ivy were the two youngest sisters. I put them under the same heading because they lived together most of their adult life. They never married and, to my knowledge never worked. They must have inherited the income from the houses owned by the parents and they appeared to live reasonably well. They played bridge, gave tea parties. Ivy played golf and did most of the housework. Renee played the piano and read books aloud while Ivy prepared the meals. They had the top floor flat in a four-story apartment block in Neutral Bay about half a mile from our house. On one side it overlooked Sydney Harbor. On the other it had a commanding view of the road convenient for keeping a somewhat critical eye on the comings and goings of their neighbors. They were anti-Catholic, could be sharp tongued and were at times a sore trial to my mother. However, they tried to be good aunts and my sister Titia and I sometimes went there for afternoon teas. Ivy encouraged my golf and initiated me to two or three courses.

10. What sort of a family life did Joseph and Elizabeth Knox create for their children who grew up in the latter part of the 19th century? My father did speak occasionally of his boyhood and, although I cannot recall my aunts discussing their upbringing, their adult way of life provides certain pointers to the past

11. One thing is clear. Joseph was a true product of the Presbyterian sector of Ulster and the Sabbath was sacred. I can recall my father, Errol, saying that he was not allowed to play on the grass on Sundays ---presumably because such pleasure distracted from strict observance of the sacred day--and was not allowed to enjoy himself on Saturday evenings because "it was too close to the Sabbath." Church going and biblical readings were a duty on Sunday. I am sure that Elizabeth was a good and virtuous mother. My father spoke fondly of her. However, it must have been a rather somber house with strict rules.

12. Joseph and Elizabeth obviously saw to it that the family were as well educated as the state system of the day allowed. They must have encouraged study and a sense of discipline. The sons were all groomed for what would be called today "white-collar" jobs. The Knoxes did not aspire to being part of Sydney society but were well regarded in the Wentworthville area and neighboring Parramatta. There was enough money for the girls to be able to develop desirable Victorian social accomplishments like music and embroidery. None of the family showed any great skill at sport and one must doubt that it was encouraged.

13. My father was clearly required to work on the small farm. He must have enjoyed it because all his life he had a great love of working the land and, in the way of farmers, was quite skilled with elementary mechanics and could turn his hand to building a brick wall, working with cement or mending a car or yacht engine. One imagines that in the fashion of the day his sisters were made to work around the house. I never heard my father talk of holidays except to go and stay with his married sister Violet on her farm. He was not a strong swimmer and I do not think that the Sydney surfing beaches played any part in his early life.

14. Joseph and Elizabeth were loyal subjects of the crown. My father told me how he was taken to the celebrations of Queen Victoria's jubilee. At the same time there is no indication that they had any close links with the "mother country." Joseph never went back to Ireland nor seems to have urged his children to do so. They seem to have very much identified themselves as Australians. My father told me that as a schoolboy he participated in the celebrations in 1901 when Australia shed its colonial ties and became an independent country within the British Empire. Except for him, none of the family left Australia and to the best of my knowledge, never even left New South Wales. Indeed, in many other ways my father, the last-born, differed from his brothers and sisters. Whereas they, with the possible exception of Lillian Violet, the farmer's wife, were content with a secure small-time life style, conforming to the rigid social pattern set by the parents, he was a restless spirit, blessed with a first class brain, a depth of vision and a desire to see the world outside Australia.

15. He had been born on 25 June 1889 in Sydney before the family moved out to Wentworthville. I know nothing of his infancy and although throughout his life he suffered from poor eyesight I assume he was a reasonably robust child. He must have been bright because after primary school he qualified to enter Fort Street High School, one of the two leading schools in the New South Wales state system. My father was proud of his association with this school, which produced a number of prominent Australians. It was situated close to the center of Sydney and the harbor. Since the family by this time was living in Wentworthville it meant a long train journey to school. My father, who had a good sense of humor and a way with words, liked to recall that they had an old Irish conductor who used to call out the names of stations "Road to Hell" (Rooty Hill), "Go to Hell," (Goats Hill) and "Went to Hell" (Wentworthville).

16. From Fort Street High he went to Sydney University to do a general arts course. I know from a story he used to tell that one of his subjects was philosophy. English must have been another because throughout his life he could quote at length from various Shakespearean plays. He had a strong memory. He stayed at University for two years and then abandoned his course in 1910 to go into journalism. I do not know the background to this decision. He was an impatient man and quite probably was bored with being a student and anxious to make his way in the world. Perhaps he needed to make money. His parents by this time were running down their farming interests and living off their investments in property.

17. He worked on newspapers in Sydney for three or four years. Then early in 1914 he went to California and found work there in San Francisco on newspapers in the Hearst chain. This was a period in his life about which he often told us stories. I think he liked the United States and the exciting future it offered. He might have stayed there if the First World War had not broken out. Early in 1915 he returned to Australia and in July enlisted as a private in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF).

18. He was commissioned in September and in January 1916 embarked for Egypt, a training ground for the Australian forces overseas. From Egypt he went to France where, in January 1917 he joined the Royal Australian Flying Corps. He had always been fascinated by flying from its infancy--he was always forward looking and embraced new idea with enthusiasm--and had witnessed some of the first attempts at flight in Australia. His bad eyesight debarred him from becoming a pilot but he told me he did some flying on observation work. Essentially, however, he was an administrator and served as a recording officer and as an adjutant. He was gassed and also hospitalized for appendicitis. As indicated above it was while he was recovering in England that he met my mother. By the end of the War in November 1918 he had become a major. He served until July 1919 with the British Army of Occupation on the Rhine. For his war work he was twice mentioned in dispatches and awarded the MBE.

19. On 4 September 1919 he and my mother were married and left shortly afterwards for Australia aboard a troopship. My mother, who had never left England before, told me she was horrified when the ship reached Fremantle in Western Australia and she saw the tin roofs and drab colorless buildings of the docks area. She burst into tears. Fortunately, the ships final destination was Sydney and it sailed into the Harbor on a lovely summer day early in 1920. Although homesick, she was enchanted and vowed to live close to the water. They set up their first home at the head of Shellcove Bay between Cremorne and Neutral Bay on the north side of the Harbor opposite to the central business and shopping areas of Sydney. There was no bridge in those days and travel to the city was by ferry boats for pedestrians and by punts for cars. My father resumed his journalistic career. My mother started a family. The story of their life together introduces my life and is recounted in the second part of this narrative.

20. My mother was not allowed to sever her English links. She was followed to Australia early in the 1920s by her mother, one sister and a brother. The story of the Coores and the reasons for their migration to Australia follows.

THE KNOXES--1920 TO 1945

36. As indicated earlier my father Errol and mother Gertrude made their first home in Sydney on the north side of the Harbor. It was in Bannerman Street between Cremorne and Neutral Bay at the top end of Shellcove Bay and was close to, but not bordering on, the Harbor. It was in this house that my sister Patricia (Titia) was born on 28 September 1920 and I was born on 16 November 1923. Home births were then the custom. I know only that I was due on the anniversary of the 1914-18 World War Armistice Day, November 11, but arrived five days late on Friday, 16 November and spoiled everyone's fish supper. It was an uncomplicated delivery and my mother had good help. My father had returned immediately to journalism and made his mark. After short spells on Smith's Weekly and the Daily Telegraph ( a morning paper), he had been made managing editor of the Sydney Evening News in 1922. He was earning a good salary and we had a live-in Nanny--"Nin." She was an English migrant named Schobell, who married and became Mrs. Turner. She brought two brothers to Australia through the Doctor Barnados scheme, Charlie and Cyril. The former did extremely well in the grocery trade and the latter, who lived with us for a time, became a well established plumber. In 1923 "Nin's" task was to look after Titia and me.

37. Sometime shortly after my birth we moved to a house about a mile away--this time with a view of, and access to, the Harbor. It was on Shellcove Bay close to Kurraba Point. I remember nothing of it. It was not a happy house for my mother. While living there she contracted typhoid fever from eating oysters grown in Sydney Bay. Later these beds were to be banned as the authorities became more aware of the health risks of dirty harbor waters. My mother was seriously ill and the disease left her with a stomach weakness which at times caused her great discomfort in later life.

38. These were critical years for her. She had gone to Australia aged 20 and had a great home-sickness for England. Life in those first few years cannot have been easy. While starting a family, she had to adapt to a new country and to an Australian climate and way of life for which her upbringing in England had scarcely prepared her. She must have seen a raw side of life that was foreign to her. Journalism in Sydney was a tough world. My father told me that one of his rivals boasted that he had "broken all ten commandments." His work was demanding and time consuming. There must have been times when she was lonely. However, the Evening News was doing well under his management and had become a strong competitor to the Sydney Sun, the more established afternoon paper. He was close to the top of his chosen profession and was now able to give my mother her two fondest wishes--a trip back to England and a house on the brow of Kurraba Point overlooking the Harbour with an acre of ground and a large water frontage.

39. The trip to England came in 1927. It was part business, part pleasure. This was long before the days of plane travel and the journeying was done by steamer and rail. We sailed from Sydney as a family with a nursemaid called Biddy to look after Titia and me and a number of large cabin trunks. Our travels took us to Canada to buy newsprint and to the United States to see the latest printing machinery. My father was always fascinated by new developments. He understood the way journalism was heading and recognized the need to invest in the future. I was only three and have no real memories of the trip. It was, however, well documented with family photos. We traveled extensively through England and Scotland and also went to Ireland. Travel in those days was leisurely and it was accepted that businessmen would be away from Australia for several months. The return trip took us once again to the United States and Canada and at one stage we rode on horses through the Rocky Mountains. I suppose I was carried on my mother's mount. For years afterwards I received a magazine as a member of the "Trail Riders Club."

40. While we were away the house was being built. My mother told me that the trip back to England helped her overcome her home sickness. She knew that she was not irrevocably cut adrift from what she still then--and indeed throughout her life--saw as her homeland. I think that the process of settling down in Australia was also helped by moving into the house about the same time as having a new baby, my sister Pamela born in August 1928. With two girls and a boy she felt her family was complete and the house was in the best sense of the words, her dream home. Upstairs it had four bedrooms in the front, two of them giving on to covered balconies with commanding views of the Harbor, and three rooms at the back. "Nin" and her husband, now working as a married couple, used two of these. I had the third. Downstairs a dining room and a drawing-room also overlooked the Harbor. Unusual for pre-war days it had twin garages on the road above and to the rear of the house. Beneath them was a bedroom in which Nin's brother Cyril lived. The grounds were terraced down to the waterfront. On the first level below the house there was a grass tennis court. On the next level there was a vegetable garden, fruit trees and a chicken run. At all levels there were flower gardens. On the waterfront, on the Shellcove Bay side of Kurraba Point, a reasonably shallow part was fenced off (later a concrete wall was built) to make a harbor swimming pool. There was a boat shed with good deep water for a yacht and plenty of rocks for fishing.

41. I am sure that the first few years in this house were among the happiest of my mother's and father's life. He had a yacht called the "Lara" some 30 feet long with a small galley and bunks for four or five people. He moored it in Shellcove Bay in front of the boatshed. It had sails but he preferred to use it as a motor boat. His great joy was to take it to Brokem Bay some 30 miles north of Sydney and spend a week or two there with three or four men friends. It meant a sea trip in fairly rough waters but he loved the challenge. He did not enjoy swimming and, with poor eyesight, he was an enthusiastic but only moderate tennis player. He was at the height of his professional life and too busy to be a regular gardener but he loved planning the property and building banks and walls. He was a good driver and was very proud of his Armstrong-Siddeley sedan.

42. My mother loved the swimming and the tennis and was an enthusiastic "green-fingered" gardener. In addition to flowers and vegetables she grew passion fruit and nurtured a most beautiful frangipanya tree. She was an animal lover and was never without one or two dogs and a cat. Cocker spaniels were the early favorites. My father insisted that as good Australian dogs they should live outside the house. From the day one was found dead in the morning from a tick in the ear dogs slept inside. My mother was tall (5 feet and 10 inches) and bordering on being thin. She loved the warmth of the Sydney sun but as a good English woman generally kept herself well shaded. She had no fear of Australian insect and reptile life and one of my earliest memories is of her shrieking with laughter as we ran away while she held up a very big blue tongue lizard. She had her own little red two seater baby Austin sports car.

43. There was a lot of social activity. A group of 8 to 10 friends regularly played tennis on Saturday afternoons and as a good Australian housewife my mother had to turn on teas complete with sandwiches and cakes. She became in fact a very good cake-maker. Once a year there was an all-day tournament with a substantial buffet/picnic lunch. The tennis playing friends came from all walks of life. I can recall two or three doctors, a journalist, a publisher and one or two businessmen. Some were neighbors, some came from further afield. The entertainment was always genuine and never ostentatious. There was a very occasional party. The house had a large hall and I can recall one very swinging New Year's Eve "do" which I was allowed to watch briefly from the top of the stairs. My mother was still in her twenties and loved dancing. My father gave her a gramophone with an electrically drive mechanism which lifted records off a spool, placed them on a turntable and then deposited them in a padded container. In this way eight or ten records could be played in succession automatically.

44. The great economic depression of the 1930s brought the golden days of life at Ladye Place to an end, at least for my parents. In about 1931 the owners closed the Evening News and for the next six years my father used his ingenuity and drive to make a living working on his own. He edited two editions of Who's Who in Australia, published Knox's Medical Directory, brought out a short-lived monthly news magazine. Inevitably his income in this period slumped. The yacht was sold. Entertainment was restricted to the tennis parties. Ambitious overseas trips were out.

45. Paradoxically the closure of the Evening News came when I was about eight and of an age to enjoy life in a house on the harbor with a swimming pool and a tennis court and adjacent to the still largely undeveloped Kurraba Point with acres of open land to play in. Personally I was cushioned from the effects of the Depression and the ills of the world. We were, however, aware of the dole queues and the hardships of others. News always had a priority in the house. We had wireless sets from the earliest days of radio. The daily newspaper was delivered early in the morning by a man with an open car. He twisted the paper and threw it like a boomerang into the driveway. I usually got to it first. The unemployed came to the house looking for work. Among them, I recall, an ex-vicar from England who appealed desperately to my mother as a compatriot.

49. At home we were fully occupied. In the early 1930s there was one other family on Kurraba Point--the Whites. He was a successful timber merchant and race-horse owner and shrewdly bought up much of the still undeveloped land. They had two girls, Babette and Dell, and a boy, Baden, of about the same age as Titia and me. Baden became a pilot in the RAAF during the War and was killed flying over England. In childhood we swam and played tennis together and roamed the harbor shore by our homes. As the Point was developed and school friends came of an age to visit, so our circle of friends expanded. Titia was a good tennis player and was coached at school. An eager older sister she coached me in turn. We had a carefree, rather idyllic, life. During the long summer vacation (December and January) we lived in bathing costumes and khaki shorts. More often than not and by preference we went barefooted. As I grew older my father encouraged sailing. Although he had sold his yacht he had kept the 10 foot dinghy and he rigged it up with a mainsail (later a small bowsprit and gib sail were added). He taught me the "rules of the sea" (who had the right of way etc) and the rudiments of sailing and then, when I was 11 or 12. set me free to wander round the harbor with different friends. He believed implicitly in self-reliance and trust.

50. We had very occasional holidays. I got my first introduction to surfing when I was eight or nine and we took a seaside chalet at Newport a few miles north of Sydney. As the family budget tightened we had the odd week away at boarding houses in the country--I can remember going to Bowral and a place on the western slopes of the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney. A visit to our cousins, the O'Briens, at their Tumbarumba farm was memorable because another car ran headfirst into ours going around a mountainous bend close to our destination.

Fortunately my mother, a good driver, had managed to stop. We were going uphill--the other car was coming downhill and didn't. No one was hurt but our car's steering suffered and the rest of the journey was a bit of a nightmare. We were not lucky with cars and holidays. On another occasion we toured the south coast of New South Wales and got marooned in bad floods at Narooma. Heading back to Shellharbour, closer to Sydney and with better weather at the time, our old Armstrong Siddeley's clutch packed up. Our father somehow got it back to Sydney where he did a deal with his bankers and bought a new Ford V-8. This was in 1935 when his fortunes were at a low ebb. I can remember his broad smile when he came back to Shellharbour to pick us up. The purchase of that new car was a great boost to his self-esteem . He loved the big generous gesture. When Titia became quite seriously ill in 1936 with nephritis, a kidney disease (diagnosed by a specialist called to the house by our parents in defiance of the GP who believed that illness could best be cured by nature and, failing that, the knife), he sent Titia with my mother and Pamela by coastal steamer to the Barrier Reef, then an unexploited resort area. My schooling could not be interrupted. As a consolation prize, I accompanied my mother and two sisters on the steamer to Brisbane and then flew back to Sydney. The aircraft was an old Stinson twin-engined plane which carried a handful of passengers. I was the envy of my school-friends. Few, if any, had flown. Even in the late 1930s aviation was still in its infancy.

46. I had started school life aged five at the Loreto Convent, Kirribilli, where my sister Titia was already well installed. Occasionally our mother picked us up in the car but generally we went by ferry boat--it was one stop from Kurraba to Kirribilli and Titia must have been made responsible for me.

At the age of eight I started with the Jesuits at St. Aloysius College. It was located at Milson's Point, adjacent to Kirribilli so there was no change in the travel arrangements. A ferry from Kurraba to Kirribilli and then a half mile walk. Sometimes I would meet a friend, sometimes walk alone. Titia traveled at different times. In those days children moved about independently. The streets were not considered dangerous and it was accepted that we were wise to the ways of the water.

47. St. Aloysius was the Jesuits' day school in Sydney and ranked below St. Ignatius (Riverview) their big boarding school on the outskirts of the city. Riverview was one of Sydney's eight public schools. St. Aloysius was in a group of grammar schools. Both these sets of colleges were private and fee-paying and run by the major Christian denominations. In the 1920s when family finances were strong it had been planned that I would start at St. Aloysius and then go on to Riverview as a boarder. By the time I started at St. Aloysius in 1932 even its modest fees were met with difficulty. I was to stay there for six years until we left Sydney for Melbourne. It was a good school run on classical Jesuit lines. In the Junior school we started in Elements, went on to Rudiments and then to Grammar. The Rector was a Stonyhurst educated Irishman, Father Austin Kelly. The Prefect of Studies was a dynamic little Australian priest, Father Thomas Hehir, always known as "Tinny" (Greyhound racing using tin hares was a big attraction in those days). To teach us, there was a seemingly endless stream of Irish novices with a smattering of Australian recruits to the Order. Australia was a mission post for the Irish Jesuits and these young "scholastics" did their teaching stint and then returned home to complete their studies and be ordained (it was a 15 year haul from entry to ordination).

48. The Jesuits kept us busy. Twice a week after school we walked to a sports ground about a mile away for cricket and football practice. Most Saturday mornings there was a match for the under tens upwards. St. Aloysius specialized in Gilbert and Sullivan productions from which I was quickly dropped but there were debating clubs and plays. We had to take our turn at serving the tridentate Latin Mass celebrated privately before school by one of the old priests. There was frequent benediction and rosary for the whole school during the day--attendance compulsory. We generally took sandwiches to school and ate them in the playground. The alternative was to go to a local shop which sold meat pies. Because times were hard in the Depression the fee-paying schools suffered. Classes were quite small and I was able to do reasonably well at studies and get into the various teams. I was never bored.