In 1962, my Mother imported her recently-acquired husband from Australia to England.\u00a0 She had gone out a few years earlier on the \u201d\u00a310 ticket\u201d that so many took back then.\u00a0 They had met in Melbourne, both working for International Harvester: he as a draughtsman\/engineer; she in personnel\/accounts.\u00a0 Dad was living in Geelong, just outside Melbourne, with his parents, two brothers and one sister.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Like many Aussie rural lads of that time, he and his brothers had grown up hunting, shooting and fishing, as they explored the outback on their doorstep.\u00a0 A love of guns and mechanics was inevitable, but it was only after Dad\u2019s death in 2015 that I discovered he had been a licensed gunsmith.<\/p>\n
In the autumn of 1962, my parents travelled by ship from Australia to England.\u00a0 \u00a0Mum was pregnant – carrying me – and I was born in the winter of 1962 \u2026 in what is still probably the worst winter in living memory.\u00a0 Dad must have wondered what on earth he had come to: months on end spent thawing frozen pipes!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Apparently, the ship\u2019s crew had been bewildered by the amount of crates that had been loaded aboard in their name.\u00a0 Dad was not leaving without his tools, so his metal lathe and numerous tools and several gunsmithing books crossed the oceans with them.\u00a0Fifty-three years later, I inherited a huge collection of tools and machinery, some of which, such as the metal lathe, he had brought to England in 1962.\u00a0 With no expected use for that particular item, I passed it on, with a milling machine, to the Gosport Shed. (Ironically, the Shed Movement started in Australia \u2013 no surprise then that we had five sheds to clear out when my Father passed away!)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now, as I ready myself for my new life in boatbuilding, I have started to bring order to the boxes of tools that I have inherited.\u00a0 They will have an extra special place at my workbench, now that they are to be put to use in earnest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1962, my Mother imported her recently-acquired husband from Australia to England.\u00a0 She had gone out a few years earlier on the \u201d\u00a310 ticket\u201d that so many took back then.\u00a0 They had met in Melbourne, both working for International Harvester: he as a draughtsman\/engineer; she in personnel\/accounts.\u00a0 Dad was living in Geelong, just outside Melbourne,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}