ELWYN FAY SCOTT

I was in the middle of decorating one of my ceramic bowls when the phone rang. ‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Is that you Doreen?’ this pleasant voice enquired, to which I of course answered in the affirmative. ‘This is Elwyn Scott,’ was the seeming nonchalant reply, ‘Do you remember me?’

CAMP CABLE...my memories

I turned fourteen in May, 1942. It was not a good year for Australia. Singapore had fallen to the Japanese Army. Singapore was the fortress that was supposed to repel any invaders, but the guns were facing out to sea, and the enemy came overland from the North!

YOU ARE JUST STARTING TO LEARN A BIT, WHEN YOU HAVE TO BLOODY-WELL DIE!
That’s what my father used to say when he was in his eighties. And now I am at least THINKING it.
Yes, it is true. It sometimes takes a lifetime to really understand some issues...or someone. Perhaps it is because when one gets older, one might have more time to ponder. Maybe life is not so frantic, or is it that we have learned at last to ‘walk in the other fellow’s shoes’...as my father also used to advise.

BERNARD’S BASIN
I found myself on my own with three daughters, aged sixteen, twelve and ten. We found a nice enough little house that we could afford, and I had a small car, but I had never driven further than the Gold Coast from Brisbane. It had been almost a year now, and it was time for some sort of adventure.

AMY COLLINS

Mum was always a good and interesting listener. And I would bring home any newsy anecdotes from my work at the hospital. I was looking after ex-servicemen from WWII, who were suffering from lung cancer...in the surgical ward, after their awful operations to have portion of their lung removed.

SHADES OF HITLER!

An elderly gentleman, very studious and learned, with three doctorates to his name, was relating a story of his youth...

THE MOUSE

We were sitting in our two seater settee watching her favourite program on television. It was a good thing that I shared this with her. It gave us togetherness. We could discuss it later. My teenage daughter was studying TV production at university and liked to dissect a given program. I loved to contribute, and she seemed to value my opinion. But we also simply enjoyed this program which was a tad trite, but it took our minds off other troubling issues. Then the mouse appeared!

BASTILLE DAY

Why should we not celebrate Bastille Day, the national day of France? We are the French class of our small community! Twelve or more of us, most of whom have been studying the French language for seven years or so. Some of us are not too bad at speaking French. We are from all walks of life, with all of us ‘getting on’ in years.

GUEST SPEAKING

It was quite exciting. I had been invited to be one of the speakers at a large function for 200 carers of the aged ethnic community in Queensland. My brief was to speak of sensuality and the elderly. Having written the book Sex in Your Seventies, I suppose I was the logical choice. But perhaps nobody realised what a hoot my speech always is!

I was eleven when the Second World War began in 1939, and seventeen when it ended in 1945. A lot happened to me during those six years.
My father had left the dairy farm at Buccan three years earlier and settled at the Dunellan Estate, now Greenslopes, in Brisbane. A clever young man, he had worked to get his credentials, and was just establishing himself in the building industry. When war was declared, we feared that he would be called up in the army, as he was an officer in the Army Reserve.