Lloyd recalls in the book “Memories of Walliston” he worked for Syd Ashmore on the fruit case mill at Lesmurdie and used to live near the mill at the back of McClures shed at Walliston.
One day his Mum went over to the mill and told Syd that his Dad had just died. Syd stopped the mill and got a worker to take Lloyd for a ride on a push bike. Lloyd couldn’t ride so the worker was given ten minutes off work to push him along the road. This was in 1928. Mum was then left with six small children. I was then nine years old and the eldest. Rowena, the baby was one. The house near McClures shed was a four roomed, weatherboard, unlined State Housing Commission house. I don’t know if we ever owned it, but I know that we never had any money to pay for it.

We went to school in Bickley which was a walking distance along a bush track near the railway line. Part of the way the track was shared with Levi Wallis’s kids who walked to the state school at Carmel which was taught by Mr. Jackson. We were alway barefoot because we didn’t have any shoes and we had a sugar-bag each for the wet weather. The idea was to tuck one of the bottom corners in and put the bag on our head as some protection. I remember being envious of the Wallis kids whose mum had acquired some canvas and treated it with linseed oil to make it waterproof and then made raincoats out of it. From memory they were simply squared with a hole in the middle which you put your head through and wore like a cape. At least it was an improvement on the sugar-bag.

Finding enough food for us was a constant battle for mum. We would walk to the Chinaman’s garden near Halleen’s and get a sugar-bag lot of vegies for one shilling. Fruit in season was fairly plentiful and there was plenty of seconds left over from packing. The baker RH Portwine of Kalamunda gave us a treat of about one dozen yeast buns every Friday. He said they were left after the round and wouldn’t last until Monday. Sometimes one or two of us kids had to go to Watson’s store in Kalamunda to get some food so we would catch the train in the morning and then, if the fettlers were working in our end of the line, we would hitch a lift on their pump trolley or later, motorised trolley. Of course, we would sometimes have to walk home and we would be awfully late for school.

Some days there would be nothing in the house to give us to take to school for lunch. Mum would then have to send us off without and find something during the morning which she would then take about half way and one of us would have to go at lunch time and meet her. In spite of the shortages I don’t think we ever went really hungry and from memory I think we had a happy childhood. We roamed the bush freely looking for orchids or bird’s nests. We learned to swim in Piesse”s Brook and late in Fred Wallis’s pool. There were a lot of activities at Fred’s place. We played tennis on their tennis courts, attended the motorbike scrambles and sometimes had afternoon tea.

The coming of WW2 made a dramatic difference to our way of like in Walliston. The three of us boys joined the services. Two of the girls trained as nurses and Mavis married a farmer.

I was in the army, saw service in the Middle East, Philippines and Borneo. After the war I trained as a school teacher, taught for a while in country schools, then went into the art and craft branch and worked at the Claremont Teacher’s College, highschools, then into business. Later I returned to teaching until retiring.

Edna worked as a nurse for some years, then spent the last 20 years or so looking after a large number of neices and nephews that we have. She never married. Ivan saw service in the Air Force and then joined the police force. He is now retired and living is Scarborough. Mervyn was in the Air Force, then married and was in business in Adelaide until moving to Sydney several years ago. He is now living most of the time in Bali. Mavis married a farmer who is now in business in Merredin. Rowena now lived in Warburton, Victoria.

Compiled by Lloyd Dunn for the book Memories of Walliston.

From the West Australian 5 Sept 1946

NEDLANDS SMASH.
Alleged Drunken Car-Driver.
After a motor cycle crashed into a
car iri Stirling-highway, Nedlands,
yesterday afternoon, the driver of the
car, David Charles Truran, of 39
Bay View-terrace, Claremont, was
arrested by Traffic-Constable G.
Pettersson on charges of drunken
driving and dangerous driving. He
will appear in the Perth Police
Court this morning.
The smash occurred about 1.45
p.m. at the corner of Stirling-high
way and Merriwa-street -When Con
stable Petterason arrived at the
scene he learnt that Truran had
been driving his car westwards in
Stirling-highway and was making a
right-hand turn into Merriwa-street
when a motor cycle ridden by Lloyd
Milton Dunn (28), of 55 Howick
street, Victoria Park, with Donald
Willis, of Centre-street, Victoria
Park, on the pillion, crashed into the
left side of it. The two motorl
cyclists were taken in a St. John
ambulance to the Royal Perth Hos
pital, where they were. treated for
superficial abrasions and discharged.