About
June was the youngest, born on 24th June at the family home of Charles and Edna Smith of 29 Robertson St, Kogarah, about 150 metres from Kogarah railway station. There was fourteen years between June and the next oldest, her brother Charlie and her sister Beryl was another two years older, so she was a "surprise". Tragedy would soon strike, as her mother Edna died less than two months after June's birth, from a pulmonary embulism. She had been bedridden since giving birth and it is likely that a blood clot from her leg - formed during the inaction - traveled to her lungs and caused her death. The symptoms of chest pain, shortness of breath and a fever had always led the family to believe she had died of pneumonia caused by being over heated by a large fire husband Charles had lit for her. June always blamed herself for her mother's death, never knowing what was written on her death certificate. It would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Les was born two and a half months later and unlike June, he was the eldest. He was conceived and arrived in a hurry, only seven months after his father Arthur Langston married Lousia Byrne. His father had continual problems with ill-health as a result of losing a lung when near fatally wounded in the final year of WWI and coping with the horrors he witnessed.
Both attended gender separated primary and secondary schools, as was the custom then and although Les showed little interest in anything accept school work, model planes and his mates, June was often in trouble for pressing her face up to palings of the common fence between the two schools to see what the boys were doing.
They met around the age of 13, as members of the same church youth group and started enjoying time together as part of a wider group of friends. By 16, first kisses had been exchanged and by 20 they were married, although that part was made difficult by the sudden death of Arthur and the rules around marriage. Arthur's death, when Les was only 19, left his mother Louisa - know as Lulu - with him and three younger siblings: Dawn 14, Brian 12 and Joyce 12 and Les was expected to take over the role of bread-winner, so marriage would have to wait. At the time, if you were under 21, you could only marry with your parents written permission. In the end, a deal was struck that he and June could marry when he turned twenty but only if they lived in the family home and he handed his wages to his mother. It seems such a harsh arrangement now but in the light of the times its not hard to understand Lulu wanting to make sure she could still provide for her family until she got on her feet.
June's father, a stern disciplinarian, was surprisingly easier to convince. Perhaps it was because his daughter had lived for some time with relatives and family friends. He was very staid in his views on marriage and thought being married rather than being in work, was June's calling.
June left school early, which she once said was as much a relief for the teachers as for her and held a number of clerical positions, none of which seemed to bring her job satisfaction. They often ended the same way, with supervisors becoming a little too fresh or June becoming bored with repetative tasks and then her not returning the next day. She was working at Parke Davis, a job she liked, when some fellow tried it on. Working for a florist, a job she hated, she woke one morning and ended the employment with a phone call to the boss saying she couldn't work any more because she had a heart condition!
Les, on the other hand, loved work, especially the money he was paid, which bought him freedom and started him on his future. In his early teens, he was mad keen of planes and was a member of the Air Cadets. He wrote an essay to win himself a joy flight from Mascot, in what he was sure would be the start of his career as a famous pilot. He used to go to Mascot anytime Kingsford-Smith was flying and watch the great man and imagine being at the controls. All those dreams were undone in his fifteen minute joyflight, where he threw up for most of the time they were in the air!
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In the early 1950's, sick of flats and and cramped for room, June and Les left the St George district and crossed the Georges River, buying a small fibro house in Miranda, right in the heart of a Sutherland Shire that was predominantly open fields and limited services. At the time, it was moving to the very outskirts of Sydney. The house, with three small bedrooms, gradually grew with Les adding a back verandah which he later closed-in to create another bedroom.
University St would act as a half-way house for friends and family and would be the focal point of parties and celebrations. It was where the family pets Willy and Skipper would rise to fame, Skipper reaching almost to immortality as the dog which stole Les' heart. The boys did their best to destroy any grass in the backyard with hard fought cricket and soccer games.
As children left, bedrooms were swapped and then in the late 1970's, the internal configuration of the house was changed to Les' design to separate the loungeroom from the kitchen - so he could hear the news at night - and revert it back to a two bedroom house. The kitchen was made smaller and better, one bedroom became a dining room and the back verandah went back to ints original purpose. In all of that, the one thing June wanted was still denied - an inside dunny. Despite a septic system and a flushing loo since the late 1960's, you still had to go outside to do your business.
In 1983, in the biggest decision of their lives, June and Les sold University St, packed their belongings and moved to Melbourne. It was an enormous wrench for June, being so far from friends and family and everything familiar but Les had been offered a a golden opportunity very late in his working life and she was deternined she wouldn't hold him back.
Les was a self-made business manager, having left his trade behind when he joined Healings in early 1963 to work as a sales manager. After a few years with them, he joined Email in the automotive division and then transferred to the gas meter division with a substantial promotion in the early 1970's. The move to Melbourne gave him the role of Australasian Sales Manager and it was one he held for the last few years of his working life.
With Melbourne and work behind them, in 1985 they began a romadic life of touring which included the valhalla for retiries, the Grey Nomad Big Loop of Australia, before settling in Elderslie, on the south eastern edge of Camden, in a house they typically transformed inside and out. June made the gardens into a treat and persued her dream of learning to play the piano. The lessons she briefly had as a child were one of her fondest memories and before long she was proficient on the keyboard and would often lead family singalongs. Throughout the 1990's, they toured to all parts of Eastern Australia, each day recorded in writing by Les and in film by June. Those logs can be found on the TRIPS tab above or by following the link.
The 1990's also bought the beginings of the challenges of aging. In 1992, Les had quadruple heart bypass surgery at St George Hospital: an operation to save a life that started less than half a kilometre away. Undoubtedly a problem created by the packet-a-day cigarette habit he developed as a teen and had continued through his life, it was a second chance that he would grasp with both hands. There was the loss of beloved family members, Nan and Uncle Emeille and June's sister Beryl, people who had been important members of their extended family. However, none compared to the cataclysmic loss of their eldest child, Lesley, in 1991. Her death devastated June and Les. As Les always said in the years which followed, no parent is supposed to outlive their child.
Recovering, it was also the decade in which they were most active in traveling with their van and sometimes with a tent, such as outback, rough track trips to Birdsville and Bedourie undertaken with daughter Sue and her husband Lindsay. However, by the late 90's, June was tiring of the daily grind of touring and reluctantly, Les agreed and sold the van. Perhaps these were the early signs of June's decay with Parkinson's Disease.
In 2001, as the list of great grandchildren grew every year, they left their home in Elderslie and bought into a self-care unit at Carrington Centennial Care Village, only a few kilometres away, on the western edge of Camden. Suddenly there were a host activities to do and new friends to meet. June blossomed on the piano and enjoyed croquet on Saturday morning and the company of neighbours. Les was growing an expanding interest in personal computers and together with a few other like-minded chaps, started a computer club that would go on to be one of the most important "clubs" at Carrington today.
There were pock marks of life threatening illness for June and stays in hospital after falls from which she somehow bounced back with humour and resilience but unfortunately, a steady decline in June, mostly attributable to Parkinson's Disease, curtailed her activities to cups of tea with visiting friends and in 2007, she moved permanently into a high care unit at Carrington. With the support of daughters Sue and Jenny and the constant presence of Les, she made the best of it but gradually faded away from daily life and into old memories. June's death in August, 2008, with Les at her side, was a sudden but sadly anticipated jolt. Les forever felt he was marking time after that.
Typically stoic, he carried on, learning to cook and do housework but gradually he accepted more help in daily living. Carrington friends were very supportive and he took up the croquet mallet himself and excelled in the game, being the most competitive player on the court, most weekends. His work with the computer club had renewed vigour and he even tried a few trips away by himself but the loneliness was too much for him and his only ventures away from Carrington became Christmas with one or other of his sons. A diagnosis of prostate cancer in 2014 floored him temporarily but he wasn't one to stay down for long and this time it was his sons, Art and Peter, who stepped into the support role, taking him to medical appointments and helping out with things that needed to be done. However, by November 2017, living alone was impossible and he accepted doctors orders and moved into an assisted care unit at Carrington. Leaving their last home and a lifetime of memories tied to possessions, many of them June's precious things, was one of his hardest acts and compressing his life into one room, nearly impossible.
He continued to work and finally published his opus on the Brown Family and only months before his death, his life story. His trusty computer was by his bed and his TV filled an entire wall of his room and it didn't take long before he was well known among the staff ... for all the right reasons! His end came in Nov 2018, holding the hands of a nurse on either side and a brief last few hours battle until he could let go of a life he had held onto with such determination for 93 years.
Les and June were ordinary folk from a working class background, whose sole aim in life was to create a legacy through their offspring and beyond. They came to the task armed only with the love they generated and shared since they were thirteen and sought to shield those that followed under the umbrella of that love until they were ready to walk out into the sunshine. The trail of children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and whatever generations follow, will all have come from that one, central core of love that shone so brightly from them. If you knew them, you knew that. To their children, they were part companion, part guide, all example.
It was the right place for their story to end, if in fact any ending is possible.