[Ronan, Tom, 1964, Packhorse and Pearling Boat, Cassell Australia, Melbourne, Chapter 1]
...
After I was born my mother found Perth too lonely and returned to her native Melbourne. At the end of that year, 1908, Dad was due for holidays and, in pre-wireless days, she plotted his approach course by the telegrams she received from various nor’west ports, then Perth and then Albany. Knowing how he loved sea travel she was agreeably surprised when he wired from Adelaide that he was leaving the ship and coming to Melbourne by rail. It was certainly much easier for a mother with a threeand-a-half-year-old daughter and a yearling son to meet a train at Spencer Street than to traipse down to Port Melbourne Wharf to see a ship come in. When he greeted her at the railway station in ‘Ave atque vale’ terms, and announced that he was going straight on to Sydney she was astonished; when he explained that this journey was not in any way a business trip but a foray to see the Burns-Johnson fight, her indignation was understandable.
Yet I myself have always admired Dad for this decision. I don’t expect that any woman would endorse this sentiment, or that many men could truthfully boast that their moral courage would have been equal to such a gesture. Dad had not seen my mother or my sister for almost two years, he had never set eyes on me; he was affectionate and rigidly loyal. Conversely, he had a weird but somehow adequate sense of proportion. The Burns-Johnson fight was to be the first World’s Heavyweight Championship ever to take place in Australia. The stake was to be the largest ever fought for in the history of the prize ring.
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[http://henrietta.slwa.wa.gov.au/record=b1117811~S2]
Author Ronan, Tom, 1907-1976.
Title Packhorse and pearling boat : memories of a mis-spent youth / Tom Ronan.
Imprint Melbourne : Cassell Australia, 1964.
Details
Call # B/RON
Phys. Description 259 p. : maps ; 23 cm.
Subject Frontier and pioneer life -- Australia, Northern.
Australia, Northern -- Description and travel.
Ronan, Tom, 1907-1976.
