Shep's Place Family Tree

‎(1)‎ of being baptised at St. Augustine's Unley, aged 4 years and being anxious that the holy water used by the minister would not uncurl her hair and

‎(2)‎ sitting face to face in the little wheeled carriage in which their mother pushed them, and Olive slapping her face for no apparent reason, so that Marion had to rearrange the seating so that they sat one behind the other. Also, in that year receiving a doll ‎(as did Olive)‎ brought back from France by Mr. Edward Hayward senior, the then owner of John Martin's Store when her father was an employee. She and Olive exchanged dolls as Violet wanted the one with dark eyes and auburn hair, not the blond. Olive gave hers to a child at Escort House, Grange. Violet clung to hers. E.M.S. has it in perfect condition, only the wig had to be renewed. The doll ‎(Lily)‎ still wears the original embroidered cotton combinations and petticoat made by Marion but has a new dress and pinafore and straw hat.

At Grange School where she commenced aged 5, though 6 was more usual, she was forever in trouble for talking. She had a pact with a boy pupil, if he would do her arithmetic she would write his essays. The pact held.

The sisters' freedom of the largely deserted beach so close to "Lily Cottage" was spoilt by their finding the body of a suicide, his face quite blue ‎(he had taken poison)‎ in the sandhills they had to traverse. Violet recalled running home from school across the paddocks the day news of Queen Victoria's death reached this remote spot from Windsor when a companion said "You know the Queen is dead?" said Violet. "I don't care, I didn't kill her." Her friend said smugly that for the remark she would go to gaol for les majesté and the terrified child rushed home to Marion.

The humour of the late 1890's was quite unsophisticated but pleased children. In class, for instance when a Jacoby boy was asked for an example of a verb used as a noun he said promptly. "Rivetts have a cow run". Not to be outdone young Rivett retorted, "Jacoby's have a billy goat run."

In 1906 Violet contracted a severe illness, a fever of some kind, which left the plump 12 year old pale, thin and devitalized so she was dispatched to Naracoorte to Will and Maude Wilson where she remained for the whole of 1906 and part of 1907 and attended Miss Sharpley's school close by.

She enjoyed her 18 months at Naracoorte and even the schooling from Miss Annie Sharpley whose own history Violet wished to record, so concisely as possible. Annie was aged 8 when the "Border Watch" newspaper of 21 Dec 1860 wrote of her outstanding scholastic ability. In 1877, at public request her father James built a school 2 1/2 miles from Naracoorte on the Messamurry Road and Annie was installed as first teacher with 25 pupils, some older than herself. The official name was "the Near Naracoorte School". The State Education Authority took responsibility in 1878. It soon gained a reputation for producing distinguished scholars, and prominent citizens of a later date were proud to have attended. Annie refused all offers of promotion, and continued teaching until she was 77 in 1929 when she retired. At first she had ridden out daily from Naracoorte until her father had a house built for her next to the school and there she was able to care for both aging parents and still teach. There was a boarder, Alex Caldwell who ran the local newspaper and who to the scandal of the town, continued to share the house after Annie's mother died. Maude Wilson, her closest friend and neighbour believed they were secretly married. Had Annie admitted this her teaching days would have ended as married women were not permitted to hold Government positions. The farewell given her on retirement was so largely attended that the Naracoorte Town Hall would not hold them all. The house, being her own was retained. E.M.S. met her in 1933. She was still mentally keen and an interesting and likable woman.

So Violet returned to Woodville to care for her mother and with a much improved wardrobe. At the Woodville Presbyterian Church she met the Whillas family of Irish extraction and Minnie, one of the several daughters became her life long friend. Her teen years were all domestic duties. During the brief time at Arthur Street, Unley she met Keith Stevenson at St. Andrew's, Unley, and in modern parlance they became "an item" for some time. His first gift to her ‎(and it has survived)‎ was purchased with his entire week's pocket money of 6 pence. It was a tiny pig carved from black Irish hogwood with six views of Ireland discernable through a miniscule window in its side. As was inevitable they drifted apart.

At 19 Violet passed the entrance examination to be a telephonist at the Adelaide Exchange and surprised herself by coming 32nd out of 200. Openings were limited and after her training she was a Temporary for five years but employed, as she was sent to various business houses to work their P.B.X. switchboards at Adelaide, automatic exchanges being still years ahead. She was appointed a Permanent on 21 Nov 1917 and was obliged to insure herself for 15 pounds and have a medical examination. The salary was £110 per annum. By this time she was engaged, having by chance once more met Keith. They found themselves sitting side by side at a wedding at St. Andrew's, Unley. He had "very nearly" asked Nelly Deans to marry him, Bertha Laubmann was also in the running as well as several others, but Violet was instantly the one.

They were both aged 23 and were engaged for three years. Violet would have been quite happy to continue indefinitely. She had a handsome partner for all occasions, theatres, tennis matches, weekends in the country with married friends, picnics at Belair National Park, the transport being by drag, a type of top heavy wagonette drawn by two horse and the gentlemen were required to walk up the steepest hills and at the Devil's Elbow where Violet kept her eyes firmly shut. The roads were atrocious and the top heavy vehicle swayed alarmingly. She had her own money and dressed well, an array of gold bracelets from her 21st birthday, a collection of silver and engraved Stuart crystal dressing-table ornaments so fashionable as gifts then, and a three diamond ring to flaunt and a well filled "glory box".

Keith decided it was time to marry, said Violet, airily, if he could find a house to rent she would be willing, smugly believing that as housing was so scarce following W.W.1 she was safe for another two or three years. Keith found that Salisbury Street, Unley, was available for leasing, paid the required deposit and informed his bride. He was pleased to escape from visiting "Argentville" as Violet's pet kookaburra ‎(Jack)‎ was an ankle pecker and there was mutual antipathy. He insisted that he receive a formal invitation to his own wedding at St. Andrew's in the January of 1919.

The reception was at home. Rose Terrace, Wayville. The bridesmaid her eldest sister, Eunice, was in blue. Violet in cream crepe-de-chine with matching silk lace, ‎(only the cuffs have survived)‎ veil and orange blossom circlet. They had purchased almost all of their furniture one Saturday morning, and as the house had a particularly large dining room, a nine foot long dining table of solid oak which was to prove an embarrassment when they subsequently built a much smaller house. In 1920 grandfather Robert Rowland Stevenson took his daily constitutional from "Craiglea", on Unley Road to Salisbury Street, to check on the health of his newest grandchild. but died when E.M.S. was 10 months old. A legacy from his father made it possible for Keith to set about building in 1922.

On 18 Jun 1918 he had purchased Lot 248 at Gordon Road, Black Forest Estate for 42 pounds 6 shillings. It was only four miles from the city, but was considered to be wilderness having only just been divided into building blocks from wheat farms. Mains water and electricity were being considered and a single track railway with steam engines had been put down in 1914 from Adelaide to Brighton on the coast. Brother Stuart Stevenson was an architect. He knew of a builder who saved items from his various commitments ‎(building materials were in short supply)‎. Specifications were drawn up, still extant, in fine detail, from roofing to chip bath heater, to wood burning stove for cooking, to two power points as electricity had arrived, and when gas was installed two years later and the Stevensons had the first gas stove it was a Great Leap Forward. There were few houses, the sea, only two miles in a direct line, could be seen, roads were unmade except for a narrow strip of macadam down the centre of the South Road for the benefit of the occasional model T. Ford.

The new house, having no street number, was required by the postal authorities to have a distinguishing name so a beaten copper name plate, "Esmercraig" was made and attached. The "Esmer" from the Lakeman's "Esmeralda Villa", Hendon London, the "craig" from grandfather's Scottish suburb of Paisley of Craigielea. E.M.S. aged two years still remembers after 77 years the day of the removal with father departing with the heavily laden horse drawn wagon and her mother and Aunt Eunice taking the Unley tram to Cross Road, then being pushed along the loose dirt footpath in her wickerwork, rubber tyred small carriage the two miles to Gordon Road. Mother and daughter had just returned from a month at Naracoorte. The sisters were in mourning for their father who had died few months earlier and Violet's new black hat was most elegant. The four sisters and Marion had shared in the winding up of the Lakeman estate following the 1921 death of Rosa, younger sister of Charles Percy. Violet received 60 pounds.

"The house in the wilderness" did not remain so for long, as post war building increased rapidly, only to be curtailed during the Great Depression of the thirties. The railway fare from the Clarence Park station was twopence halfpenny return. Violet, practical and inventive, and skilful with her hands so that handicrafts were always "the finished product", made the garden at the new house, flowers, vegetables and fruit trees. She won prizes for fine needlework at the Royal Show, could wood carve, do basket weaving, cane and raffia work, crocheting, fine tatting learnt from her mother, "bobbin" lace making and even at 74 attempted and successfully made a cement Japanese lantern garden ornament from directions in an Australian Women's Weekly magazine ‎(1967)‎ with which she was photographed by the magazine staff who published it with an article in due course.

Her collections included shells, stamps, fine china, miniature ornaments, geraniums, ‎(gardening was her first love)‎, scrap books of various subjects and toy making on quite a large scale for the Red Cross during W.W.2. the results going to needy children, and countless other things.

There was always time too, to offer a helping hand to anyone in difficulties. It was only during the last few months of the two years she was confined to bed ‎(E.M.S. caring for her)‎ at Gordon Road, where she died in 1978 aged 85 years that the busy hands were still.

The locality had a name change from Black Forest to Clarence Park pre W.W.2, the land closely built over, the dirt roads paved, a six lane highway with overpass across the double railway where 120 diesel trains a day sped to the coast and the constant thunder of traffic along the once dirt track of 1922. A far cry from that year when Lakes's dairy herd grazed as far as the next street to Gordon Road.