Character Study

I have spent a few hours of this good Friday reading the diary of my Great Aunt Dora. The story begins all full of the hopes of a young 18-year-old first-generation Australian girl whose parents had migrated from Germany to South Australia around 1877. I know her story, I knew and loved my great Aunt Dora. She will never marry. One of many women of her time, when, after World War 1, there were not enough men to go around. I imagine this is what life in the 1920’s was like for her, a maiden aunt caring for her parents.

Dora

She had one once. Before the war.

He came from Hamburg. A distant relative from the family.

But the Great War intruded. He was the enemy.

Interned. Never to return.

She perched on the bench in the Royal Botanical Gardens. Watching. Men promenading in pale pinstriped suits, on their arms women in their frilly-white Sunday best, giggling.

Easy for the men, she thought. Pick and choose. Pick and choose. Even the damaged men, the cripples, have a chance.

She sniffed.

What about me? Is that my future? Caring for my aging parents? No choice but to be an old maid?

© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2020; updated 2024

Feature Photo: A lone date palm, Botanical Gardens © L.M. Kling (nee Trudinger) 1986

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Want more memoir? Some travel?

Take a journey into Central Australia with the T-Team…

Click on the link:

The T-Team with Mr. B: Central Australian Safari 1977

Trekking with the T-Team: Central Australian Safari 1981

Or

If Sci-fi is more your thing

Check out my War Against Boris series…

The Hitch-hiker

Mission of the Unwilling

The Lost World of the Wends