“I’ve had lots of happy moments in my life. I was the happiest when I married Ivan and I was free of responsibilities. We were living in Whyalla for a time, we had nothing, but that didn’t matter. Possessions are not happiness. Ivan had consented to come over to Kangaroo Island as a home missionary. I was expected to be a minister’s wife. We arrived 10 days before my eldest son David was born and it gave me time enough to plant some carrot seeds and a few bean seeds.
The farm work was terribly hard but it was still good, because it was free and I understood what tough living was. I had been brought up with that. You had what you could produce. That’s it. You taught your family what you knew. You didn’t know a lot of outside stuff, technical stuff, but the natural stuff was what you taught your children. I liked nothing better than having my children home and teaching them myself.
It was a cruel time when Ivan died. It was so, so difficult and we had planned that I should die first and it didn’t work out. Now he’s been gone getting on 33 years and I am still hanging around waiting for eternity. That was the saddest time. You are back on your own resources, you got no one to talk to, nobody to work things out with. But life is what you make it. I learned, no matter what I did in life, I learned. You learn every day and I am still learning. Life has been good to me. Kangaroo Island has got a lot of beauty, and I don’t want to live anywhere else and have never wanted to. I have lived here since 1944, so 76 years this year.”