closed.
Bill was the eldest son in the family. On leaving school he joined the staff of the Commercial Bank of Australia, where he was joined a year or two later by his younger brother, Frank. Frank spent his working life with the bank but Bill quickly found the life too restrictive and determined to go to the USA, then the land of the future in his eyes. Quite talented artistically, he supplemented his wages by giving violin and guitar lessons in the evening; by the mid 1920s he had saved enough for the fare to California and off he went, travelling on the Union Lineâs ill-fated
Tahiti
. 24 Bill spent five years working in San Francisco and three in Los Angeles. In 1932 he returned to Australia on another Union Line ship, the
Niagara
25 which, by some strange coincidence in his choice of ships, also sank some time after his passage on board. He finally settled in Melbourne where he took a position with a firm which imported electrical goods from the United States and also designed and made stained glass, wrought iron and other decorative pieces. That is where he met William âJockâ Frater, a Scot generally credited with having brought French Impressionism to Australia. In time, Bill established his own company to design and make decorative lighting, and once financially secure he derived much pleasure from supporting and learning from Frater. He financed various painting trips to the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, to North Queensland and to Central Australia, often painting alongside Jock, watching and learning, and often being rewarded with the gift of one of Jockâs paintings. Bill never married, although he did have a number of passionate affairs with women met in Melbourneâs art world; when he died more than a dozen of these Frater canvases were found in his house, many others having already been given away to family and friends.
My Aunt Nell, the third child in the family, worked for twenty years or so on the local newspaper, the
Bendigo Advertiser
, as Social Editress: she was responsible for a full page of news, âMostly For Womenâ on each Tuesday and Thursday, and for two such pages on Saturdays. She worked from her study at home in the mornings, then in the afternoon from a big room she shared with her assistant in the
Advertiser
building in Pall Mall. I was always intrigued by the brisk and business-like way in which she handled the minor crises and deadlines of the job, using shorthand to record phone conversations and interviews, swiftly typing up final copy for the printing room, always calm and immaculately dressed ⦠she seemed to me to be the very epitome of a lady journalist. Long after retiring from the
Advertiser
, she told me how she had come to take up journalism. She had moved to Bendigo with her parents in 1933 and after a year or so there doing nothing, had been urged by friends to apply for the newly established position of Editress of the âWomenâs Pageâ. She had been called in for interview by the Board of Directors and apparently was in the process of impressing them as a well educated and artistic young lady, when one of the Directors suddenly asked her whether she felt she could handle the quite considerable amount of typing involved in preparing the social material for the printing presses. Nell told me with a twinkle in her eye that at that stage she had never typed a line in her life: typing and shorthand had not been part of the curriculum at Loreto Abbey in Ballarat when she had been a student. But realising the importance of the question and recalling the typewriters she had seen in the office and even on sale in the family shop in Hamilton, she had smoothly replied that it was ages since she had touched a typewriter, but she felt quite sure she would be able to cope. She was appointed to the position ⦠and then rushed post-haste to a Business College in Melbourne to do a crash course in shorthand and typing, amusing the
Bill was the eldest son in the family. On leaving school he joined the staff of the Commercial Bank of Australia, where he was joined a year or two later by his younger brother, Frank. Frank spent his working life with the bank but Bill quickly found the life too restrictive and determined to go to the USA, then the land of the future in his eyes. Quite talented artistically, he supplemented his wages by giving violin and guitar lessons in the evening; by the mid 1920s he had saved enough for the fare to California and off he went, travelling on the Union Lineâs ill-fated
Tahiti
. 24 Bill spent five years working in San Francisco and three in Los Angeles. In 1932 he returned to Australia on another Union Line ship, the
Niagara
25 which, by some strange coincidence in his choice of ships, also sank some time after his passage on board. He finally settled in Melbourne where he took a position with a firm which imported electrical goods from the United States and also designed and made stained glass, wrought iron and other decorative pieces. That is where he met William âJockâ Frater, a Scot generally credited with having brought French Impressionism to Australia. In time, Bill established his own company to design and make decorative lighting, and once financially secure he derived much pleasure from supporting and learning from Frater. He financed various painting trips to the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, to North Queensland and to Central Australia, often painting alongside Jock, watching and learning, and often being rewarded with the gift of one of Jockâs paintings. Bill never married, although he did have a number of passionate affairs with women met in Melbourneâs art world; when he died more than a dozen of these Frater canvases were found in his house, many others having already been given away to family and friends.
My Aunt Nell, the third child in the family, worked for twenty years or so on the local newspaper, the
Bendigo Advertiser
, as Social Editress: she was responsible for a full page of news, âMostly For Womenâ on each Tuesday and Thursday, and for two such pages on Saturdays. She worked from her study at home in the mornings, then in the afternoon from a big room she shared with her assistant in the
Advertiser
building in Pall Mall. I was always intrigued by the brisk and business-like way in which she handled the minor crises and deadlines of the job, using shorthand to record phone conversations and interviews, swiftly typing up final copy for the printing room, always calm and immaculately dressed ⦠she seemed to me to be the very epitome of a lady journalist. Long after retiring from the
Advertiser
, she told me how she had come to take up journalism. She had moved to Bendigo with her parents in 1933 and after a year or so there doing nothing, had been urged by friends to apply for the newly established position of Editress of the âWomenâs Pageâ. She had been called in for interview by the Board of Directors and apparently was in the process of impressing them as a well educated and artistic young lady, when one of the Directors suddenly asked her whether she felt she could handle the quite considerable amount of typing involved in preparing the social material for the printing presses. Nell told me with a twinkle in her eye that at that stage she had never typed a line in her life: typing and shorthand had not been part of the curriculum at Loreto Abbey in Ballarat when she had been a student. But realising the importance of the question and recalling the typewriters she had seen in the office and even on sale in the family shop in Hamilton, she had smoothly replied that it was ages since she had touched a typewriter, but she felt quite sure she would be able to cope. She was appointed to the position ⦠and then rushed post-haste to a Business College in Melbourne to do a crash course in shorthand and typing, amusing the
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