From the Fauld explosion to happiness in Australia, she found a way to “just carry on”.

Beryl was born in a little house on New Row in the village Draycott-in-the-Clay in Staffordshire, England during the Depression years. She was the youngest of three children, with an older sister Madeleine and older brother Gordon. Her father Will was a plaster miner, like his father before him, in the nearby Fauld gypsum mine. Her mother Alice, was a farmer’s daughter and a capable country housewife.

Draycott at the time only had a shop/postoffice (which was next door), a methodist chapel, a school and three pubs. I get the sense that the village was insulated from the effects of the Depression with Peter Ford’s gypsum mine and farming providing local employment. Village life for Mum’s family revolved around the closest pub, The Swan, a tiny ancient inn, where dominos and cards were played, run by the Bowley sisters who made everyone welcome. Mum grew up surrounded by extended family. Her maternal grandfather Robert, a retired farmer and expert hedge-layer, lived with the family, sharing a room with Gordon. Just up New Row were Aunt Sis and Uncle Will, and not far up the lane to Hanbury was The Greaves, the home of her paternal grandparents Emma and Will (Snr) on a small plot of land. Everybody knew everybody in the village.

I heard Mum reminisce fondly of an idyllic childhood in this most English of country villages. She attended the village school and in summer played netball. On weekends she would play with her friends from local farms. One had a pony and she and her friend Daphne would take him for rides in the neighbouring Needwood Forest or down by the Dove River snaking through the fields at the other end of the village. She loved riding in springtime when the bluebells would carpet the bridle path. Her grandfather Robert, whom she adored, promised to buy her her own pony to keep in the field next to The Greaves. Sadly, that never happened.

With the war years came tragedy. First, in 1942, her sister Madeleine was struck down with pneumonia after riding her bike home in the rain. She was hospitalised but soon developed meningitis and died, aged 15. Mum was only 11 years old and missed her older sister acutely. They had shared a room and were close. Mum looked up to her; they were physically very similar, she was a very good pianist, had a boyfriend and had just finished commercial college. Penicillin had just started to be used at this time in the UK, but none was available to treat Madeleine. Mum’s understanding was it had been reserved for the forces only, a decision she attributed to Winston Churchill for whom she held a lifelong hatred.

On 27 November 1944 further tragedy struck. Half of the ancient gypsum mine where her father Will worked had been taken over by the RAF as a munitions dump or bomb store. It was known as Fauld No 21 Maintenance Unit and was a key repository of ordinance destined for the pivotal Allied air offensive into Germany. Will now worked for the Air Ministry as a civilian working on the structural integrity of the mine tunnels. “Everyone knew we were siting on a time bomb”, Mum would say, “You could hear them working underneath, from the kitchen.” On 27 November, the time bomb went off. Mum heard and felt the explosion from Burton, where she had started commercial college. “We knew what it was when we heard it. The dump had gone up”. Four thousand tonnes of ordinance exploded, killing her father who was working in the mine and 70 others, including close village friends. Her beloved grandfather had been working hedge-laying on Castle Hayes farm above. He disappeared along with 6 other farm workers, the entire farm buildings and 200 head of cattle. It was one of the largest non-nuclear land explosions ever, and the largest in Britain.

The explosion changed the course of Mum’s life. Both the breadwinners of the family – Will and Robert – had gone, leaving Alice a single mother supporting two teenage children. Compensation was resisted by the British government lest victims of all war accidents expected payouts, so the family initially survived on emergency payments from a charitable relief fund set up to support the families of the explosion. Eventually, the British government did begrudgingly pay paltry compensation but only after being sued by the Union. In the meantime, Alice had to get a job as packer at Elkes biscuit factory in Uttoxeter to make ends meet. [The Court of Enquiry report was kept top secret until 1975. When finally released, it described lax safety measures, a barely existent chain of command, safety controls waived under pressure to process bombs to keep up with the demands of the air offensive, with the specific cause likely being the attempted removal of a detonator with a brass chisel, causing a spark, explosion and chain reaction. In short, it was negligence; a classic workplace accident waiting to happen.]

These events not only traumatised Beryl, but gave her a lifelong mistrust of authority, doctors and hospitals and the Church. The unfairness of it all cemented her belief system as atheist and gave her at times debilitating anxiety which complicated her relationships throughout her life.

While Mum suffered from the trauma of loss of the war years all her life she did not let this hold her back in seizing the opportunities of love and adventure. She completed commercial college and went to work as a shorthand typist at Cowlishaw’s Solicitors, then as an administration assistant in the laboratory of a milk factory, and then Uttoxeter Council, attracting the attention of numerous suitors at each location.

In 1949 her brother Gordon, having finished his carpentry apprenticeship, left for Australia to work. He returned in 1953 with a young bride, Dawn, for an extended honeymoon. He must have waxed lyrical about life in Australia because, a few years later Beryl and Alice made the decision to emmigrate to join him in South Australia. In January 1957 they sailed on the Orontes via South Africa to Adelaide.

While Mum and Nanna enjoyed Australian life, and loved spending time with Gordon and Dawn’s young daughter, they were homesick. Alice in particular missed Alf, the new man in her life, a cheerful mechanic from Uttoxeter. They decided to return “home”.

So in July 1957 they again sailed on the Orontes, this time the route taking them via Ceylon, Aden (Yemen), and the Suez Canal where they were one of the first ships through the canal after the Suez crisis. Mum loved the old ship, which was fitted with a polished wooden interior, recalling it creaked as it rolled through the seas. The Orontes was one of the longest running passenger ships on the UK to Australia route, working the route for three decades.

Back home, Mum found work in a secretarial role with the probation service in Burton-On-Trent where her colleagues Beryl, Esther and Ken became very dear friends. She met her second fiancé, Cliff, and Alice and Alf also planned to marry. Beryl and Alice built a brand new bungalow in Barton-Under-Needwood, not far from Draycott. But Cliff and his penchant for touring the countryside to find historic battlefields was not enough to silence the call of clear Australian skies and warm weather. Mum told me “I was standing at the sink doing the dishes. It was a terrible day. I just turned to Mum and said “let’s go back. I’ve had enough of it here. And she said “Yes”.” Alf agreed to go too. Alice and Alf married in 1963, and soon after, Beryl, Alice and Alf sailed to Australia on a new ship, the Northern Star, via Las Palmas, Durban, Capetown and Fremantle to Melbourne. Gordon met them at the port to drive them back the 800 km the same day, but eventually ran out of energy at the tiny Mallee town of Coonalpyn, where they spent their first night of their new life in the Coonalpyn Hotel.

Beryl, Alice and Alf moved into a flat in Knox Court on King William Rd, Hyde Park, Adelaide and Mum found secretarial work at the Housing Trust. One morning when she was waiting at the bus stop outside the flats a handsome stranger, also a tenant at Knox Court, stopped his Humber Super Snipe and offered her a lift. Ron Smith was a newly single, tall, charming director of a South Australian real estate company William James and Co and he was smitten with this attractive and intelligent English beauty. Their first date was almost not to be. Dad had been fishing with his mate Alan in a small boat in the gulf that day. The engine cut out while they were still out to sea and they had to row to shore. He was two hours late picking her up.

Mum said he was so embarrassed and stressed at running so late that she couldn’t but accept his apology and proceed to fall completely in love with him. Soon she was spending most of her time in Ron’s flat, and on weekends accompanying him to various land subdivision developments and rural properties on the firm’s books. She took her camera with her and documented the landscape, winning a camera club trophy for her shot “Cattle crossing a stream”.

Beryl and Ron married in 1966 and moved in to the maisonette Ron had built for her in Torrens Park, after a motoring honeymoon of western Victoria. Knowing how close Beryl and Alice were, Dad provided the other side of the maisonette to Alice and Alf. This was extremely handy when I came along; for my earliest years I was surrounded by four adoring adults and Mum had her mother and stepfather for help close at hand. When I asked her why she didn’t study at University at this time she said “What for? Why would I do that?” She had everything she had ever wanted; her own family, a man she loved and she didn’t have the responsibility of having to go out to work anymore.

In 1969 the five of us set sail on the Fairstar for England. Mum wanted to show off her new family to the relatives and Alf had young grandchildren he needed to meet. We sailed from Sydney across the Pacific via Tahiti, through the Panama Canal, for an 8 month stay in England, also visiting Scotland and Ireland. While we were there, atheist Mum yielded to Nanna’s demands, and I was christened in the Methodist Chapel in Draycott-in-the-Clay. Mum, Dad and I flew home via stopovers in New York and Los Angeles, leaving Nanna and Poppa to sail home as Nanna refused to step onto one of those modern flying machines.

Back home in Adelaide, the Torrens Park maisonettes soon became too small for an active child and extremely creative Ron. We moved to a large house with a tennis court where we had a dog and where Dad could indulge his love of vegetable gardening and creative projects. We bought a caravan which was used often, holidaying every school break around South Australia – mainly at good fishing spots like Port Rickaby, Stansbury and Edithburgh on the Yorke Peninsula, Normanville, Beachport and the Coorong. Dad bought an almond block at Willunga and we became weekend almond farmers for a few years. Sick of the corporate life, Dad finally wound up his business to concentrate on an exciting project. He started growing native plants and soon turned the backyard into a native plant nursery. More room was needed again – Mum welcomed the next move to an 11 acre property with a brand new house designed by Dad, where he expanded Smiths Native Nursery into a commercial concern, growing and selling native Australian trees and shrubs and employing 10 people. Mum was glad to be living back in the countryside again. And the move took us back closer to Alice and Alf who had built a house only 10 minutes away at Seaford in the new subdivision.

Mum supported and encouraged Dad in his ideas which gave us a rich and interesting family life. She also supported his reconciliation with his adult son Robin, and helped me, at age 12, in the shock of discovering I had a brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew I never knew I had. Christmas and Easter were now much bigger family affairs, catered ably by Mum who excelled at the English roast dinner.

In 1984 we lost Nanna to multiple myeloma, then in 1985 Dad died suddenly from a massive heart attack. This was a terrible blow for both of us. Mum was lost without her two pillars of strength. To make matters worse, Dad had died while Alf was back in England on an extended holiday visiting his family. Mum now had only me, at 18, to lean upon. It was at times a heavy burden. I started to realise the toll the losses she had suffered in her youth had taken on her mental health as black moods descended upon her, which no amount of logic or love would shift.

Mum and I flew back to England during the end of year Uni break for 3 months. Introducing me to her home and our extended English family was the perfect distraction for her grief. We stayed with her close friend Esther, had a traditional Christmas with Great Aunt Sis and cousins Joyce and Bill and on Boxing Day followed the Meynell Hunt through the countryside. It even snowed. We hung out at The Swan with the Bowley sisters and explored the stately homes and castles of the district. In the Uttoxeter cattle market we ran into distant cousins and Mum’s old friends. We visited relatives at dairy farms and I got to meet my step-cousins Gaye and John and step-Aunt Susan. They have remained close thanks to multiple visits over the years.

But back home in McLaren Vale and the reality of the very large hole in our lives left by Dad, Mum struggled to adapt to her new life. We decided to keep the nursery going and formed a partnership. I worked on weekends and Mum did all the office work. We relied heavily on the staff Dad had hired. The nursery kept Mum going, even though, or perhaps because it was the source of much argument between the two of us. Mum resisted making new friends, but enjoyed socialising with my friends, and enjoyed regular trips to the races with Alf. (Mum had started studying the form years back in England and visiting the local racetrack at Uttoxeter. It was a passion which consumed much of her leisure time. She would say with much pride “I can pick winners better than any man!”)

Eventually Mum began socialising with the ladies of McLaren Vale, becoming a regular at coffee mornings at the bakery with the Vale matriarchs Paula, Patty, Shirley Johnson and Shirley Kimber, Maria and Marina and Erica. Winemakers Paula and Dom Scarpantoni became close friends, inviting Mum to join them in family celebrations and in the sponsors tent at the Strathalbyn Races many times.

Mum continued to enjoy holidays. We travelled to England and Europe in the summer of 89. With Esther we explored York, the Yorkshire Dales and the Lakes District, including meeting James Herriot and visiting Wordsworth’s Cottage.

We then travelled to Switzerland which Mum loved. One of my most special memories with her is celebrating my 22nd birthday taking the cog railway to the top of the Jungfrau looking out over the glacier and the rooftop of Europe. We drove a 2CV over the Pyrenees to Spain, having to get out to push it over the steepest bits.

With Paula Scarpantoni, Mum travelled to Tasmania on an organised tour for Italian speakers. Mum spoke no Italian, but had a terrific time. She took up French classes, at which she was hopeless, and visited me in France where I was doing my year as an assistant English teacher. With her old friends from Burton she then toured the south of France. She visited me in Croatia during my 6 month stay there after she toured through Italy. She also toured New Zealand with Esther.

When Mum became a grandmother she relished the role, always ready to give me invaluable support with my kids Sang and Jinny, enabling me to work and progress my career. She became adept at handling Sang, no mean feat, mainly due to liberal bribery with chocolate frogs. Doing the dishes was her speciality and she was happy while over the sink, tuning in to the conversation or the ABC. We spent most weekends at the Vale, the kids playing outside building cubbies and making mud pies while Mum and I cleared up fallen trees, with the help of my various long-suffering boyfriends and husbands. Mum enjoyed outdoor work, especially on the ride-on mower. Evenings were spent eating curry chicken from the Redgum Chinese Restaurant and watching The Bill and Midsummer Murders on TV. When Mum gave me the block of land next door I built a house and we were neighbours. As she grew older, the roles reversed and I was able to be there to help her, although this was a battle at times as her independence was such that while she loved my company, she railed against my advice and help.

Eventually, Mum became old and frail. A series of falls with two broken hips and a broken pelvis resulted in multiple stays in hospital. Following a complete hip reconstruction, Mum finally agreed, under sufferance, to go into care. She waited a year to get in to a home in McLaren Vale. It was worth the wait. With the care and love of the staff there, Mum was able to spend her last years in peace and security surrounded by friends.

Here are seven facts that will give an insight into Beryl’s character:

1. Mum was the head girl prefect at the village school. No surprise there. She was obviously a smart one.

2. When Mum and Nanna decided to build a brand new house in a subdivision in Barton-under-Needwood, Mum, who was working full time at the Burton Probation Service, applied for a loan. She was refused, not because she was not earning enough, but because she was a single woman. Mum did not accept this, and challenged the bank. In the end they agreed to give it to her, but only if it was in joint names with her mother. Mum was smarting from this blatant sexism years later.

3. One time, when she was young, Mum rode pillion in her ballgown, behind her boyfriend Arthur, on his motorbike, on their way to a ball.

4. Mum once pretended to eat an inedible pork curry her friend Esther had cooked us by scraping it into her handbag when Esther wasn’t looking. Mum later disposed of the evidence on a walk to the shop, finding a public bin on the main road. I witnessed the whole thing in silent hysterics.

5. She demonstrated in the Anti Vietnam demos in the 1970s and was even on TV.

6. For many years, Mum was a member of the Australian Democrats. She was an avid follower of politics on television and was addicted to ABC News. I was often met with her cry of “Do you know what the bastards have done now!” when I arrived home.

7. A few years ago I organised for Mum’s DNA to be tested. It came back 90% English (specifically from the Midlands) and 8% Swedish and Danish. I’d say that means that Viking blood flowed through her veins. This is completely consistent with her character: a determination which is so very English, supported from within by an internal fire worthy of any good Viking.

Mum would always cheerfully say “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.” In a similar vein she would often remind me “Don’t work too hard, don’t do too much”. This would frustrate me and I would retort “Well who else is going to do it?” This would equally frustrate her and she would usually say “Oh Jillian, don’t be so ridiculous!” Oh how many times have I heard that!

One day, I was struggling, not long after losing my husband Anthony to a brain tumour. She took my hand and said quietly, “You just need to find a way to carry on”. I knew when she said this that she was talking from experience, talking about the inner strength she had found to carry on, after losing Madeleine, after the explosion, and later after losing her mother and then Ron. I saw then that despite the intermittent black moods that had plagued her all of her life, that great well of inner strength had sustained her for her 93 years.

So let’s take a leaf out of Mum’s book and put off the unnecessary, let’s work, but not too hard, and, come rain or shine, in our own way, we’ll find a way to carry on.

RIP Beryl Smith, 1930 – 2023, cherished mother, loving grandmother. Dearly missed by her UK and Australian families. Now reunited with Ron, the love of her life. Always in our hearts.