Meeting Australian connections

It's too bad you can't arrange for everything to be perfect when long lost cousins come calling! Harold had been looking forward to meeting his cousin, Margaret but when he and May got to Soldiers Point there was flooding. It was still raining. The place didn't impress Harold as he wrote: "The most outlandish place to live no railway one bus each way to Newcastle 30 miles." He went on to compare it unfavourably with Sanderstead in England where he and May lived.

May let Harold have a third of the airmail blank to write about their visit with Margaret. It's too bad the remarks he made were about flooding and transportation in the area with only a few details about the people. He did, however, provide another sketchy family tree. The information on this one, while still not providing last names, does provide other clues. You can see on the left of the tree above his system of codes for the people they saw, the ones who were living and the ones who had died. That gives me a bit more to work with.

Harold didn't get to write much. Maybe he preferred it that way. Something he wrote in the margins of the previous letter have me intrigued though. He said: "Have just written my old school girlfiiend at Auckland. So that's the next event."

It will be interesting to see what Harold and May write about his school girl friend after they get to New Zealand. I just hope they give her last name so I can find out more about her. In the meantime, it's time to get working on the clues about his maternal relative that he left me. 

Sources:

Chambers, M.C. Letter to Mrs. C.E.B. Cavanagh written April 4/55 from Sydney

Chambers, M.C. Letter to Mrs. C.E.B. Cavanagh written Good Friday, April 8/55 from Soldiers Point