Cecil Driscoll

“The war was a tough time, but I’d learned a few survival skills before then, growing up during the Depression years. My dad had been a shearing contractor. He would travel all over the Mallee with another shearer and his two-stand plant which he would shift with a Dodge utility if it was needed. Mum would cook for them, and we kids were taken along as well. We would play outside all day… We didn’t have bikes or even a football with which to play. When I was eleven, Dad died from an abscess on the brain, so Mum had to return to her parents, the Hogans in Merbein… with eight kids in tow! We used to laugh about Granddad, Jimmy Hogan. He was a real old Irishman and Grandma was English. Us boys were brought up Catholic and the girls, Protestant. Grandad was retired when we moved back with them. It must have been a shock to suddenly have eight children living in the house. The boys all slept in one room and the girls in the other, two or three to a bed. No wonder he was grumpy at times.