Dulcie Waugh

As we walked into Dulcie’s room, she pointed to a striking painting of a Cobb and Co. coach and horse team pulled up in front of a once two-storey hotel in Wentworth. With hand on hip near the coach stands great-grandfather John Oxley. John and wife Sarah Ann had sailed from England to Africa, then on to Adelaide as a young married couple. Leaving there, they travelled up the Murray River to Chowilla station in a riverboat. They lived there for some years. It was virgin bush when the land was first taken up. Sarah told family that the only white people she saw were those on the boats that called in to the stations to pick up the wool bales or bring provisions. John and Sarah had quite a large family of children, one of them being Dulcie’s grandmother. For a short time, they leased the Saltbush Pub from Cobb and Co. Coach Lines. The pub was about 10 miles east of Wentworth. Dulcie Jean Hoyle-Holdsworth made her arrival into this world on the 11th of August 1923, at Kirkee Private hospital in Deakin Avenue. The hospital was run by Sister Giddings from 1920 to 1942. A second daughter, her sister Shirley, was born two years and four months later. A special treasure she showed me was given to her on the first day of school. A card about 9” by 5” with a religious picture on it, Dulcie had embroidered stitches around the edges. It was presented to her in 1928 from St Francis Xavier’s school in Box Hill.