Page 11 - Gwen Landsberry - Memories Memento for Family

Dad got a job as an insurance salesman and was really successful. I loved it in Sydney. It was

different to country living. We had a billiard room. Our home had a lovely comfortable feel and was
very social – filled with family and friends and often later, as I got older, with our tennis crowd,

which is where I met Alf. He was a lot of fun and very popular. Always there was a piano in those
days in homes and Alf would spend the whole night playing the old war time tunes with everyone

gathered around singing and dancing. There was such a difficulty because Alf was protestant and I

was Catholic. In those days to get married, he had to go to lessons with the local priest to
understand Catholocism. They ended up having great debates and talked for ages beyond the lesson.

When we were first married, Alf and I lived with his parents across the road from the pair of semi

detached we bought. We’d all scraped together literally our last pennies to buy them. But we
couldn’t get the tenants out due to the tenancy laws of the day. Alf’s mother called him Alfie and was

very molly-coddling of him. If he got up in the middle of the night, she’d be up to check nothing was
wrong. She always had to check if he had his singlet on. It was hard as a newly wed. But Alf was an

only child. In the end I said we have to move or I can’t stay. So we did and it was the first time in my
life I had privacy – my own space and new furniture.

123 High Street, Willoughby

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