Mount Jane first farm at Cungena

Their father, Thomas Kermode of Norton Summit, was a hard man, clever, careful, self educated but bigoted and mean with money. His childhood was apparently tough. We were told that at 13 he was a pony express rider on Kangaroo Island. He later worked for Thomas Playford at Norton Summit on the farm and then became a farmer himself. He fought in the Boer War and in the First World War and wrote home to his wife, May, tenderly, giving instructions on the running of the property. He was also a policeman at Murray Bridge, joined: 1-4-1904, resigned 31-12-1907. Sadly, May died of cancer in 1927.

Thomas re-married, a lady who knew him well and made sure she got promises concerning financial matters before she tied the knot. She had worked as a parlour maid for the Barr-Smiths in Adelaide and knew about gracious living. Afternoon tea involved keeping the lovely brass kettle boiling on the table, over its spirit burner, a lace tablecloth and all the accoutrements. She was tall and grey-haired when I knew her and always wore her hair in a sort of bun with marcel type waves at front. She had summer and winter coats for when she went out, as ladies did then, and always wore amazing shoes, I now realise, high, square heeled black lace ups. She took good care of her feet because she had six toes and some webbing between them.

Thomas Senior took an interest in shares and was able to support the family capably even through the depression. At some stage he bought an old gold mine at Balhannah in the Adelaide Hills. The family spent lovely holidays in the mine building. They had Lady Muriel Barclay's (the wife of a former governor) old bath, which mum was quite proud of. An awful thing happened, however, which shocked the whole family. A Mr McCarthy, quite legally, took out a mining lease on their property and began mining in the middle of their yard. There was nothing they could do about it though my grandfather kept his shotgun ready and loaded should anyone step over the narrow boundaries of the 'mine' in the midst of his property. There ensued years of bitter feuding and on one occasion my grandfather is said to have pointed the shotgun at Douglas Mawson, the famous geologist, when Mr McCarthy invited him onto the property.

When Mum finished Teachers' College she was 19 years old and was appointed to the single teacher Courela School on the West Coast, a remote and lonely place, difficult to access, but she was on her own with no fond help from mother or father. She boarded in a tin lean-to at the back of a property where they thought her city manners very strange. She was well educated in health and insisted on bathing every day, quite unusual in those days! On a horse, 'a decent little skewbald, very pretty and quite fast' she would ride to her school in the middle of the bush and teach all 7 grades. The inspector said she was "Confident, earnest, firm, hardworking, promising, inexperienced" in the first year and "Confident, diligent, pleasant and improved" in the second, though she was chided for not wearing stockings (in 100 degree+ temperatures) to school, on one occasion. Isolated and alone, it is not surprising that she soon met and wanted to marry my father, which had severe repercussions. Any woman teacher who married immediately lost her job so that was almost the end of teaching until 1956, when the rules changed. My mother also lost her family because her father was outraged that my father was a Roman Catholic and refused to have anything to do with them. She was barred from the family home. Fortunately the family later reconciled when my older brother was born and dad joined the army, but there was always a bitterness which remained. When Mum contracted polio in the great epidemic of about 1952 she had to spend a year on her back in bed. By now her father had died but she was cared for very well by her stepmother while Dad kept the home fires burning.