Mrs Imelda Woods
Born in Toodyay 6/11/1916

I married my husband Clifford when I was nineteen after having met when I seventeen. We were married for only a few months when Cliff was sent to the Eastern States to be in the air force. It was very hard to have just been married and your husband is sent away. I was a little scared as I was left to fend for my self.

When he finally came back, it was like getting to know each other all over again. We felt like a newly wed couple again. My husband was a teacher before he left for the war, so he started teaching again. We were sent to different country areas in Western Australia mainly because it was very hard to get house in Perth when Cliff got back from the war.

Our first country town was Kulin. We stayed in the hotel there, and then we had the schoolhouse to move into. We had no fridge, but the local storeowner had been a friend of Cliff’s and he said when someone cancelled a fridge in the store we could have it. So that was great we got our fridge. Then another friend of Cliff’s came along and he was a Ford car representative and said we really do need a car. So he organised the Ford car for us and that was another way we got something from Cliff’s friends. We loved Kulin and played many sports. The wheat belt towns that we were in the people were just so friendly and I cried when we left there.

From Kulin, we went to Holyoak, which was near Dwellingup. That was a dreary year as this place was damp, cold, and I just didn’t like it there.

Pingelly High School was next and we had two lovely years there. My husband was promoted and then he came home and said “Guess where we are going.” When he said that we were going to Esperance, I thought that was the end of the earth. We were there for two years and had a ball.

Esperance was growing and developing. There were no roads to the beach and we did a lot of camping. We went camping with other couples and had some lovely adventures in the bush. It was a wonderful time. Sometimes we would go to Ravensthorpe and there were only sandy tracks all the way. I walked most of the way as I was car sick for most of the time. When we got back to Esperance I told some of my friends that I ran most of the way to Ravensthorpe. Well imagine my embarrassment when that story that I told was put in the local paper. My husband had no sympathy for me as he said I should not exaggerate so much. But I enjoyed that town, the climate was lovely and the people were friendly.

We then went to Bridgetown and I didn’t enjoy this cold and damp town but the house was lovely.  We only spent a year there. There were heaps of snakes there which I was terrified of and had a few close encounters with them.

Norseman was an experience that I could never forget as the drive up was dust with gravel roads that were corrugated. The dust storms were incredible, it was a dry barren area, but we only stayed a year there.