My Mother was a child of the depression being born in Australia in 1930. Her father was a surveyor and the family often travelled with him. She can remember a time before electric refrigerators, living in tents with dirt floors in the back blocks of Queensland as she grew up. She became a nurse at the end of her teens and with a few breaks along the way to marry and divorce three men and mother six boys had a career in nursing spanning nearly fifty years. I am the oldest of the sons with five still alive and we have spread across the world, myself living in Japan, another brother in England and the other three in different parts of Australia.
Since retiring, Mum or Alne to her friends has kept busy but has never settled – too many years of work to sit on the porch and rock in the chair. Earlier this year, having converted to Buddhism many years ago, she went to India, loved it, has gone back and still loves it with no plans to leave. This is her letters on her travels there – the typos are mine but my excuse is she has appalling handwriting as only left-handed backslanted writing could be….