My parents lived at 31 Beaconsfield Parade, Albert Park and I remember swimming in the sea just across the road. We moved to Port Melbourne when I was about 16. My father, Percy Robert, wanted to stay in the Albert Park area after the war because his parents still lived in Middle Park. He wanted to be near the sea because fishing and yachting were very important to him. He was one boy in a family of six, his five sisters spoiled me. I remember my mother, Louise, looking for a house to rent. Unknown to my father, my mother paid a deposit on the house in Evans Street, to stop paying rent. It was tenanted, and the tenants did not pay the rent for six weeks before they could be moved out.

My mother was a very strong lady, who married father in 1918 when he was in England during the First War. After the war she left her big and friendly family to come to Australia and a very unwelcoming mother-in-law. Her father was a nurseryman in Bournemouth. Louise met Percy after he was gassed in the French trenches and sent to England to recover. After that, all his life, he had emphysema.

The house in Evans Street was smaller than the rented houses but mother was always very welcoming of our friends, Dick used to bring home boys from the South Melbourne Orphanage. We children used the back entrance to the house, from the lane, to come and go. The house looked out onto the railway gate control box and to the siding where the trains and coal trucks were shunted. Every twelve minutes a train would rattle past going to and from the city. Most mornings I would run for the train, Bernie Woodruff ( a window dresser at Myers) said that if he saw me ahead of him he knew he was going to miss his train!

During the war years no one had a phone but the corner shop did and they would take a message for us if it was an important matter.

I joined the Mission to Seamen at 16 around the late 1930s. When I was still only 16 I met Stan (Stanley Howard) there. He was in the crew of a trading vessel.

My brother Dick, (Richard Robert), went to the 2nd World War, he joined up as soon as he was 18 and went to New Guinea.

Stan & I were married on 4th September 1943 at Holy Trinity Church in Bay Street but he went back to the ships almost at once. I began my own dressmaking business in a shop in Essendon. This shop was a venture which Stan encouraged when he was on leave at home after the Tobruk campaign. I had always dreamt of having my own shop. Stan helped me paint the shop and get settled in. I had been designing and cutting as well as sewing clothes since I was 18 and I had some very faithful customers. The Essendon business remained until around 1956. When we didn't have children, Stan encouraged me and helped me achieve nearly every dream I had.

Soon after our wedding the estate agent spoke to my mother to ask if she would like to buy the house next door, at 84 Evans Street, which was for sale. She interested me in it instead. Stan, consulted by mail agreed and I bought it. Some of my friends said why would she buy a house, but I said because housing is going to be hard to find at the end of the war but my friends insisted that it was the man's job to buy the house. I paid a deposit on the house and was able to pay it off fairly quickly .

This picture shows Norah and Stan at the Danish Club in Albert Park (courtesy Norah Howard).

My mother thought she should do something for the war effort. My father said, "What can you do? You have only ever done housework." but mother said, "I'll show you." She got herself a job in a button manufacturing factory in Hardware Lane in the City. In the factory she stamped holes for the buttons. I think father was opposed to this at first because he feared he wouldn't get his meals on time. He need not have worried as we always sat down to the evening meal at 6.30.

We had a pianola in the house in Evans Street and used to have lots of friends in to sing around it in the evenings in the front room. My parents always encouraged us to bring friends home and they loved coming. The pianola was moved to number 84 when Stan came home, then when we left 84 Evans Street the pianola went to Rouse Street with us. In 1969 we moved to a house in Poolman Street and sold the Evans Street house.

Stan was a seaman and in the navy during the 2nd War. After the war he worked for a long time for Joe Butler's cartage business in Thistlethwaite Street. Joe and his wife became great friends of ours. Stan died of cancer in the Heidelberg Hospital about 1982.

When my mother was ill in 1982 she came to live with Stan and I here in Poolman Street and the house in Evans Street was shut up. Later I rented the house to Alice Murphy, (a relative of her husband Stan). Finally it was sold in 1969.