by Robyn Watters
Last year my daily walk took me past the walls of memorial plaques in the Springvale Botanical Cemetery and I would look sadly at the bright orange ‘expired’ stickers on many of the plaques. This ominous warning sticker meant the deceased estate had only paid for a limited tenure for the plaque to be displayed. When the time was…
by Robyn Watters
Norma Madeline Watters Born: 7 June 1924, Albert Park (at home) Died: 23 April 2021, Brighton
We often imagine that women born a century ago saw their destiny only as wives and mothers fleshed out only by the necessity to bring in money if they were from the working class. My aunt Norma Madeline Watters born in 1924…
by Robyn Watters
Captain James Renton Watters Born: 14 October 1838, Longhope, Orkney, Scotland [1] Died: 4 February 1919, Prahran, Melbourne [2]
Captain James Renton Watters, master mariner, settled in Port Melbourne and surrounds in 1875, bringing his Cockney bride with him. Ancestral pride swelled his reputation as a capable and adventurous seafarer but The Truth newspaper filled me in on…
Robyn Watters writes:
My grandfather Bob Watters had a hard start in life. His mother Eliza was deserted by his father Captain James Renton Watters as soon as he was born in 1892. Single mother Eliza and her seven surviving children proceeded to move around rental properties in South Melbourne and Port Melbourne.
Bob probably attended the Montague Primary School in…