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Charles Mclelland Barker was born on 22/1/1908 in Woollhara. When his mother EDITH EMILY BAX was 37 weeks pregnant with Grandad, his father REV CHARLES MCLELLAND BARKER died while on circuit in Young. Edith was left with two small children, Harold (1903) and Kathleen (1905) and baby Charles. Left to raise her children alone, a few years later she managed to build a house in Waverley a few doors down from her parents, William and Emma Bax. Sadly Harold died in 1919 from appendicitis when he was just sixteen years old. Only a year later, Charle's grandfather, WILLIAM BAX, committed suicide in a violent way. These events would have impacted Grandad directly but he recalled a happy childhood with many days spent playing in nearby Centennial Park. He is also likely to have spent time at his maternal grandparent's holiday house at Wentworth Falls, Bunjaree, as in his later years he bought his own holiday house at 16 Myoori Ave at Wentworth Falls.
At sixteen years old, Charles began working as a boy Friday at the Dairy Farmers Co-op Milk Company Ltd. The dictionary term for Boy Friday is 'go to' boy; a man who will help you get things taken care of; a man you can rely on when you are in need of extra assistance; a man who acts as a 'jack of all trades' and is capable of doing almost anything; a man you can count on when you are overwhelmed with your own chores and the duties must be done; a man who does most of the leg work on a project, but never takes (or gets) credit.' Charles would go on to be general manager of Dairy Farmers and spent his entire working life with that company, (on retirement he had a lifetime supply of products including Sara Lee cakes, much to the delight of his grandchildren).
On December 23rd, 1931 Charles married NORMA PEARD DUNLOP, a kindergarten teacher. They bought their first house at 3 Chester Rd, Epping. This was where they raised their three children. In this house they raised three children; Lynette Florence (1932-2017), IAN MCLELLAND BARKER (my father) (1935-2019), and Rosemary Edith. Lynette Florence would become a GP and later an anesthetist. She married Peter Degotardi, also an anesthetist, and they had six children together. She moonlighted in women's health in a Family Planning clinic where by chance she was my practitioner when I went for a pregnancy test at 17 years old. She was very kind to me and encouraged me to 'make my own choice'. Ian became a solicitor and married NELLE FISH. They had seven children together living in Alice Springs and Darwin, where Dad became a QC. Rosemary became an airhostess and married Robert Anderson, living in Queensland where they raised two boys and two girls.
Later on Norma and Charles built their dream house at 12 York St, Epping. It was a beautiful architect designed house on a large block of land. I visited the house once as a 9 year old child and remember it as magical. A long, steep, gum flanked driveway wound downhill to an immaculate fluorescent green lawn surrounded by rhododendrons, camellias, and hydrangeas. The substantial bungalow house with its white paned windows beckoned warm and inviting beyond the lawn. Grandad had a very green thumb and spent hours lost in his garden at Epping and his garden in the blue mountains.
In the 1980s, Charles and Norma sold their York St house and moved permanently to their mountain house. Grandad tried to put a caveat in place that their property could not be divided by a developer. Sadly that is exactly what happened and there is no remainder of their beautiful property.
In 1980 my parents separated in Darwin and my two younger sisters and I moved to Sydney with our mother. We stayed with my grandparent's at Myoori Avenue for six weeks. I remember Grandad as a man of quiet habits. He would get up at 5am, have a bowl of porridge and then spend the morning in the garden. He had a hillside full of rhododendrons, shrubs and a forest of trees that he tended. At morning tea Grandad would come inside, shaking his boots at the back door and padding inside in his socks for a piece of Sara Lee pound cake and a cup of tea. Then he would continue working in the garden until lunchtime. In the afternoon Grandad would sit in his lovely lounge room with its big windows looking out over his garden. There he would read the Financial Times, play computer chess and sit in his recliner and doze. Grandad's sister Kathleen would also visit on weekends and she would sit quietly knitting.
Later my young daughter Lucy and I would visit occasionally as Lucy loved 'Barley Charker.'
Grandma died in 1982 and Grandad continued to live there until he moved to Pitt Town to live with his daughter Lynette and her family. There he celebrated his 90th birthday surrounded by many of his grandchildren and great grandchildren. In 1997 Myoori Avenue was sold and Charles McClelland Barker died in 1999.
York St, Epping, NSW
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