Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Joan Dinning (mum) Grew up on a farm in Hansonville, N,E. Victoria.   She was the eldest daughter, followed by four brothers, plus an older one, and then three sisters arrived. She was required to be very domesticated from an early age, looking after her siblings.  By the time she was 23, she was "fed up" with her lot (although she loved her family and was very close to them all! And her father said of her decision to join the Army:  "I just had the kitchen redesigned to her directions!"), and so the Army was a release from this daily/yearly sameness.  

Army life, and the social part of it, was a change! She learned to play golf.   She recalls coming in from jobs late at night in freezing weather, and supposedly not to have a warm shower to warm up.  But she did anyway.    

She was an ambulance driver... and I recall her saying as how she had to back these ambulances into the loading dock, with an inch to spare on each side. She didn't admit to me any mishaps!

At the end of WWII she met Trooper Ronald Frank Butler of the 2/4th, at an end of War Celebration dance, at Pukapunyal.  They had both been "stood up" by their respective dates; so Ron (my dad) said "come on Toots, let's go in".   And so the beginning of a 50+ year marriage, from September 1946.

They set up home in Adelaide, where I was born in November 1947.   The headiness of Army life over, I think she was unhappy, and probably "homesick" for her friends and family in Victoria. Also, having "reared" her own siblings, the novelty of babies had worn off - but I know she loved me and my siblings, and was a good mother.  She made friends in Adelaide, and life trucked on.  It helped that one of her sisters also had married an Adelaide man too, so they saw each other frequently.

Laurel.