Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Claude Desmond Rayner was born with his twin sister Mona on April 22, 1917 in North Unley, nearby the Adelaide suburb of Mitcham where his family lived. He was educated at St Michael's School at Mitcham, leaving to enter the workforce aged just 14 years. Before the 1938-1945 war he worked as an office boy and then quarry labourer.

In 1941 he enlisted. His war was spent in Australia. After being discharged from the AIF following the war's end, he eventually found work with the Postmaster General's department. From 1949 onward he worked as a postman in the Mitcham area until he retired aged 65.

In April 1946, fresh out the army, Claude proposed to Joan Elizabeth Turner (whom he always affectionately called "George"). They announced their engagment on their shared birthday - April 22 - and married on December 28, 1946, in Ararat, Victoria. They had three children in 10 years - Claudia, Liz and John - and lived most of their life together at 3 Wokurna Ave., Mitcham.

As a young man Claude played cricket, tennis and football for local church teams. For many years he raced pigeons. As retirement loomed, he took up lawn bowling and played competively for the Unley Bowling Club first division team (where his mates included the former Test cricketer and South Australian Speaker, Gil Langley.) Claude was also an active member of the Hyde Park Masonic Lodge.

Upon retiring from the Post Office in April 1982 Claude was given a Rotary Good Employee Award in recognition of his "courtesy and help to the householders of Mitcham, his marked level of integrity, loyalty, dedication, accuracy and persistence in work for Australia Post".

Claude purchased his first car (a Holden Gemini) only after giving up work. For most of his life he had used a bicyle (and later a Vespa scooter) to get around his suburb, even to take his pigeons to the railway station on race days. In his retirement he often drove his beloved "Gem" to Warrnambool to see his grandchildren, even to Brisbane when his daughter Claudia moved there in 1988. After 1988 he and Joan made a habit of spending six weeks or so each Adelaide winter in sunnier Brisbane.

Although he left school at an early age, Claude was a prodigious reader, both of fiction and non-fiction. He had an extensive vocabulary which equipped him to make very short work of the ordinary and cryptic crosswords in the newspaper he had delivered each day.

Claude Rayner died with his family at hand, on September 19, 2008, in hospital in Adelaide at the age of 91. But for his time in the army he had lived all of his life in an around the Adelaide suburb of Mitcham.