Pat's story: Love Life and Work in Middle Park

What are our sources for understanding the past? This presentation describes the early life and times of a local girl, Pat Hawthorne - great-granddaughter of the adventurous Farrell family who reached Port Melbourne in 1841, but experienced downward mobility. Its primary source is Pat’s extensive and incident-filled childhood narrative, written 40 years back at my request. In it she describes her life in the Depression and WW2 as the eldest of five and sole supporter of her family from the age of 14, when her father was too ill to work on the wharves as a casual labourer.

This presentation focuses on Pat’s childhood before the war years that decimated her family – exploring the impact of her parents, her Middle Park schooling, her job trajectory and her local love life. Despite the toughness of Pat’s start, including the abject poverty and housing precarity she experienced and what factors led to post-war mobility becoming possible.