A Long Way From Australia

A Memory of Eastwood.

I have just started researching and writing a family history for my daughter who was born here in Australia and has little knowledge of the backgrounds of her English grand- and great grandparents. My theme is "Thank you for the Music", as both sides of my parents' families were very musical and it is a big part of my life here in Oz. I've started with my mother's family who were born and brought up in Eastwood. I'm being helped by my cousin Roy Spencer, an actor and writer who now lives in London and who specialises in presenting and writing on DH Lawrence. He has a wealth of knowledge on Eastwood history and culture and I am very grateful for his insights. I am also very excited to be discovering things about my mother's family that I never knew. This family history is going to be a real journey and will take much longer than I thought so it's a good thing I have just retired from work !
My main memories of Eastwood are from my teenage years in the late 50s and early 60s, and the visits to Grandma & Grandpa - Joe and Frances Smith (nee Frances Carlin of Mansfield). When I knew them, they lived at Mansfield Road, across from the Miners' Institute where they had previously lived and worked as stewards. I think this later became a museum ? My Uncle Arthur Smith also lived in Mansfield Road and one of my mother's younger sisters Clarissa (Auntie Clarice) lived with Uncle Frank Spencer in Queen's Square.
I remember sitting squashed together in Grandma & Grandpa's kitchen/dining room - I never remember ever sitting in the front parlour ! From there we had a distant view of the pit head and slag heap from the local colliery. The mines were such a part of life as I grew up but we never seemed to worry about air pollution and there was always wonderful countryside close at hand for weekend drives and hikes.
The back garden at Mansfield Road was large and a wonderland of plants, I especially remember the Chinese lanterns which I thought very exotic, and the bushes of red currants which I was allowed to pick. In his working life Grandpa was a miner and also played the drums in bands; as a teenager in the 1920s my mother (also Frances) loved to go to dances , especially when Joe came down from the band platform and asked her to dance.
As a younger man Joe always dressed smartly for Chapel with a flower in his button hole; as an elderly man I remember his love of Woodbine cigarettes !

G'ma & G'pa both died when I was already living away from home and I never had the chance to talk to them about their early lives.
I wonder if anyone reading this can remember the Smiths or the Spencers ?