I was born in 1944 and grew up in a house of women in Richlands and Darra. Mum (Alma Bohan) was a strong woman of Irish descent, and she had two grown daughters. Then there was me-and Nita was born three years after me.
I remember when I was about eight, Nita and I would sit in Zerlotti’s café in Darra while Mrs Zerlotti went to the shops nearby. I remember Mr Zerlotti one day gave us an ice cream – tutti-frutti it was – the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. This was the first cafe in Darra – and it had the back-to-back booths that were popular in milk bars then.
Years later, I found that Mum had had a third adult daughter, Nina, who married a US soldier here during the war, and was all ready to go to the US. But then she developed tumours and died at twenty-three. But she was never spoken of.
When I was thirteen, I found that my sister Mescal was actually my mother. It was strange to find that Nita was my aunt and not my little sister.
But even today we are close.
I also found that I am the daughter of a US soldier! My grandparents had a farm at Wacol, and when the Americans came, my grandmother did washing for the soldiers. So, there were often soldiers visiting the house, which is how my parents met.
Before I was born, my grandmother left Snow and moved her daughters from the Wacol farm to one of Timo Zerlotti’s fibro houses in Littleton Road, Richlands, close to the US Camp Darra. I went to Richlands State School, then later to Darra State School.
It was only when organising my wedding that I found that Harrison was not my only name. And now I wonder about a letter that came from America about that time – my grandmother simply said “You don’t want to go to America” – and I never saw that letter.
I have my Birth Certificate now. It names Mescal aged twenty-one, and my father – Carl Jones Phillips, aged thirty-four, born in Waxahachie Texas. Apparently, he was in New Guinea when I was born, and he signed and returned the papers that were sent up to him.
But he never came back! If he was coloured, the White Australia Policy wouldn’t have allowed him back into Australia. (My mother had reddish-brown hair and blue eyes – I am dark, with brown eyes). Maybe when he got back home his time in Australia all just faded away. I can only guess – my family would never speak of him!
There is a studio photo of me as a baby that my mother had taken to send him – and I have a chromed bracelet he gave my mother with Australian and American coins set on hearts cut from pennies.
I also have a letter he wrote to my grandmother in 1946, a warm and well written letter. He asks about me and my mother, and the money he sent, and gives news about several other soldiers who obviously had also been frequent visitors to our house. He also mentions his wife Ruth!
