THE LIFE STORY OF ANNIE SARGENT

While on leave from the rigors of war, Tim took the opportunity to reconnect with his family. He was able to visit his father, but two of his brothers and his sisters had emigrated to Canada while the remainder of his brothers had enlisted in the war. He was never to see any of his family again. Tim didn’t ever have much to say about the war. It is known that he suffered, as did many others from Trench Foot; and he was discharged on the 20 th of April 1919 with a partially amputated finger and War Neurosis. A veteran of war at twenty years of age, Tim found it hard to return to everyday life. He had not started to shave or smoke before he returned to Australia, but the toll the war had taken on him became evident as he worked his way from state to state, unbound by the ties of family or home. Tim took up work where he could find it, turning his hand to whatever need doing. He worked on construction of roads and bridges, planting pine forests near Canberra, working on farms and in the steel mills of Newcastle. He nearly became a partner in a beekeeping enterprise. Tim rode a Harley Davidson motorcycle and came to love the country life, perhaps for its contrast to his seafaring and military days. While work was difficult to find during the years of the Depression, Tim would tire of his current employment or situation and move on of his own volition; as he was never sacked from a job. As a single man with his own transport he was free of some of the responsibilities and cares of other men, and he received a small pension of 2/6 pence for the loss of his forefinger, amputated during the war. He was living in a tent in the bush near Sylvania with a fellow traveller when he became friendly with his future in laws. He purchased two pence of turnips from a farm stall, when the farmers suggested that he could find employment with them on the small holding raising poultry and vegetables for sale to passing motorists. His future wife Annie was taken by his bluest of eyes; which she recalls fondly even today more than eighty years later. The work on the farm was paid in kind with food and whatever money they could afford. As things started to get better Tim was offered more regular work with a contractor who was laying concrete in the main street of Cronulla. The work was all done manually and was therefore hard physical work; but Timwas undaunted. He was a fearless man, and in one instance ran out and jumped onto a runaway cart. The Baker’s horse had bolted with fright and it fled with the cart swaying from side to side down Port Hacking Road in Sylvania. JohnWayne could not have done better as he jumped onto the back of the cart, climbing to the front where he could grab the reins and pull the horse up. Once the work in Cronulla finished, Tim got the urge to move on and in 1935 he travelled to Tasmania to go fruit picking. Annie thought she would never see those blue eyes again as Tim felt he needed to continue his life on the road. After three weeks the family received a letter to say how he had been unwell, that he missed his adopted family and the work was not as plentiful as he had heard. Tim had not thought that a family could ever mean as much to him after his own difficult family life, and he returned. He and Annie were never parted again. Tim managed to get work with the Post Master General, and when Annie’s family farm was sold; they all moved to a smaller holding in Miranda. Two years later, in August 1938 Annie and Tim were married. Annie’s parents were quite shocked as there was a fifteen-year age difference between the couple, and Annie’s mother did not attend the wedding. Confident that the marriage would be a success, Annie and Timwere married at Rockdale in the church manse, with Annie’s father and a friend as their witnesses.