Thursday, February 01, 2007

Happy Birthday Pa

My dad turns 80 today.



Redhead Beach, NSW central coast, 1947

6 comments:

Ampersand Duck said...

Yay for dad! What a spunky photo!

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Yes, you can sort of tell he's going to live a long time. He was indeed very dishy when young; pity it wasn't hereditary.

By the time this photo was taken he'd matriculated, learned how to run a farm, done some accountancy training, supported himself at night being a waiter in a seedy wartime Adelaide club, learned to dance at the Wonderland Ballroom because men were so scarce by the early 1940s that they let cute schoolboys in, done two and a half years of Navy service and got engaged to my mum, who took the photo.

Zoe said...

That's the beach I grew up on!

And yeah, spunkrat.

Mindy said...

Congratulations to your Dad. May he live to be a terror well into his hundreds. Not suggesting that he's one now, but I think if you make it to 100 you can be as much of a terror as you like, cause you've earned it.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

Zoe, don't I remember you saying you grew up on Lake Macquarie? I swam in it every summer when I was a kid, in the enclosed baths at Arcadia Vale where my maternal grandparents lived -- we'd drive from Adders to Arcadia Vale (ah yes, the Hay Plains in January, with three carsick kids, in the days before airconditioned cars) every New Year and stay for three weeks.

Mindy -- he is indeed a terror. Widowed at 72, remarried at 77, and you should have seen him flirting with the waitresses at his birthday dinner. The Wicked Stepmother just rolled her eyes.

genevieve said...

COngratulations to your dad - both photos are lovely.