Preface

Ever since I was a small boy my Great-Great-Grandfather, Edward Fall, has been watching me benevolently from his oil painting on the wall: Silver locked, bible under arm, he has always been part of my life. He watched me grow as a very small boy; he even followed me as my parents moved house and, now that they are both dead, he is present in my own home. First, he watched over my family but, more recently, took pleasure in my grandchildren as they ran about excitedly. They, too, are now almost grown up. Yet, it saddens me that I hardly know anything about him other than that he was a Baptist minister at Rugby in England and retired in 1848 after forty years of service to his church.

For a long time I simply took him for granted but, as the years went by, I wished that I had known this kindly old ancestor of mine. What did he think about? What was important to him? Who were the people in his life? Being born in 1779, he must have grown up with the beginnings of the industrial revolution, with its new railways and its child-labour factories. What did he think of these? I shall never know. True, I visited his church, found his tombstone, and even the flyleaf of his bible, with the birth date of his children and a list of their marriages, written in his own hand. However, there was much more to the man than this, and I have always regretted not knowing anything of importance about him.

It was then that I realised that the same could be said of me by my great-great grandchildren, unless I did something about it. This book, which you now hold in your hands, is my one-sided conversation with you -my grand-children and, hopefully, my great-great-grandchildren - and beyond. I know that the Reverend Edward Fall of Rugby who inspired it, cares about me - I can see it by the way he watches me - and I know that I care about you, who follow me. I hope that through it you will gain some impression of the times in which I lived.

My first attempt to write about my background was to spend five years of intensive work from 1989 researching and writing The Rumble Family Register -a large volume of family history that traced the forebears and descendants of my mother’s parents, Harry and Kate Rumble. This work required the cooperation of many members of the family and greatly increased my sense of family bonding and of belonging. I printed sixty-five copies for distribution to my cousins, and completed the work in mid 1994. In 1989 I attended a course entitled Autobiographies for Future Generations run by the University of Western Australia Extension Service and given by Luceille Hanley. Inspired by this, I embarked on my own autobiography immediately after finishing the family history. From the outset I decided that it would be detailed, and that it would emphasise my development as a person. The husk of my life is simply a recital of where I have been and what I have done - anyone can be aware of that. But it is the kernel - the essential inner core of my being - that contains the story of my development as a person, and this is not available unless I tell it. tried to be both honest and frank in this.

My life took me as a youngster from the small country town of Yarloop in Western Australia, where we existed with few amenities and with very little money, to the capital City of Perth where, at the age of ten, I continued my education and eventually graduated in Engineering at the local university. It was not long before I became a lecturer in that university, married, raised two children and spent three years in London working for my doctorate.

Returning to Perth at the end of 1960, I soon found myself changing: as I grew in confidence, I discovered that my interests lay much more with people than with the lifeless things of engineering. I became Sub-Dean of Engineering - a position where I dealt extensively with students and their academic problems. It did not take long for me to realise that I could communicate easily with them. Then, from 1967, my family and I lived for twenty years in a student residence where I led an exciting and rewarding life, intensely involved with both the community as a whole and with its individuals.

I discovered that everyone's life is a life of growing, of blossoming and flowering; a striving to discover and then become the person that one truly is. Some achieve this easily, while others are beset with difficult problems. Through my privileged position, I came to know many young people deeply. Often I sensed their fears and their joys: they became mirrors to my own understanding of myself. We all face the same, often painful, process of growing and becoming: I hope that, by reading of my struggles, of my growing, my joys and pains, and of my sometimes silly, inane, stupid and irrational behaviour, you will gain strength in your own understanding and of your sense of belonging to a family that stretches back in time beyond memory and hopefully forward to the far-distant future.

Your circumstances may be very different from mine; habits and customs and even values may have changed. Where I have used current colloquialisms, I have tried to explain their meaning in footnotes, for fashions change. You may smile at the quaintness of some of our old fashioned ways, but beneath this veneer of civilisation and custom, I think you will see a common thread of humanity and its striving.

I examine this common thread in the last chapter because, although much has changed to society since the birth of my grandfather in 1866, the character of man has remained the same. In this last chapter I explore the lessons that I have learnt from life on how to live.

I am greatly indebted to those who helped me complete this volume. First, to my wife Kay, who encouraged me and who carefully proofread all sections of my work and made suggestions for its improvement. She also forgave my many transgressions when I failed to complete routine tasks because I had become so absorbed in my writing. I am also indebted to Luceille Hanley, the tutor from my 1989 course, who took an interest in my work and read each chapter as I completed it, and commented on it. She became a valued friend, and I thank her for the encouragement she gave me.

The volume is large (with more than 360,000 words altogether), so I decided to bring it to life by including as many photos as possible. I bought a high quality scanner and brought together 400 photos that I hope will prove interesting. I grouped these in pictorial essays at the end of each chapter, each essay dealing with the subject matter of the previous chapter, but containing sufficient text so it stands complete in its own right. You could survey the entire autobiography by reading only these essays

I dedicate this volume to you my descendants, as much as to those that came before me, and as much as to those who took the steps of life with me, my wife, my family and all those with whom I had the good fortune to share life.

I ask only one thing of you, that should my story have meaning for you, then you, in your turn, will pass your own story on to future generations.