To discuss Irwin's parents, one is faced with an unusual problem. As stated on his marriage certificate, his parents were Minnie Teather and Joseph James Poynton. Yet this is not true. His natural mother was Laura Gladys Poynton (b. 1894), and his father Charles Hartley Stokes (b.1881)

A family photograph taken at Illabarook in Victoria of a family get-together in 1921 shows Gladys and Hartley Stokes together with Edward and Joan, their two elder children. They had five children altogether. They were Edward, Joan, Peter, and a pair of twins, Irwin and Valerie. The latter pair were born on January 14, 1925, at Midland Junction.

Hartley Stokes was a railway engineer, possibly working with the Midland Railway Company, which was managed by J.J.Poynton. He was injured during a fall and died later of complications. Gladys also died a few years later, possibly of melanoma, and the three youngest children were fostered or adopted by close relatives - Valerie by Ern Paton, who was married to Gladys' sister, and both Peter (now known as Hartley) and Irwin by their wealthy but childless great uncle, Joseph James Poynton.

There are abundant photographs of Irwin and Valerie from a very early age at Midland Junction. There are none of them together with parents, which seems amazing and may be deliberate.

It seems that the adoption by JJP took place at about 1930, when there is a photograph of Irwin on the driveway of the family home in Claremont. There are very few family photographs with JJ Poynton, who was a busy man and in any case sent his adopted children to boarding school for a lot of the time. Only after Minnie's death in 1934 does a single photograph show Irwin with his new stepmother, Nina, and JJP on the tennis court of their home. By all accounts, Irwin was rather a larrikin, and he spoke of some of the shenanigans he got up to at this time.

Apparently they knocked out many of the windows of the Midland Railway Company's workshops with stones from catapults over the years. He must have been short of parental supervision.

At Guildford Grammar School, they had a teacher who had some sort of speech defect which caused him to drawl. He was known as Tex, and Tex was one of Irwin's favorite victims. On one occasion Tex was writing on the board when a dart thrown by Irwin embedded itself in the board next to his right hand.

Later in Claremont, he and Hartley would buy "basket bombs" - a powerful firecracker which cost sixpence (in about 1936) and prowl the neighbourhood at night, blowing up people's letterboxes. This was great fun but no doubt an expensive annoyance to the neighbours! Basket bombs were later banned.

Hartley had a beer fetish in his youth, apparently bragging about how much he drank. The reality was that beer was hard for adolescent boys to obtain. Irwin and his friends urinated in a beer bottle and (presumably after cooling it!) presented it to Hartley to drink. He immediately raised it to his lips and swigged a mouthful from the bottle...

During the period 1934 - 1938, JJ Poynton was not only Manager of the Midland Railway Company, but also Lord Mayor of Perth. It was said that JJ was such an astute financial manager that he was the only person to have ever made Midland Railways profitable. Certainly he was highly paid, receiving £4000 per annum, about 20 times the average income. He had a mansion in Claremont with 3 acres of gardens, several servants, a car and a string of agricultural properties. Irwin lived in the lap of luxury and was educated locally at Christchurch Grammar School.

JJ Poynton died in 1938, leaving Irwin and Hartley orphans yet again. They were, however, cared for by their foster mother, Nina (nee Jackson) who was close to them for the rest of their lives. She regarded it as a duty to see that Irwin and Hartley and their descendents received the benefit of JJs estate, which was considerable. The estate did have to pay death duties, which were probably at a rate in excess of 50%, so many of the properties had to go. In the end, only the 26,000 acre property "Bellaranga" was retained.

Irwin attended Narrogin Agricultural School in 1941 and 1942, no doubt with the intention of having him manage the farming properties. His academic performance at the school was modest, except in English Literature which was outstanding. At the age of 17 he completed the course and went to work on a farming property run by a couple of women. With the advent of war, most of the men had been called up, so new graduates from Agricultural College must have been eagerly sought.

He was also eagerly sought by the Australian Army, which at that time absorbed hundreds of thousands of young men for the war against Japan. Irwin was drafted into the Army in 1943, and when he turned eighteen, volunteered for the Australian Imperial Force. Only volunteers could serve overseas. He trained in jungle warfare and became a driver of a tank transporter. In early 1945 he embarked for service overseas, but never saw a shot fired in anger. He did see the consequences though.

His first port of call was Morotai, an island west of Suluwesi in Indonesia. It had just been recaptured from the Japanese and was being tranferred back to the Dutch. Apparently the Dutch treated the Australians (who had done the fighting) in a very distainful and arrogant manner, treatment which made Irwin rather unsympathic to the Dutch administration of Indonesia.

From Morotai he was shipped to Balikpapan in Borneo, which had just been taken from the Japanese when he arrived. There was total chaos, and combined with the heat and dirt common in even modern Indonesia, most unpleasant. This was no holiday either. Then on to Singapore.

The troops arrived in Singapore Harbour shortly after the Japanese capitulation which followed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It took a few days for the surrender to be signed by the local commander, then the troops went ashore. Irwin was a driver for the relief of Chiangi Prison. This was an infamous prisoner-of-war camp, and he brought out men who weighed less than half what they had been when captured. One point he did make was that the most brutal guards at the prison were not Japanese at all, but Korean.

From Singapore he went on to the Malay Peninsula, and one postcard he bought was of the Kuala Lumpur Railway Station - in Japanese. From there he was sent to Japan, where he was a member of the 35,000-strong Commonwealth Occupation Force at Kure, on the Inland Sea.

Kure had been a major shipbuilding area and the target of very heavy bombing by the Americans. The yards were a mangled mess, as was the city. But this was nothing compared to the situation in the city next door. Twenty kilometres down the road was Hiroshima. He arrived there early in 1946, to an area which was just a charred plain with a large, twisted concrete structure in the centre. There were thousands of orphans and destitute, desperate women.

There were many orphans and women working as housekeepers in their quarters. Despite the widespread poverty, nothing ever had to be locked, nothing was ever stolen. The Australians found the honesty of the Japanese unbelievable.

The women would sell anything to order to get milk and sugar for their children. They sold art, they sold silk, and of course they sold their bodies. Every leave pass was issued together with a condom. No doubt they did not go unused, as the troops had immense supplies of commodities for which the Japanese were desperate. And Irwin drove a supplies truck. He found he could stop anywhere and sell a load of sugar, condensed milk or beer. Every week they were supplied a carton of cigarettes, which were better than currency in Japan. In fact, he never drew his pay during the entire stay. In later life he said he felt he had made a mistake in not exploiting the blackmarket to the full. Some of the Australian troops returned home wealthy men.

Irwin learned a smattering of Japanese. Certainly enough to ask for a beer, cigarettes, food. Sex, too, no doubt. He loved the women there but was not so keen on the men returning from overseas. He thought them beautiful and cultured, and looked back on his stay very fondly indeed. No doubt he was not the only one, and some Australian troops married Japanese ladies, but were not permitted to bring them home. The 35,000 troops ended up the fathers of about 200 children during the two years they were there. They must have made good use of the condoms, and probably the women made good use of the abortionists.

One evening, as he returned from the showers, Irwin passed an officer who was remonstrating with another soldier, who was put under arrest. Irwin (who was rather drunk) thought the officer most unjust, and told the officer in no uncertain terms what he thought of him. "Poynton, you are under open arrest!"

"Make that closed arrest," said Irwin, as he punched the officer in the face. There was then a wild chase up a flight of stairs. When he reached the top, he rolled a 200 litre drum of water (put there in case of fire) onto the pursuing men. At the end of affair, Irwin was in prison, minus one of his front teeth. There he remained three months. He always regretted seeing Japan as a member of the Army, and argued against that sort of tourism.

During a leave period they went to a hot springs resort at Beppu. They spent a couple of weeks there, where they really enjoyed "having their backs scrubbed by the girls." Nowadays, Beppu is an expensive tourist resort, still very famous.

The devastation at Hiroshima was awesome. The actual death toll in the bombing is unknown, and has been estimated in the range of 150,000 up to 400,000. The city had been spared much of the bombing which had destroyed Kure, Nagoya, Osaka and Tokyo, and was filled with refugees. There were also many troops. What Irwin saw were the shattered survivors, and mere shadows of people who had caught the full force of the blast. Those shadows were etched into the concrete - the surface had been uneffected where protected by a human body. The person had been evaporated in a fraction of a second. Other than those shadows and twisted pieces of steel, only the concrete shell remained. Of the remainder there was nothing.

Being a driver, Irwin had to travel through narrow streets of the cities and villages. It was while driving that he hit a small boy. He described the child as "being in a very bad way," and he was sure that it died, though he heard nothing more about it.

And it was in Japan, in the middle of a cold, snowy winter night, that their quarters started to rock violently. They suffered a very severe earthquake. The men all evacuated the building, having to stand around outside, clad only in pyjamas, in the snow. The next day much of the wharf where they worked had disappeared into the sea.

Early in 1948 the Commonwealth Forces returned to Australia. Irwin was discharged in Sydney after five years in the Army and headed back home to the West.

Travelling west, he stopped off in Kalgoorlie to see his sister, Valerie. She was working in the Commonwealth Bank, where she was labelled as Miss Stokes. For the people of Kalgoorlie this was more than a little confusing, because they had known her for years as Valerie Paton. When she had been adopted by the Paton family after the death of her parents (Hartley and Gladys Stokes) the arrangement had not been formalised in the correct manner. Her name had not been officially changed, and the Commonwealth Bank were sticklers for tellers names being advertised correctly. Then her brother Irwin Poynton turned up. The good burghers of Kalgoorlie were completely flummoxed, and thereafter starting calling her Valerie Paton-Poynton-Stokes. The problem was ultimately solved by her marriage to a young industrial chemist, Frank Lynn.

Valerie was sharing a flat with Ailsa Compton, a student at the School of Mines. The flat adjoined Ailsa's parents' home in Collins St, Kalgoorlie. George Spencer Compton had rented the flat to keep out tenants who did not meet his standards. So it is doubtful if there was much hanky-panky.

Soon enough, Ailsa and Irwin were "in love", and they married on August 25, 1948 at St John's Cathedral in Kalgoorlie. By this time he must have been working as a woodcutter in the Norseman District, as his occupation is listed on the certificate as "contractor". After a honeymoon at Safety Bay, they moved to Norseman where a small house was purchased at 12 Dodd St for about £250. The cottage is still standing, a short distance from the waste dumps of the Central Norseman Gold Mine. Irwin kept working out in the bush. Meanwhile Ailsa was pregnant, having got that way possibly on the first night of the marriage. Charles Edward Poynton was born on 24 May, 1949, exactly nine months after the wedding.

As the pregnancy proceeded, Irwin gave up timber-cutting and moved into Norseman. There he worked as a miner.

The house is very close to the mine, and walking is the best way of getting from one to the other. There was very little entertainment (just radio and occasional motion pictures) so people sought each other's company. It was a friendly little town, and they got to know several of their neighbours quite well. One was the MacAra family - Duncan, Effie and their two children, Robyn and Ian. This contact survived right through until the 1990s - nearly 45 years. Another friend was a young geologist at the mine, Laurence Brodie-Hall. He was a friend who dropped around frequently, and entertained with his violin. Later he went on to become the Chairman of Western Mining Corporation.

Irwin considered work in the mine dangerous. One time he came in to find all the timbering squashed flat after an earth movement. On another occasion the roof collapsed, dropping hundreds of tonnes of rock into what had been their working area. He did not enjoy working in pitch black holes which might drop on him at any time. So he decided to resign.

When they arrived in Perth, late in 1949, there was an acute housing shortage. Irwin and Ailsa shared a flat in Adelaide Terrace with Ailsa's sister Joan, her husband Alan, and their son Michael. Irwin was shortly to receive a cash settlement from his father's estate, on his 25th birthday.

When the money came through, they bought a house at 114 Grantham St, Floreat Park for £4000. This was about £1000 in excess of market value, but for that they took vacant possession, an important consideration, as otherwise one had sitting tenants. He paid cash, and Joan Mitchell recalls seeing the cheque and thinking that she would never again see so much money in one lump sum. The average annual income at the time was about £400. Irwin and Ailsa also bought rather elaborate furniture and a car to go with their new house.

The inheritance must have been substantial, because with the remainder Irwin bought a fleet of trucks and employed several men to establish a brickcarting business. During the days he managed the business while in the evenings he studied accounting. The business suffered a major blow with a strike at the brickworks, and Irwin was in the unhappy situation of paying men for whom there was no work. The cartage business collapsed, and ultimately he sold the trucks.

After the collapse of this business, Irwin got a job with Attwood Motors in Stirling Street (now the site of the Sunday Times) where he worked selling spare parts for Holden and other General Motors cars. This was a regular job where he would arrive home from work at 5:30pm every evening, either in a trolleybus or by car.

Irwin had something of a car fetish at the time. He firstly bought an Austin A40, followed by a Citroën. The latter was his pride and joy, and on one occasion had a policeman hot on his tail as he drove home, drunk, from the pub at 87 miles per hour (140kph) down Grantham St, Wembley. He ended up in court and was fined. This days the courts would not be so lenient!

After the Citroën there came a Morris Minor, with which he was not very happy. In 1954 he bought a second-hand Holden FJ from the man over the road, a Mr Major who was a motor dealer. This car had six cylinders and towed a caravan he purchased. Several caravan holidays were taken, one through the Southwest, Albany and east to Esperance; another up to the family property at Bellaranga.

In 1957 the FJ was traded for the latest, a brand-new FE Holden. It was black and had modest fins and a fair amount of chrome. I recall the family going into the city and waiting rather impatiently for the predelivery service to be completed, then everyone piling in and being driven home. The FE was to be the family car for the next ten years. Irwin had decided that changing cars every year or two was good for the motor trade, but not for his finances. In any case, the money was starting to dry up.

During 1954 oil was discovered at Rough Range on the Exmouth Gulf. There was a massive boom in the sharemarket (which happened to make Irwin's brother Hartley very wealthy) and new oil companies were floated. One of those companies was Westralian Oil Ltd.

Westralian Oil mounted an expedition into the Great Sandy Desert from Balfour Downs Station, to the east of Marble Bar. The leader of the expedition was Ailsa's father, George Spencer Compton. Irwin was responsible for the transport in the expedition, which included several large trucks and a Landrover. The vehicles were parked on the front lawn for some time, then everyone disappeared into the desert for several months.

Conditions were arduous. The sealed road stopped at Wubin, on the edges of the wheatbelt. From there on, for more than a thousand kilometres, the roads were dirt and very rough. They drove to Nullagine (when Irwin slept on the verandah of the pub) then on to Marble Bar. From there they headed east to Balfour Downs, Jigalong Mission, then through the Rabbit Proof Fence into what was fairly unexplored country. There were no tracks and the vehicles had to be pushed through scrub. There were many punctures and progress was only eight or ten miles per day - about the same that could have been achieved with horses. Tyres and fuel were the chief items consumed.

There were extensive sand dunes which were a major problem with the heavy vehicles, then later areas which had been burned out. These burned areas had thousands of fire-hardened stakes. Tough on tyres.

The Rudall River was reached 72 miles after crossing the Rabbit Proof Fence, after nearly three weeks. Travelling along this river Spencer Compton noted green schists, gneiss and breccias. These were not the sort of rocks they were seeking at all, not when they were sent there by an oil company. Spencer thought they had some potential for gold. The Telfer mine is now a bit to the north of the expedition's route, and is one of the largest and most remote goldmines in Australia.

One hundred and three miles after crossing the Rabbit Proof Fence, a camp was established where a creek entered the Rudall River. This creek was named Poynton Creek by Spencer Compton. It was the base camp for the expedition's exploration of the Mt Sears Range and Rooney Creek. Six miles further down the Rudall River the expedition was abandoned and they returned to Perth in time for Christmas, 1954.

In 1997, Charles had a contract to do some mapping in the Paterson Province, as the Rudall River area is now known to geologists. He was working on a platinum project about 100km south and west of the 1954 expedition route. When reviewing geological reports and maps, he found a "Poynton Formation" and the a "Poynton Terrain". Irwin's name is up in lights, at least for the geological fraternity in that area. It is not set in concrete though, as formation names are changed whenever the geological thinking is revised.

When up in the Rudall, Charles also saw many meteorite craters similar to those found by the 1954 expedition. The craters were then quite fresh, and the expedition dug out a crater in the expectation of finding a meteorite at the bottom. In this they were disappointed, as was Charles when he excavated a similar crater in 1997. Charles's thinking is that a vast swarm of possibly ice meteorites impacted the Rudall area shortly before 1954. The craters extend over at least 100km, and with a density of several per square kilometre. The craters are uniformly about a metre deep and five metres in diameter. The gneisses in the bottom of the craters are shattered and crumble in the hand, and fragments have been thrown up to ten metres from the crater.

After the expedition, Irwin returned to the spare parts business. He worked for Attwoods for several more years, then joined Western Motors, who were Volkswagen dealers. This was a smaller operation and he would run the parts section by himself on Saturday mornings. I would often go in and spend the morning at his work in Hay St, Subiaco.

In 1961, he again changed jobs to become the manager of spare parts at James Clay Motors in Nedlands. This dealership was a new Holden dealer - previously they had been selling second-hand cars. Irwin found he was managing only himself and that the place was a bit of a shambles. The owner had recently been killed in an aircraft accident and the business was losing money. He decided to leave early in 1962 and to get out of the motor trade. The chosen new career was as a shopkeeper.

Grantham Street in Floreat Park had become a major road since Irwin and Ailsa had purchased the house in 1950. One of my friends was killed on the way home from school, and in any case, there were plans to send the sons to Hale School in 1960. In 1961 this school was due to relocate to Wembley Downs. The sensible choice was to build a new house handy to this school, on a quiet street in Wembley Downs. In doing so, they could also realize the capital tied up in the Floreat Park house, especially as Irwin was eligible for a War Service Loan on very low (about 3%) interest rates. The house in Floreat Park was sold for £5600.

Three lots were purchased in Wembley Downs. A pair was bought on Weaponess Road, a corner site which Irwin and Ailsa would be suitable for shops. Their intention was to build several shops, operate one themselves and let another. These plans fell through because the Perth Road Board (now City of Stirling) refused to change the zoning of the lots for this purpose. The other lot was at 51 Buxton Road, where they went ahead and built a two-bedroom house for £2700 on a half acre site costing £800. The lot was purchased for cash while the house was financed by a War Service Loan on a £250 deposit.

The balance was kept in the bank and later used for the purchase of a shop.

In February 1962 Irwin resigned from James Clay Motors and bought a mixed business at 155 Broadway, Nedlands. This was taken over from Bruce White and came complete with a middle-aged woman employee, Mollie. Aspects of this business are described in the biographical material on Ailsa Poynton.

The shop was not a money-making affair. In an era which saw the expansion of the supermarket, this business was attempting to compete with major chain stores on price and variety in a tiny space only six metres square. The turnover and profitability gradually declined, and accounts for the period showed that the couple were making perhaps £20 per week when both were working as much as 12 hour days, seven days per week. Both the older sons also worked there after school and on Saturday mornings.

Two vehicles had to be run to allow lengthy opening hours and something resembling normal family life. Neither of the parents was ever home before 6pm, and it was usually Ailsa who went home early to cook for the family. Irwin would come home after 8pm. Meals had a monotonous similarity - usually steak, peas and potatoes. This lack of variety was despite the store selling quite a variety of vegetables, a considerable proportion of which would spoil and were thrown out.

The operating cost of two vehicles between Nedlands and Wembley Downs, and the time taken in travelling, dictated that the family shift to a rented house closer to Nedlands. This was at 54 Watkins Road, Claremont, down the street from Nina and her two sons at 2 Watkins Road.

The family spent two years in Claremont, renting out the house in Wembley Downs. This resulted in a lot of travel for Tony and Charles to school in Wembley Downs. The rental arrangements were unsatisfactory and ultimately the family moved back to Wembley Downs in early 1965.

The impact of the shop was to destroy family unity and self-respect. The constant travelling and absence from home wore down the enthusiasm of all members and resulted discipline problems with the sons. These culminated with the experiments with rockets and explosives by myself (Charles) which resulted in all the rear windows of the house being blown out and my expulsion from Hale School. I had not liked the nature of private Anglican education for most of the time I was there, and the move to Perth Modern School was highly beneficial to me.

The shop was sold in 1968 for a fraction of its purchase price in 1962. By that time I was a student at the University of Western Australia and found many new interests more fascinating than spending afternoons behind the counter. Ailsa and Irwin considered this a liberation from a life constantly tied to the counter and where they could never take a day off.

Irwin had undertaken an agricultural education at Narrogin Agricultural High School. This was provided with the intent no doubt of him managing the Poynton family's various farming enterprises. The remaining property was Bellaranga, of about 26,000 acres in the Morawa region. This enormous piece of land was used to grow wheat and sheep.

As time passed though, it became clear that Irwin was not going to be given this job by the family. Possibly they detected a problem with attitude or competence. Outside managers were always appointed by Hartley Poynton, so finally Irwin decided to buy his own property. In early 1964 a conditional purchase block, Avon Loc. 27671 of 282 acres (114 hectares) was bought southwest of Bakers Hill and about 65km east of Perth. The property had limited fencing which did not even enclose a single paddock, was partially cleared and had a steel-framed shed. The aim was to use this as the nucleus for a property to produce meat for the Perth market.

The property was named "Piangle" after the property established by Alexander Poynton at Illabrook near Ballarat in the 1860s.

To be closer to the property, Irwin got a job in the Wundowie steelworks during 1968. In early 1969 the family moved to a State Housing home in the town, again letting the family home in Wembley Downs. I was away at University, but came to live and work there for a few months in 1969. The pay for Irwin (and Tony and I) was poor and it was a struggle doing any development.

In May 1969, Jennifer Ann Poynton was born at Wooroloo Hospital, an "afterthought" in the family it was said. Jennifer was the fourth child to be apparently conceived in late August, the probable result of celebrating 20 years of marriage.

The steel shed was converted to living quarters better suited to long-term occupation. This did result with some problems with the council, but finally they decided not to notice the illegal conversion of a shed into a house.

Year by year the land was cleared of stumps, rocks and sticks and pastures established. This was all very hard work and after the sale of the shop became the principal preoccupation of Irwin and Ailsa. Irwin retrained as a linesman with Telecom, a secure, public service job which brought him almost unaccustomed income as he strove to improve the property. Ailsa also started work, with a refrigerator factory (Arcus) in Jolimont. Both went to the farm on weekends and during holidays, and great progress was made in development during this period.

In 1973 the adjacent block, Avon loc. 27672, was granted to Irwin and Ailsa under conditional purchase. This brought the farm up to a more economic size of 540 acres (about 220 Ha), and they commenced clearing almost immediately. Jim and I spent three weeks in the winter of 1974 building a fence around the eastern half of the new block. This lot was later given to Jim and Tony (in 1984) when Ailsa and Irwin felt it was too much work for them to run such a large property.

Just a couple of days after his 50th birthday, Irwin suffered chest pains and was driven to hospital. He was immediately transferred to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and put under observation. He was fortunate to have been there when he had a major heart attack. This attack greatly weakened him physically and he was kept in intensive care for a protracted period. The impact was not only physical but also psychological, as the realization came to him that he was now a prematurely old man, and might die at any time.

He returned to his work with Telecom after several month's absence, and continued for some years. He even managed to get some long service leave (from Telecom and his time at Wundowie) in about 1980. But continued ill-health dogged him, and he retired early from Telecom at the age of 57 and thereafter was on a sickness pension until he turned 60. He could then receive a war service pension.

In 1981 it became obvious that the house in Wembley Downs was unoccupied for lengthy periods. Ailsa and Irwin would spend weeks or even months at a time on the farm, and at one stage mentioned that I might buy the house from them. As was always the case, I never knew whether or not to take them seriously and it was hard to get any firm answer. I was quite interested in purchasing the house and renting it to a group of travellers or friends.

A telephone call came from my mother. She told me that the house had been sold, and that I should come and remove remaining property from the house. They had sold very quickly for $50,000. This extraordinary decision stunned me, as I had quite a lot of emotional attachment to the house and had done a lot of the landscaping and labouring on an extension. Worse, it was far below its market value, and I felt they were robbing themselves for selling it for at least $15000 (maybe $25000) less than it was worth. I went and cleared out my old room.

This money was quickly spent. A large new shed was erected on the farm, as were fancy new stockyards. A flock of sheep was purchased at premium prices of about $20 each. A new car was bought for mother, and a new light truck for Irwin.

From then on, Irwin and Ailsa lived full-time on the farm, occasionally visiting Perth and on very rare occasions going off somewhere for a little holiday. They still had their daughter, Jenny at home, who went to Chidlow Primary by the school bus. Irwin and Ailsa lived on their pensions and dabbled with raising cattle and the occasional crop of hay. Their life seemed to become more and more sedentary.

Irwin had continued health problems, mainly to do with fluid retention in his lungs. He was on continuing medication for that condition and for heart pain. I was concerned that his condition might suddenly decline and result in his death.

In 1978, the youngest son Jim married Wendy May, and their daughter Julia Michelle was born on January 18, 1979. Jim and Wendy firstly lived next to Irwin and Ailsa in Wembley Downs, renting 53 Buxton Road from a neighbour who was overseas. Irwin helped them buy a house in Craigie (a northern suburb) and they then moved to a bigger house in Kingsley. This house was then sold and Jim and Wendy moved up to the farm, where they built a new kit home on the land Irwin and Ailsa had given them.

Jim's two children were Julia and Catrina (born 1980) and they spent a great deal of time with their grandparents, who were the closest neighbours as well.

During 1987 and maybe earlier, Ailsa had intermittent abdominal pains which defied medical diagnosis. By the time she reached a doctor the pain would disappear. Tests failed to reveal any possible cause.

Late in January, 1988, the pains returned very intensely, and Ailsa was taken to hospital in agony. The condition was pancreatitis, usually precipitated by obesity. Ailsa was certainly overweight, from years of rich diet and declining activity.

After two operations, her condition declined and she died on Jan 31, 1988 at the age of 61 years.

Ailsa's death, Irwin was left a widower. He had the company of his grandchildren and Jim and Wendy, but his isolation and generally antisocial disposition left him without any female friends. His time was spent alone, and he appeared to lose interest in the farm. The fences and general appearance gradually declined. He did take a couple of journeys to the East though, something he had never done while he was together with Ailsa.

The first of the journeys was in July, 1988, to attend Jenny's marriage to Christopher Pratt in Melbourne. The whole family drove over in a convey of three vehicles. Yukari and I were in my van, Jenny was in a car previously belonging to Ailsa, and Jim was in his Mitsubishi Colt. We also had a number of others with us, and the total party was about ten people. We stopped in to see Joan Stokes (Irwin's sister) in Adelaide, and continued to Bordertown to see Muriel Compton, and finally to Melbourne.

The wedding was a rather quiet affair, with only about fifteen people. A day or so later Yukari and I took Irwin with us through East Gippland, up the Snowy River to Jindabyne, to Canberra and on to Sydney. After a few days sightseeing in Sydney, a city he had not seen for forty years, he felt he had to return to Western Australia to look after his cows.

The other journey was undertaken in late 1991, to see his sister Joan in Adelaide again, and to again visit Muriel Compton. Muriel is the estranged wife of Ailsa's brother George, and she and Irwin had always been good friends. Irwin flew to Adelaide, the first flight he had taken since a tumultuous journey from Kalgoorlie to Norseman in 1949. He found flying had changed a lot in character. After being away for about ten days, he was back at the farm again.

Another proposed journey was to Japan with Yukari and myself in September 1990. I was willing to pay, and felt it was high time he went and saw for himself the dramatic changes since he left in 1948. He thought it too difficult - he didn't want the hassle, he didn't have a passport, there wasn't enough money. So he didn't go.

I did not travel up to the farm at all frequently, especially in summer. Yukari was not enthusiastic and its a bit lonely doing these things by yourself. Occasionally, though, Irwin would come to visit me. His last visit was in May, 1992.

During that visit, when he stayed for a couple of hours and chatted about world issues, we were discussing the Americans' sympathy with Iraq until the Iraqis invaded Kuwait in August 1990. I compared this with the general fraternising of the Western powers and Japan prior to World War Two. He agreed, then told me a story.

During 1935 a Japanese navy fleet visited Perth. Irwin's stepfather, JJ Poynton, was Lord Mayor of Perth at the time and a very welcome guest on the ships. So welcome, in fact, that he was invited to bring his sons and many of the senior boys from their school, Christchurch Grammar School, to inspect the ships. Irwin was the youngest boy by far to be shown over the ships, and received rather special attention as the Lord Mayor's son. After the inspection, the officers, one of whom was a Japanese prince, were invited to the Poynton home in Richardson Road, Claremont.

The officers came around in the evening in full uniform, with their swords. Under Japanese etiquette, though, one did not wear the sword into the house in which you were an honoured guest. In Japanese noblemen's houses there was a special sword rack. In the Poynton house, the umbrella stand in the hall had to do. Irwin had clear memories of all the swords in the stand.

This was a wonderful little story. I wondered who the Japanese prince was who was entertained by J.J. Poynton. Was he the younger brother of the Emperor? It is a question worth answering and apparently the visit was widely reported and photographs published in the "West Australian" at the time. In any case, I thought this and a lot of other recollections of my father were worthy of being recorded on videotape. I decided I would take my camera up the farm after I had completed my academic work for the semester, and conduct some lengthy interviews.

My examinations at Curtin University finished in early July, 1992. I was about to have three weeks relaxing and planned to go and interview Dad.

On Sunday, July 5th, I had a call to say that Tony had found him unconscious in bed, and he was being taken to hospital by ambulance. I rang St John's to be told that he was being transferred directly to Royal Perth Hospital. I went in and found the rest of the family waiting at the emergency section. Irwin was very groggy, but responded slightly to questions. The doctors thought that he had possibly taken an overdose of some of the many tablets in his bedside cabinet. They decided to pump out his stomache, which is unpleasant to watch, so we left.

The stomache pump was not the answer and the doctors came to the conclusion that he had had a stroke. He was placed in intensive care under observation. Because he had vomited then aspirated the vomit during his stroke, there was a problem with pneumonia. An aspirator was fitted and he was supplied oxygen to keep up his blood oxygen levels. There was a lot of medical electronics around, reminiscent of Ailsa's death four years earlier. I felt that the prognosis was poor, and so too did the young female doctor who was looking after him.

The family spent much of Monday visiting, and came again on Tuesday. The situation seemed really hopeless and the doctors were planning to take him off oxygen. He was struggling to breathe and obviously the pneumonia would kill him. I placed my hand on his forehead, murmured "Goodbye", paused a little while and left. I knew I would never see Dad alive again. He died shortly after midnight on the morning Wednesday, July 8, 1992. He was buried in the same grave as Ailsa on Saturday, July 10, by a civil ceremony. Tony, Jim, myself and a friend of Dad's carried the coffin from the hearse to the graveside. It was a short, heavy journey.

That afternoon we had a wake at my home at 78 Blencowe St, West Leederville, where I got to know relatives with whom I had long since lost contact.

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