Lloyd Mervin Hodge

Lloyd Mervin was born on the 20th May, 1884 in Gawler, South Australia. He died in Queensland on the 9th April, 1964. Lloyd trained at Roseworthy Agricultural College and in 1905 Lloyd moved to Queensland and took up an 800 acre selection on old Degilbo run in the Burnett District. On the 30th August, 1909 at Didcot, Queensland, he married Emilie Sophia Dobbie, daughter of Alexander Williamson Dobbie and Esther Catherine Elizabeth Wallis. Emilie was born on the 7th January, 1882 at College Park, South Australia. Emilie died on 4th November, 1914 at Bundaberg, Queensland

Lloyd went to war in 1914? expecting to die. He met Joan Grace in England and they married on the 8th January, 1918. Joan came out to Australia as a war bride straight to Central Queensland where she had to make her own bread, etc. Joan was born in England on the 13th December, 1891 and died on the 10th January, 1986 at Ludgershall, UK. According to their son's (Brian) wedding, Lloyd and Joan were living at Buderim in Queensland in 1946.

Parents

Children born to Lloyd and Joan:

• David Lloyd born in Ludgershall, UK on the 20th April 1919 and was killed in action in Syria in 1941.
• Brian was born in Biggendan, Queensland. He married Florence Jean Crawford and they had three children.
• Nancy was born in Rockhampton, Queensland. She married Keith James John Barr in 1958 at Redcliffe, Queensland.
• Margaret was born in Biloeda, Queensland. She married Thomas William Shapcott

Uncle Lloyd Reminisces I was the youngest of a family of ten. A bit redundant probably, but the Victorians believe in large families as part of their orthodoxy. "Replenish the earth", and all that, so that everybody was pleased when another "blessing" arrived - except perhaps the mother who was not consulted, but who was apt to become a chronic invalid in the forties. Earliest recollections go back as far as my third birthday. I remember the crudely painted tin toys I was given, and playing with them, and bending them out of shape on the dining room carpet, but after that there are many gaps with occasional outstanding incidents clear and sharp, until I was seven, when the picture becomes continuous. This would be in 1890 and I quite remember the wonder of seeing the calendar change from 89 to 90 and thinking in a childish way that we were indeed breaking new ground and that any thing might happen now. . . . But I go back to the 1880s again. The world beyond the garden fence was a very different place from today, Consider a moment. There was no electricity, no telephones, motor cars, aeroplanes, radios, gramophones, picture theatres, refrigeration. Tinned foods were not in commercial use, through progressive people had ice boxes. So far as roads were concerned, tar paving and bitumen were unknown. Macadamised roads as they were called were the order of the day. The surfaces were generally pretty rough and either dusty or slushy as the weather changed. Cracked road metal (stone cracked by hand) was laid annually on the worst stretches and roughly rolled in, and God help you if you ran into a patch of metal of a dark night when riding your bike, nasty stuff to fall on. One got about in a variety of vehicles, a whole terminology has disappeared with the coming of the motor car - wagonette, coach, brake, landau, victoria, express, buckboard, dogcart, hansom and dozens of others. These had iron tyres and were drawn by single, double, tandem, unicorn or four in hand depending on type. It you wanted the equivalent of a taxi, you couldn't ring up for it so you asked father when he left for business to arrange for a cab to call at an appointed time, and if he forgot, that was too vexing of him. Public conveyances in Adelaide were principally the horse-drawn tramcars, mostly double-deckers pulled by two horses, who sometimes slipped down in wet weather. Frequently the trams ran off the rails at the curves and the male passengers helped to push them back. Trains were running for limited distances and accommodation consisted of wooden seated carriages, but later first class were provided with upholstery. Telegrams could only be sent from the G.P.O. to principal towns, but the system developed very rapidly. Push bikes were used a good deal, the old penny farthing with first iron and then solid rubber tyres. I remember the first "low bike" being ridden on the Adelaide oval at a cycle race meeting and creating a sensation. It left the old penny farthings standing. Pneumatic tyres were invented in 1897 and cycling on those roads thereafter was more comfortable, believe me. The transition from horse to motor transport was comparatively slow. Early cars, 1900-1902, were liable to refuse to go at awkward times. Wealthy people played about with them as toys and put the fear of God into sundry stray stock on the roads, but gradually doctors and business men ventured and finally about 1909-10 Henry Ford's model T gave them a boost. A wonderful old car that, temperamental too. One old bud told me that when it held him up his unfailing remedy was to piddle on the commutator. Altogether the turn of the century was an exciting time. The Boer war, motorcars, telephones, electric light, the beginnings of the movies, the death of Queen Victoria, the long range rifle and so many other discoveries. In Australia the Commonwealth was born amid much flapdoodle. And in 1903 the Wright brothers flew for short distances. I remember in May 1905 arguing in a railway carriage between Hughenden and Richmond, that we would live to see flying a commonplace. The other travellers did not think so, but in 1908 that laughing Frenchman Bleriot flew the Channel and in 1916 I saw aerial acrobatics in France that made one's hair stand straight up. Now, just fifty years from the Wright bothers' short hops we are flying twenty to thirty thousand feet up at over six hundred miles per hour and talking of rocket flights to the moon! What of the next fifty years? And now John I am past seventy and a grandfather to quite a few. Looking back, I am glad to have lived through one of the most interesting and eventful periods of history, scientific discovery, transport, World Wars, atomic weapons and the cancelling out of war as we've known it, the cold war and communism. I should dearly like to be here to see what happens during the next fifty years, but unless I can overlook it from on high, I am afraid not. 20 Jun 1955 (part of letter to John Lewis Hodge)