‘CHILD OF THE WAR YEARS is my story from the age of about two until my fifteenth birthday. It’s the story that is probably similar for many West Australians born just before or during the years when our fathers went off to England to fight the Nazis for and with the ‘Mother Country.’
Some of the dads were fighting the Japanese in New Guinea, Malaysia and Singapore.
I was very fortunate to have a wonderful grandfather. For those first few years of my life, he was the father figure. My mother and I continued to live in the house that dad had built in Florest, but Pa regularly came to visit us or I stayed with him and Granny at their home in Subiaco. He cooked the best bacon and eggs and Granny taught me to make up stories.
This memoir also contains information about the generations who came to Australia from England and Ireland. Because of them, my siblings and I are forth or fifth generation Australians. Our great grandfather, Charles Mizen, left England, on his own at the age of sixteen. After moving from Brisbane to Sydney and Melbourne, he settled in Perth and established the first Mizen building business. His son, Oliver (our paternal grandfather) was also a builder – a very successful one, also in Subiaco. His four sons worked with him in the family business, Mizen and Sons. With all those building genes, you’d think I could at least hammer a nail in a piece of wood, but no, I missed those genes.
I just tried to work out how many descendents Pop (Oliver Mizen) has/had. It has to be more than fifty.
Come along to the book launch on May 30th and we’ll see if we can work that out.