Old Film:: Auntie Betty & the Car (1950s)
I’ve never lived under the illusion that my father’s sisters were anything but liberated, capable and determined. My grandfather had an awful lot of girls before he produced a few sons and there doesn’t seem to be any reference to a world where women were less capable or less deserving. This photograph is scanned from a 6cm x 9cm film negative made by my grandmother Elvie Ruth Bonner (1901-1986). I am led to understand this is auntie Betty behind the wheel of a car – a Vauxhall. I don’t know if she owned it, but I’d be surprised if she didn’t. This photograph was made in Tasmania’s rugged South West sometime around the early 1950s. Betty is still alive and living in Melbourne.
The next photograph, from memory, is most likely to be Aunties Parley, Betty, Teeny and Pat (not in that order). The photograph was also taken by my grandmother sometime in the 1930s. They are a lot older than my father and he was born in 1933. I like the composition of this photograph because it would have been very simple, if unsophisticated, to the girls in the centre of the viewfinder.
