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I began my schooling in a private school. Then father got one of his hairdressing clients to get me into the first grade in August. I had already done most of my first grade work and age-wise shouldn't have gotten into school until the next year. I had a uniform and walked to school which I continued to do all my school days except part of high-school. We had one cat, Smutty. Smutty really wasn't well loved by the adult female of the family. The cat was liked to a certain degree but it didn't get as far as being let inside. WALPA Eventually when I was ten years old we went to East Gippsland and my father bought a store there where we worked for quite a few years. It was a general store; part of the history that is gone. The building is still there but it doesn't operate as a business any longer. People are living in it as a home but not operating a business. I think my parents thought of the move as an opportunity. They had looked for awhile; it wasn't the first business they had inspected. The store had been running as an established business for almost 100 years, "The Walpa General Store". They bought it from the Hebe's. Walpa is near Lindenow. It is twelve miles out of Bairnsdale. We were one mile form the Wakwah (Wuk Wuk) Bridge on the Mitchell River. If you know the Mitchell River is involved you'll be able to find it. We lived on Skull Creek; it was supposed to have been the site of a massacre involving local Aboriginals. I don't really know too much about that though as a historian who wrote about the area skirted around the details.