Feature interview

Violet Peter’s interview is a chatty, funny and moving collection of memories about growing up in her much loved Beauty Point after the First World War. Her father, a returned soldier from the First World War, was able to buy one of the houses built for injured soldiers in Bay Street down at Beauty Point.

This interview, and that of John Carruther’s, provides a wonderful description of these significant houses which are no longer standing. Violet gives a room by room description of her house and a house by house description the families who lived in the other servicemen weatherboard cottages.

Violet recalls how her father was injured in France. “He was buried for a long time before they dug him out and put him on the stretcher to take him to the hospital with a broken leg, but they let him slip off the stretcher and it injured his leg beyond repair and he lost it. He had an artificial leg. Finally he was on a pretty good level, but he was difficult.”

She also remembers the games she played with the children of other returned soldiers and the life long friendships they have maintained, the man who lived in the cave on the water’s edge below Bay Street on the water’s edge and the bravery of her husband in the Second World War.

Hear the complete recording...