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children who were safely delivered in its midwifery unit. The new mothers would subsequently spend a few days in the care of the small staff of trained nurses, the local GPs calling in each day to check on the recovery of their ‘middy’ cases and on the state of health of other patients booked in for overnight or for longer stays. 7 These other patients would include people who had undergone surgery or treatment in one of the big fully-equipped metropolitan hospitals and who had been discharged after a few days to convalesce in a small private hospital, thereby making room for the admittance of more serious cases.
    My father, Jim Mulcahy, was a young GP new to the area, and at Easter time of 1930 he accompanied a slightly older colleague to Mildon to meet the owner/managers, Sister Millane and Sister Donovan, and to decide whether he might in future refer cases to them. Fortunately my mother rather than her nursing colleague was on duty when my father was introduced. The meeting became a case of love at first sight and within a few months wedding plans were afoot.
    My mother sold her share of Mildon to her business partner and set off for her parents’ home in Hamilton, 300 kilometres northwest of Melbourne, to prepare for the wedding, set to take place on the day after Boxing Day. December 27 had been selected as the wedding date so as not to greatly inconvenience guests travelling from distant places such as Melbourne and having to absent themselves from work for several days.
    Four of my mother’s five brothers, my uncles Bill, Frank, Ray and Leo, were all working in Melbourne and they all travelled to Hamilton together for the wedding in Leo’s newly acquired Essex. The car had not been ‘run in’ and so had to travel at low speed. The fuel for the engine was fed by gravity rather than by a petrol pump, so climbing even modest gradients was something of a problem, with the petrol not keen on flowing uphill from the tank at the rear of the car to the engine in front. My uncles hit on the solution of reversing the car up the hills, with one of them walking in front and another walking behind to explain the situation to any other travellers on the road.
    Having left Melbourne early in the morning of Christmas Day they had not arrived by sunset, and as darkness fell my grandfather set off walking down the Melbourne road swinging a hurricane lantern to guide ‘the boys’ home. He met them at the foot of the hill at the edge of town and was puzzled to see them and their new-fangled motor car facing towards Melbourne rather than towards Hamilton. He was not impressed by Leo’s contraption that had obliged his boys to travel so slowly, and often backwards, all the way from Melbourne!
    The wedding went off without any other hitch and after the ceremony and reception my parents drove to Melbourne and sailed on the
Nairana
for a honeymoon in Tasmania. My mother was terribly seasick and so my father gave some thought to staying and setting up practice in Tasmania. But as he had already bought a house and started up his own practice in Melbourne, where his mother and sister lived and kept house for him, such a dramatic change of plans was not really practicable. So my mother returned, as she had gone over, on the
Nairana
, and was still seasick even after the ship had crossed Bass Strait, steamed up Port Phillip Bay and the Yarra River and had tied up at its berth at North Wharf behind what is now Southern Cross Station.
    My father’s decision to marry had come as quite a shock to his mother who apparently had believed that he would remain at home with her as the comfort of her old age. When he announced his intention of bringing his new wife home, my father persuaded his mother that she should move out and a house about to be built in a nearby suburb was selected for purchase. Building work progressed very slowly, however, and my grandmother and aunt were not able to move into their new