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Ernie further. Nonetheless, he recalled some memories of that time and of his great-grandfather,
that remarkable little old man known as Dirty Dick.
Ernie said: 'When we went to Australia in 1922 - my mother, father and myself - it was because
my mother wanted to see her father, Jack. She said: "We must go. He's getting older". She said
she'd probably never see him again - which was the truth. We were there for six months, as my
father took six months' leave. We stayed in boarding-houses and with some relations. We went
to Sydney once. The ship we were on going over was called the Commonwealth, P & 0, and
my grandfather, Jack, was there to meet us. He came to the boat. My mother said: "There's my
father!" He was 60 then. We saw him a few times, but my mother didn't want to meet his
second wife. She wouldn't go to his house. She just saw him. He came to see us at Auntie
Jane's (Elizabeth Jane) or at Mary Ann's (Mary Ann Regelsen). We met them, but nobody else,
I think. We went to a shop - one of them had a shop. Jack was living in Footscray then. He was
a short man, looked like his father, with a biggish nose and no beard or whiskers. Auntie Jane
was timid and quiet. The old man was living with her, with his daughter. His wife was dead. He
was 92 when we were there... I remember a story they told about him. In his home there was a
fireplace made of stone. He said it wasn't standing square - it was lop-sided. He said so to his
daughter Jane. She said: "It's been like that for 50 years. How can you say such a thing?" One
day they came home and found he'd knocked down the fireplace to make it square. He said
he'd rebuild it, but he never did. So they had to get somebody in to rebuild the fireplace again in
stone... I remember him sitting on the verandah of their house in Footscray, and my mother was
also there, and my father. His sight wasn't so good. Somebody would walk past the front of the
house and say: "Hallo, Dick!" And he'd say to my mother (he never wore glasses): "I can see a
blur. But I can't see who it is. Who is it?" My mother would say: "That's so-and-so". Somebody
that she knew. And he'd say: "Ah, hallo"-whatever the name was. And he smoked a pipe. I
used to fill his pipe for him. He had a stick and stooped a bit. He never gave me any money...
When we came back to Johannesburg from Australia, a lot of the buildings had been blown up
in Mayfair, during the miners' strike in
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1922. But we missed it all. We came back on the Border. It was quite cold. There were
icebergs nearby. My mother corresponded with her father until he died. She sent him a photo -
she sent him money. She was fond of him'.
When, years later, Olive wrote in 1944 to Jack that his grandson, Ernie, had become a
freemason, Jack sent his masonic medai to Ernie in return.
So Ernie Lawless, and Olive and Jim, came to Australia in 1922, and went. As did the novelist,
DH Lawrence, and his wife. They stayed at Thirroul, south of Sydney, in the winter of 1922.
There, in a rented seaside bungalow, he wrote most of his odd Australian novel, Kangaroo.
What Lawrence thought of Australia is partly revealed in letters he wrote during his four-month
stay, and presents us with an outsider's view of Australia and Australians at this time, albeit of
New South Wales and Thirroul - a view that still holds true in part where first-time visitors are
concerned.
He wrote: 'There is a great fascination in Australia... There is something so remote and far off
and utterly indifferent to our European world, in the very air... I feel if I lived all my life in
Australia I should never know anybody - though they are all very friendly. But one feels one
doesn't want to talk to any of them. The people are so crude in their feelings - and they only
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