On the way to Tenterfield we tracked down the location of Hallam Road and took the promised selfie. It was a pretty drive, taking us through the beginning of the Great Dividing Range. Tenterfield is on a plateau in the middle of the range. I'm assured you are not in the outback until you get beyond the whole range so Tenterfield is not quite there.

I'd been disappointed that we didn't see any kangaroos on the drive despite the many warning signs, so my cousin Toni and her husband Denis took us out to a park where we were sure to see a few. It was a pretty bumpy ride through the bush - this is what all-wheel drive vehicles are for, not intimidating your neighbors in the suburbs. Although kangaroos were seen, they were not seen by me. (I guess it's not just shooting stars that I'm doomed to miss.) I did see a couple of wallabys and it was a fascinating look at a very different landscape.

Lorna

Lorna Atkins is my mother's youngest sister. She lives in Stanthorpe in the house she and her husband built 63 years ago when they were newly married. I'd hoped she would be able to identify the men in my mother's collection of photos of good-looking men in uniform, but she couldn't be sure about them. She was eight years younger than Hazel and these were very distant memories for her.

She did fill in some surprising details about my parents' marriage. The story we'd always been told was that once Merrill went back to the US and mustered out of the army, Hazel couldn't get a visa to follow him. So he had to go back to Australia to get married. That has always seemed like a grand romantic gesture not entirely in keeping with my father's character.

According to Lorna, there was a fellow in Stanthorpe named Stan Fossey who was courting Hazel. She wrote a letter to Merrill saying she was no longer sure she wanted to go to America, and in fact, she hadn't seen him in so long she wasn't sure she still even liked him. That letter was what prompted him to set sail for Australia. Which is an even more improbably romantic story.