Where it all began
Kev first met Eil in the years immediately after the Second World War. Their story is one of a suburban life lived in the one house over fifty odd years. an ordinary life if you like, but one with a richness that all lives contain.
Kevin John Capelin
Kevin was born on 20 July 1921 at home in Wardell in northern NSW . He was the fourth of six children to Laurence Capelin and Ellen Kilcoyne. Elder siblings were Laurie, Esma and Nat. His younger siblings were Cyril and Rita.
He lived in Sydney with Ellen at Leichhardt (Sydney) for the first four years of his life until 1925 when Ellen returned to Wardell.
Kev grew up on the banks of the Richmond River at 102 Pimlico Road, Wardell experiencing a typical farmlife of hard work and play among canefields, cattle and bush. With his brothers and sisters, Kev rode their horse, Silver to primary school at Wardell Parish Catholic School.
After primary school, Ellen took Kevin to Sydney where they lived at 11 Station Street, Petersham from 1932 to 1936 (Sydney) with Ellen’s sister, Aunt Liz and Phil Maher and cousin Kath Maher from age 12 to 16 to finish his schooling.
There, Kev lived with the Kilcoynes and experienced city life for the first time and worked in various jobs associated with the cab business.
In his later teens, Kev moved back to Wardell to work on the farm, cutting and hauling cane. As a teenager, Kev’s life was full of football, swimming in the Richmond River and attending local dances and discovering girls. Also at this time, Kev became a favourite uncle to Esma’s tribe of children at Meerchaum Vale, who were biting at his heels.
By the time Kev was 20, the Japanese were getting closer and in 1942 Kev put his age up a year and, with many of his mates, enlisted in the army at Wardell on 1 January 1942. (Service No. NX81411). He chose the Signal Corps to be with his mate Bluey Creighton and spent the next couple of years training in many parts of the country including Atherton and Sydney. On one memorable trip, he accompanied a shipment of military gear to Darwin, via Adelaide, the Ghan train to Alice Springs and truck to Darwin. His battalion finally saw action in the much-criticised Borneo campaign. He landed at Balikpapan on 1 July 1945, where 560 Australians lost their lives, just six weeks before the end of the Pacific war. He was discharged from the army on 5 April 1946 at Enoggera.
Before marrying Eileen in April 1949, Kevin lived in Elaroo Street, Morningside.
He lived in Sydney with Ellen at Leichhardt (Sydney) for the first four years of his life until 1925 when Ellen returned to Wardell.
Kev grew up on the banks of the Richmond River at 102 Pimlico Road, Wardell experiencing a typical farmlife of hard work and play among canefields, cattle and bush. With his brothers and sisters, Kev rode their horse, Silver to primary school at Wardell Parish Catholic School.
After primary school, Ellen took Kevin to Sydney where they lived at 11 Station Street, Petersham from 1932 to 1936 (Sydney) with Ellen’s sister, Aunt Liz and Phil Maher and cousin Kath Maher from age 12 to 16 to finish his schooling.
There, Kev lived with the Kilcoynes and experienced city life for the first time and worked in various jobs associated with the cab business.
In his later teens, Kev moved back to Wardell to work on the farm, cutting and hauling cane. As a teenager, Kev’s life was full of football, swimming in the Richmond River and attending local dances and discovering girls. Also at this time, Kev became a favourite uncle to Esma’s tribe of children at Meerchaum Vale, who were biting at his heels.
By the time Kev was 20, the Japanese were getting closer and in 1942 Kev put his age up a year and, with many of his mates, enlisted in the army at Wardell on 1 January 1942. (Service No. NX81411). He chose the Signal Corps to be with his mate Bluey Creighton and spent the next couple of years training in many parts of the country including Atherton and Sydney. On one memorable trip, he accompanied a shipment of military gear to Darwin, via Adelaide, the Ghan train to Alice Springs and truck to Darwin. His battalion finally saw action in the much-criticised Borneo campaign. He landed at Balikpapan on 1 July 1945, where 560 Australians lost their lives, just six weeks before the end of the Pacific war. He was discharged from the army on 5 April 1946 at Enoggera.
Before marrying Eileen in April 1949, Kevin lived in Elaroo Street, Morningside.
Eileen Mary Capelin
Eileen was born on 26 May 1918 at 47 Railway Street, Petersham NSW where her siblings Dot and Jack were also born.
She was the second of five children to John Hill and Margaret Whalan: Dorothy 5 February 1916, John E. (Jack), 11 April 1921, Lorna and Stan, 15 December 1923.
The Hills and Whalans can be traced back to Co. Leitrim in the north and Co. Killkenny in the south of Ireland. (see link)
She spent her early years at Grandmother Teresa (Revitt) Whalan’s home at 63 Railway Street, Petersham before the family moved to 76 Brighton Street, Petersham, where Lorna and Stan were born. (Cousins Kate (Revitt) and Frank O’Reilly lived next door.)
Her cousin, Marie (Madden), daughter of Beatrice Hill and James Madden, and Kevin Nash would later also live at 63 Railway Street.
The Hill family members were generally big people until Eileen came along. Tiny tot Eileen became known as Totty at school and it stuck. At the Cathedral School At St Mary’s in Sydney, she was a bright student who loved English, particularly poetry, obtaining an “A” in English in her intermediate exam in her last year of school.
During the war, Eileen and some of her very close friends wanted to work for the Postmaster-Generals Department, where her father worked, as telephonists. She dearly wanted to work with her friends, but her height and reach were a problem to work the lines and plugs. Whereas some people put up their age in order to participate, Eil had to stretch her arms to qualify to be a telephonist.
Also during the war, Eileen learnt to drive large PMG trucks delivering mail around Sydney and later, Perth. The truck Eil drove was known as the truck with the invisible driver because she was hidden by the steering wheel.
While Eileen retained her driver’s licence for many years she rarely drove, keeping her licence current for emergency purposes.
Eileen returned from Perth to Brisbane and in 1949 she was an Accounting Machinist and lived at 17 Isedale Street, Wooloowin.
She was the second of five children to John Hill and Margaret Whalan: Dorothy 5 February 1916, John E. (Jack), 11 April 1921, Lorna and Stan, 15 December 1923.
The Hills and Whalans can be traced back to Co. Leitrim in the north and Co. Killkenny in the south of Ireland. (see link)
She spent her early years at Grandmother Teresa (Revitt) Whalan’s home at 63 Railway Street, Petersham before the family moved to 76 Brighton Street, Petersham, where Lorna and Stan were born. (Cousins Kate (Revitt) and Frank O’Reilly lived next door.)
Her cousin, Marie (Madden), daughter of Beatrice Hill and James Madden, and Kevin Nash would later also live at 63 Railway Street.
The Hill family members were generally big people until Eileen came along. Tiny tot Eileen became known as Totty at school and it stuck. At the Cathedral School At St Mary’s in Sydney, she was a bright student who loved English, particularly poetry, obtaining an “A” in English in her intermediate exam in her last year of school.
During the war, Eileen and some of her very close friends wanted to work for the Postmaster-Generals Department, where her father worked, as telephonists. She dearly wanted to work with her friends, but her height and reach were a problem to work the lines and plugs. Whereas some people put up their age in order to participate, Eil had to stretch her arms to qualify to be a telephonist.
Also during the war, Eileen learnt to drive large PMG trucks delivering mail around Sydney and later, Perth. The truck Eil drove was known as the truck with the invisible driver because she was hidden by the steering wheel.
While Eileen retained her driver’s licence for many years she rarely drove, keeping her licence current for emergency purposes.
Eileen returned from Perth to Brisbane and in 1949 she was an Accounting Machinist and lived at 17 Isedale Street, Wooloowin.
Kev and Eil's Life Together
Kev had met Eil during the war years but did not marry till some years later. There’s a great story there of star-crossed lovers, of slow foxtrots at the YWCA in Sydney, of letters passing in the mail informing each other of their respective broken engagements. He was discharged in Brisbane in April 1946 and Eil had moved to Western Australia. Kev wooed, won and eventually married Eileen in St Joseph’s Catholic Church Belmore, Sydney on Saturday 16 April 1949.
Kev and Eil purchased 45 Moolabar Street, Morningside – a war service home, for £1,500 in 1949. (It was sold in 2008 for $410,000). Here, far from family and friends in Sydney and Wardell, they would live for the next 50 years, making a new life and new friends.
Two boys were born, Stephen in February 1950 and Michael in August 1951. Kev settled into work at the Queensland Cooperative Bacon Assoc Ltd (Atlas Bacon), Murrarie from 1946 to December 1959 where he worked on the floor and later drove a delivery van to the various delicatessens round the southside where strong friendships were forged with the Oxenhams, the Smiths and the Jensens. One of the boys’ favourite trips was to travel in the back of the refrigerated van, eating cheerios between stops. Eileen washed nappies and Kev’s overalls in the old copper under the house, carrying hot water up and down stairs to the bathtub.
Kev was a strict parent and, while probably fair, felt that young boys needed firm discipline. The strap behind the kitchen door got plenty of use in their young days for minor faults like ‘answering back’ and ‘crying for nothing’. While one of Kev’s favourite saying was ‘This hurts me more than it hurts you!’ Perhaps he was applying his own father’s methods before he knew better; or was simply applying the same treatment all children received at school from the Catholic Nuns and later the Christian Brothers.
Kev and Eil were great supporters of schooling, both academic and sport and never missed a speech night or sporting event. Kev’s calls of ‘Run hard!’ and ‘They can’t run without legs!’ from the sideline could not be ignored.
Kev loved his leisure – fishing, golf, football, drinking, body surfing (the champion) and bowls. He and Eil were great supporters of Easts Rugby League Club. In winter months, both Saturdays and Sundays seemed to be spent either at Langland’s Park where the crowds were six deep round the roped-off oval or later at Lang Park, after mass of course.
For holidays, there were annual trips either to Caloundra or later Currumbin where Newcastle Flats was a pilgrimage site to be spent with aunts and uncles from Sydney. In between there were regular trips back to visit their parents, and Kev’s sisters Esma and Rita and their families particularly the Gahan gang at Meerschaum Vale, where Kev would take up his friendship with Steve, Vince, Rob, Norm, Laurie and Rita. One memorable holiday trip was to the Snowy Mountains in the Mini Minor camping under a tarp and travelling the dirt mountain roads somehow squeezing foreign hitchhikers and a stray dog into the car along the way.
Kev’s work at this time moved from selling smallgoods, to selling, flour, cake mixes and other cooking ingredients for Simpsons & then RM Gows from 1960 to 1971. This new work involved more extensive travel to country towns and he was often away from home for up to two weeks at a time. In these absences, Eil continued to wash, clean and feed the boys, but this was a difficult time for them both.
This new work also meant that Kev could get a new car every couple of years, which he loved. Gone were the Morris and VWs and we saw a procession of Holdens pass through the family from the EH through the HR to his favourite, the blue HK Monaro. It was the closest Kev got to a sports car since his early Standard soft top convertible Tourer Q269-116 he purchased for £190.00 in 1948.
With the boys at St Laurence’s, Eil returned to work that she loved with the PMG as a comptometer operator. For the time she was at the cutting edge of technology.
While Eil was an expert knitter, Kev was an avid reader. He was a member of the Stones Corner library and he seemed to be always reading a book or had his head in a newspaper, and not the sports pages either. Ideas and politics were as important to him as sport and information needed to be shared and discussed and tested to see what the truth was. The kitchen table at Moolabar Street was as interesting as the lecture theatres for learning and exploring.
Kev and Eil did not push their sons in any particular direction. They were always there to guide and advise but ultimately they decided their course in life. Maybe they were just happy that they weren’t choosing to be smallgoods or flour salesmen.
When he turned 50, Kev changed jobs again, giving up the travelling to become a postman with the Postmaster General’s Deparment (PMG) at Stones Corner and deliver mail and good cheer to the folk of Coorparoo. He pushed his bike and dodged dogs for ten years until his retirement on 28 August 1981 when he was 60.
He and Eil travelled in Australia, Asia, the Pacific, and camped up and down the East Coast of Australia, enjoying good health and freedom for a good 10 years. They loved life and had many interests including theatre, classical music, politics, dancing, camping, the beach and bowls. Kev joined the South Brisbane Club and later the Cannon Hills Club where he collected trophies and made new and lasting friendships with Noel and Bev Taylor, Joy and Gennie Mahonashan and Mort and Marguerite Howes.
Eil loved life and she was a superlative and prolific knitter and cook, particularly of fruit cakes.
Kev and Eil loved their grandchildren. Between 1979 and 1985 Steve & Andrea and Mick & Mally produced five grandchildren (Adam, Jessica, Joshua, Elizabeth and Nicholas). Eil was always a stickler for good manners and emphasised the importance of politeness and caring for others. She believed that despite changing times, good manners should never change. Eileen would have some of the grandchildren for a week’s stay. She trained them for a week using a series of hand signals and gestures that were only understood between them. At several following dinners there was the delightful performance of Eil communicating with the children with winks, nods and hand signals with responses of ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘please pass the butter’ on cue.
Eileen was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999 and died peacefully at home surrounded by family on 15 January 2001. Attached is the funeral service for Eileen.
Kev suffered his first heart attack in 1991 when he was 70 and underwent a couple of open heart and bypass operations. During the second of these, he clinically died on the operating table. He often recalled the peace he felt as he was’ lifted above the table towards a bright light and felt his cares peeling away like an onion skin’. From this experience, Kev never had a fear of death and, while he felt that every day after that was a bonus, he know that when his time came to die, that he could face it with some ‘experience’. Kev suffered a stroke in January 2005 and, although he recovered mobility and speech, he was unable to live independently. He died at St John’s Home, Toowong on 5 May, 2007.
Kev and Eil are buried together at the Mt Gravatt Lawn Cemetery.
Kev and Eil were truly a gentle couple. They sought and found happiness in their lives, they were content with what they had been given and loved the company of others.
Kev and Eil purchased 45 Moolabar Street, Morningside – a war service home, for £1,500 in 1949. (It was sold in 2008 for $410,000). Here, far from family and friends in Sydney and Wardell, they would live for the next 50 years, making a new life and new friends.
Two boys were born, Stephen in February 1950 and Michael in August 1951. Kev settled into work at the Queensland Cooperative Bacon Assoc Ltd (Atlas Bacon), Murrarie from 1946 to December 1959 where he worked on the floor and later drove a delivery van to the various delicatessens round the southside where strong friendships were forged with the Oxenhams, the Smiths and the Jensens. One of the boys’ favourite trips was to travel in the back of the refrigerated van, eating cheerios between stops. Eileen washed nappies and Kev’s overalls in the old copper under the house, carrying hot water up and down stairs to the bathtub.
Kev was a strict parent and, while probably fair, felt that young boys needed firm discipline. The strap behind the kitchen door got plenty of use in their young days for minor faults like ‘answering back’ and ‘crying for nothing’. While one of Kev’s favourite saying was ‘This hurts me more than it hurts you!’ Perhaps he was applying his own father’s methods before he knew better; or was simply applying the same treatment all children received at school from the Catholic Nuns and later the Christian Brothers.
Kev and Eil were great supporters of schooling, both academic and sport and never missed a speech night or sporting event. Kev’s calls of ‘Run hard!’ and ‘They can’t run without legs!’ from the sideline could not be ignored.
Kev loved his leisure – fishing, golf, football, drinking, body surfing (the champion) and bowls. He and Eil were great supporters of Easts Rugby League Club. In winter months, both Saturdays and Sundays seemed to be spent either at Langland’s Park where the crowds were six deep round the roped-off oval or later at Lang Park, after mass of course.
For holidays, there were annual trips either to Caloundra or later Currumbin where Newcastle Flats was a pilgrimage site to be spent with aunts and uncles from Sydney. In between there were regular trips back to visit their parents, and Kev’s sisters Esma and Rita and their families particularly the Gahan gang at Meerschaum Vale, where Kev would take up his friendship with Steve, Vince, Rob, Norm, Laurie and Rita. One memorable holiday trip was to the Snowy Mountains in the Mini Minor camping under a tarp and travelling the dirt mountain roads somehow squeezing foreign hitchhikers and a stray dog into the car along the way.
Kev’s work at this time moved from selling smallgoods, to selling, flour, cake mixes and other cooking ingredients for Simpsons & then RM Gows from 1960 to 1971. This new work involved more extensive travel to country towns and he was often away from home for up to two weeks at a time. In these absences, Eil continued to wash, clean and feed the boys, but this was a difficult time for them both.
This new work also meant that Kev could get a new car every couple of years, which he loved. Gone were the Morris and VWs and we saw a procession of Holdens pass through the family from the EH through the HR to his favourite, the blue HK Monaro. It was the closest Kev got to a sports car since his early Standard soft top convertible Tourer Q269-116 he purchased for £190.00 in 1948.
With the boys at St Laurence’s, Eil returned to work that she loved with the PMG as a comptometer operator. For the time she was at the cutting edge of technology.
While Eil was an expert knitter, Kev was an avid reader. He was a member of the Stones Corner library and he seemed to be always reading a book or had his head in a newspaper, and not the sports pages either. Ideas and politics were as important to him as sport and information needed to be shared and discussed and tested to see what the truth was. The kitchen table at Moolabar Street was as interesting as the lecture theatres for learning and exploring.
Kev and Eil did not push their sons in any particular direction. They were always there to guide and advise but ultimately they decided their course in life. Maybe they were just happy that they weren’t choosing to be smallgoods or flour salesmen.
When he turned 50, Kev changed jobs again, giving up the travelling to become a postman with the Postmaster General’s Deparment (PMG) at Stones Corner and deliver mail and good cheer to the folk of Coorparoo. He pushed his bike and dodged dogs for ten years until his retirement on 28 August 1981 when he was 60.
He and Eil travelled in Australia, Asia, the Pacific, and camped up and down the East Coast of Australia, enjoying good health and freedom for a good 10 years. They loved life and had many interests including theatre, classical music, politics, dancing, camping, the beach and bowls. Kev joined the South Brisbane Club and later the Cannon Hills Club where he collected trophies and made new and lasting friendships with Noel and Bev Taylor, Joy and Gennie Mahonashan and Mort and Marguerite Howes.
Eil loved life and she was a superlative and prolific knitter and cook, particularly of fruit cakes.
Kev and Eil loved their grandchildren. Between 1979 and 1985 Steve & Andrea and Mick & Mally produced five grandchildren (Adam, Jessica, Joshua, Elizabeth and Nicholas). Eil was always a stickler for good manners and emphasised the importance of politeness and caring for others. She believed that despite changing times, good manners should never change. Eileen would have some of the grandchildren for a week’s stay. She trained them for a week using a series of hand signals and gestures that were only understood between them. At several following dinners there was the delightful performance of Eil communicating with the children with winks, nods and hand signals with responses of ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘please pass the butter’ on cue.
Eileen was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999 and died peacefully at home surrounded by family on 15 January 2001. Attached is the funeral service for Eileen.
Kev suffered his first heart attack in 1991 when he was 70 and underwent a couple of open heart and bypass operations. During the second of these, he clinically died on the operating table. He often recalled the peace he felt as he was’ lifted above the table towards a bright light and felt his cares peeling away like an onion skin’. From this experience, Kev never had a fear of death and, while he felt that every day after that was a bonus, he know that when his time came to die, that he could face it with some ‘experience’. Kev suffered a stroke in January 2005 and, although he recovered mobility and speech, he was unable to live independently. He died at St John’s Home, Toowong on 5 May, 2007.
Kev and Eil are buried together at the Mt Gravatt Lawn Cemetery.
Kev and Eil were truly a gentle couple. They sought and found happiness in their lives, they were content with what they had been given and loved the company of others.
funeral_-_complete.doc | |
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