Looking for Neville Pt 1.

So being the youngest of Ethel May's 5 boys has its many pluses and minuses too. The difference between us all spanned 23 years.. and two marriages. Neville was the eldest. And my earliest memory of him is my mother telling me that that Neville was coming up from Sale to visit us. I was about 3 at the time and I still remember Neville and Colleen coming to our home at Chermside and he gave me a toy US Army Jeep.

I was over the moon. Mum get him back more often!

Neville never talked much about his early years, even to his own family. One of his daughters regularly writes to me for more information about her father. (Nev died in 2006) So trying to peel back the years to learn more about my eldest brother has become a sort of mission. This is part 1.

So Neville Lance Boland joined the RAAF, probably to get away from home I reckon and in the following years I found a picture of his 21st birthday cake. It had aeroplanes on it, naturally!

Most of my memories of Nev are hazy until he left the RAAF and came to work with Max at Max's Speedo Electric Service at 87 Logan Road, Woolloongabba in the early sixties. Eventually prior to discharge he was posted to Amberley and I have memories of catching the train to Ipswich with mother and Collen coming to pick us up to have lunch with them. Nev would dart home from the base and join us. He also used to send me B&W pictures of aeroplanes to Clayfield when I was at primary school. Now I never thought about it much at the time, but looking back he was a really good brother.

So, moving forward, during the Zombie Apocalypse I have been sorting  though boxes of family photographs and documents and I came across a letter from my mother to Nev telling him about the preparations for his 21st birthday bash at Hamilton Road Chermside. Off course, I was little more than a gleam in my father's eye then as it was more than two years before I was born.

So here is mother's letter and the cake.

Shot in Malta C1953

RAAF ID card

Check out Nev and his cool glasses.

Double click to enlarge.

What a swell party it must have been.

Aeroplanes, I see my mother's hands here.

There will be more to come, Nev had an amazing life in and after the RAAF.