G is for Gertrude Nellie Gayner Cottam née Honeybone

My Auntie Gert,  27 Dec 1907 - 26 November 1992, married my mother’s brother Phillip Douglas Cottam. She died at 84 years of age, just a month off 85.

We loved to visit our cousins and Aunt and Uncle at Sandmount. We would walk across this lovely orange earth to the innovative home-designed chook sheds. Dad and Uncle Phil would chat away there, whilst we watched all the chooks under the low roof of the poultry farm. 

Other memories I have are of the old house they first lived in there, a small dark building, that would be filled with a cosy glow in the evening when the kerosene lanterns were lit. 

In their new house, Auntie Gert had a beautifully painted dividing screen, she sat by, in what I think of as a sunroom. Also, the kitchen plate rack had a lasting effect on me as I had one built in to our kitchen, due to that memory. 

I remember my tall male cousins and Fleur out riding her horse.

(I was thrilled to see this Facebook post (below) from a relative (husband of 1^st cousin x 1 ) who honoured my Auntie Gert Cottam (Gertrude Nellie Gayner Honeybone). Also known as Ma.) 

Thank you to Mark McNamara for the images and notes, below.

 

Ma Cottam has a special spot at ‘Heritage’. 

We had her funeral service in our back garden almost 3 decades ago when this bright Japanese maple tree, was planted in her memory. 

 

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Ma lives on inside ‘Heritage’ as well, as she did the six matching tapestry seat covers 

for our oak dining setting, which took great patience. 

 

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Ma was a city girl, the daughter of an English hat maker. 

 

 

Honeybone family, Middle Park, Victoria. C 1910

NB: Interesting there are no hats being worn in this image.

(Auntie Gert would have been about 3yo, so she may be the little lass down the front 2nd from left, or if younger, the baby on the lady's knee, on right.)

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Ma did a good job to adapt to much harder country life

 when she married Phillip Cottam.

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Note below from Mark McNamara

Ma Cottam’s gift to ‘Heritage’, was the lions head brass door knocker for our front door. It came from the old Cottam farmhouse, where Phil and Gert started their married life, at Drumanure, just over the creek from Brookfield. Ma had 16 homes after that, and she never put the door knocker up on any of them. 

 

Her husband Phillip met a tragic end at their new property on Labuan Road at Sandmount, where they had worked so hard to establish as a dairy farm, while still raising chooks for egg production. Phillip had a fall out of the back of his old ute, when bringing a lamb in, and later died at Mooroopna Hospital as a result of a head injury he suffered. 

 

The old Holmes door (Heritage) had a plain tin doorknob in the middle, that was swapped with the O’Brien brothers, who had a matching brass lions head knob on their very old Nixon Street home in Shepparton. 

 

An etched glass specialist from Shepparton East made the Heritage red glass panel above the door and the matching etched panels on either side at the top, which were originally plain red. 

 

Ma’s good turn made the 'Heritage' entry complete.