Blanche’s father, Charles Gittins was born in a farming family in the north of England [parents' names and dates not immediately available]. He rarely spoke of his early life, recalling only that he was once chased by an angry bull and escaped by jumping up onto a thorny hedgerow. He emigrated to Western Australia from England in 1886, when he was 24. (The photo of Charles as a young man was supplied by Charles' grandson, Geoffrey Gittins).
By 1888 Charles had joined the gold rush in the arid interior of Western Australia. He soon found, as so many others had before him, that the gold rush was "mainly rush and very little gold." The young Englishman endured the dust and heat of Coolgardie (near Kalgoorlie) for only a short time before a quest for a climate more like that of his birthplace led him to Albany. There, Charles took a job in a brick-yard (Stokes Brick Works, nowadays still operating as the Albany Brick Company located a mile or two from the center of the town near the Albany Circle). He had been working there for a few years when he met his future bride, Mabel Murray.
Continue reading: 2.1.2 Mabel Murray (1875-1950) Background and Youth (-1897)
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2. Blanche Gittins (1910-1987) Background and Youth (-1929)
2.1 Albany
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