May’S Story

The biography Mays Story follows the long life of the protagonist, May, who was born in Hawthorn, Victoria, in 1908 and died in Perth, Western Australia, in 2009. Her mother took her not long after her birth back to Wiluna in outback Western Australia, where her father had a gold mine. From there, they went while she was a small child to the Swan Hotel in Fremantle, which belonged to them until 1921. Her father died of the Spanish Influenza in 1919. Subsequently May lived in Swanbourne, then in Victoria before returning to Perth, where she married and gave birth to two children. The biography includes historical events and descriptions of a way of life now lost to memory and soon to be forgotten unless we have written accounts. It is based on the life of a typical Anglo-Saxon woman of her time, with all her prejudices and faults, generosity and strengths.