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- In 1908 Freda attended Raymond Terrace Public School near Newcastle, NSW. She was 12 when her mother died and is said to have hated her father for deserting the children after that happened. Freda reported being looked after by an aunt Dora in Adelaide. However Harry’s sister, Dora, had died in 1902. So it was probably his sister Magdalene’s oldest daughter, Dora, who looked after her for a while. Freda also talked of “the Sisters”, and was able to recite the Rosary, therefore presumably at some stage she was sent to a Catholic orphanage.
She never spoke much of her family, so it is not known when she went to join her half-brothers, Chris and Angus BYERLEE, in North Queensland, but at some time she kept house for them on their sugar cane farm. She later worked as a nurse at Charters Towers Hospital, where she met her future husband when he was a patient. She was married on 20 February 1923 in Charters Towers, Qld, to Robert Alexander Samuel CALDWELL (known as Alex) who was born 23 March 1893. Freda and Alex moved to Townsville, Qld, on 18 September 1923. She looked after Chris’s oldest two children, Joyce and Jim, when their mother died in 1928 till an aunt took over their care. Alex had worked with the PMG and as it was a reserved occupation he had not been allowed to join the Services during the First World War. After the war he worked as a linesman with the Council. They helped bring up their grandson, David, after his parents separated. They made a trip to NSW with their daughter Ruth and her husband in the 1960s and met up with various members of the family. Alex died on 28 April 1970 in Townsville, and Freda died on 22 June 1984 also in Townsville, Qld.
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