Written by Meredyth Cunningham (nee Sykes), Isabel’s daughter.

Isabel was the first of eight children born to Lachlan McLeod and Isabel Potter, in Wentworth, on the 20th August, 1911.

The first eight years of her life were spent on Dunvegan Station, on the Darling River (see map), where she loved to ride and help her father with station work. The need to educate the growing family saw the family move to a fruit block, Carvel at Dareton, though “L.McL” (as Isabel affectionately called her father, Lachlan McLeod) remained all week at Dunvegan.
Isabel was educated first at the Wentworth Convent, where she learnt typing and shorthand, rare skills for the time. She next spent four happy years at Presbyterian Girls College in Adelaide (now Seymour College.) Depression hardship forced Lachlan McLeod to move his two eldest daughters from boarding school, back to the family home.

In 1928, aged 17, Isabel found work on the Wentworth Herald as a journalist, with Stan Hunt as paper editor. She then joined Sunraysia Daily staff as the Wentworth correspondent, until Des Sykes “poached” her for his legal practice in Wentworth.

Isabel converted to Catholicism, and she and Desmond married in 1937, and built a house in Walnut Avenue, Mildura.

The family moved to an undeveloped block on the Murray River, near Dareton, called Corduroy, where Isabel created a beautiful garden and Desmond a citrus orchard of some 30 acres, while practicing law in Wentworth and Mildura (see also Corduroy 1940s page).

Meredyth and Judy commuted from Mildura to the Loreto Convent at Marryatville, Adelaide, for 9 years apiece (says Meredyth) and hated nearly every moment of it. After a trip to the UK and Europe in1956, the family moved to a small cattle and sheep farm, about three kilometres west of Eden Valley in the Barossa, which they called Silver Ley. There Des and Isabel farmed Romney cross sheep and Black Angas cattle from about 1958 to 1960-61. The farm was not viable - just over 150 hectares - and the family moved to Linden Park Adelaide, where Des entered a law practice (Stevens, Rymill, Boucaut and Jacobs) and Isabel returned to work as an adviser to young couples.

Meredyth and Judy both obtained Arts degrees from University of Adelaide, with Judy adding a Diploma of Education to her CV.