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5. Loomes and Ropers

7. Des & Isobel Sykes

In 1917, E.J. Sykes, Joan's father, bought a red T-Model Ford for £340; one of the first cars in Wentworth. In that same year he and Selina had their third child, Edna Joan (30/9/1917) and E.J. was appointed Mayor of Wentworth (1917-1919, 1932 and 1936-1937). At the same time, Bern Wilkes purchased Oakdean, and E.J. purchased Freemount, both near Balranald, NSW.

Des started secondary school in Sydney, boarding at St. Joseph's; E.J. drove him to Hay, where he caught the train (subsequently he would travel by train from Mildura to Melbourne, stay overnight in Melbourne, and catch the train to Sydney; the train line reached Mildura the year before Des was born). Des states;

I thought St. Joseph's was a hell of a place for two years. We were starved, literally starved. But in the third, fourth and fifth year it was enjoyable. The food was good and the conditions were good, and generally the brothers were fair.

Des won a prize for an essay on peace (a relevant issue at the end of the 'great war'), and said he was usually in the top five of his subjects.

In 1918 William Minogue died (while ferrying horses and a dray across the Darling river). In 1920, when Joan Sykes was five years old, both her great grandmother, 'Gran' Minogue (age 84) and Frederick William Wilkes (aged 71) died. Photos were taken of 'Gran' that same year outside the Commercial, with Joan and Barn Loomes (Maysie's oldest son, on a visit to Wentworth, also aged five), by Maureen, who, at the age of 15, had been given a camera. Maureen also took several photos of her school friends at Mary's Mount, Loreto Convent, in Ballarat, where she was a boarder.

Maureen Sykes Des Sykes E.J. Sykes

In 1925, when the lock on the Murray river was built at Wentworth, and St. Francis Xavier's Catholic school built on its present site, Joan was eight. Her mother, Selina Wilkes, died at the age of 43 as a result of an appendicitis operation. She had been running the Commercial, and so Des, at the age of 21, interrupted his law studies in Sydney to return to Wentworth and look after the Commercial, which was being rebuilt at the time. Gran (Christina Monogue) Wilkes, mother of Selina, moved from Tara to the Commercial. She died in 1927.  In 1927 also Maureen married Ken Ford (where?); Ken had been working in the Water Conservation and Irrigation Board in Wentworth, supervising the construction of the Curlwaa bridge and the irrigation of Dareton. This was also the year that the old Wentworth gaol closed. A year or two later, Maureen was the Hostess to the Governor, Sir Phillip Game, who stayed at the newly rebuilt Commercial Hotel while visiting Wentworth. At the Governor's Ball, Des Sykes met Isobel McCleod for the first time. Jean Roper (nee Loomes) recalls how Maureen, shortly after their marriage, rang Maysie, in tears, worried that Ken had locked the door of his room because he was with a girlfriend. Maysie came down from Tara, to find Ken in a meeting with the local Anglican minister. Jean remembers that when Maureen was pregnant, she slipped into a channel, and, unable to find an adequate change of clothes, changed into Jean's school tunic, causing much hilarity. Maureen, not concerned with decorum, would also go swimming while pregnant - something quite unusual, and, according to Jean, was embarrassing for Jean and here friends. Maureen, she says was "before her time". In 1931 or 32, at the beginning of the depression, the Sykes family moved to Sydney. Maureen and Ken began building a house in Cammeray; their first child, John was born in 1933. E.J. and Des rented a flat in Kings Cross (while Des finished his Law Degree), and Joan boarded at Normanhurst (spending her holidays with the members of her family). For her final years of school, Joan moved to Kirribilli in Sydney, where she was a weekly boarder. The Sykes witnessed the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, with the procession of floats across the bridge.

They returned to Wentworth around 1934 and lived at the Commercial Hotel. Maureen managed the Commercial , spending a lot of time at Tara; Selina (Maureen Selina Joan Ford) was born in 1936. The Fords returned to live in their house in Cammeray in Sydney in 1939.