[ Post a Response | Auckland Islands ]
Posted by John Jones I write this from New Zealand - a country which Madelene came to call her 'second home' during recent years. I first met her in January 1995 as a fellow passenger on the 200t Geomarine, heading soutwards to those uninhabited and fascinatingly beautiful but tragically despairing Sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands, away down south of NZ. Her interest there was prompted through discovery a decade or so ago that her Gr Grandfather, Robert Holding, was a survivor of a wreck (the ship Invercauld) there in 1863. Mine was a re-awakening of memories of wartime years 1942-45 during which I lived there for all of 1943 - just 5 of us "dropped off' as it were, on Weather/Coastwatching duties, to be picked a year later. Robert Holding a;so 'lived there'for a year plus 15 days - the big difference was that I was well sheltered and provisioned and knew (provided that we won the war!) I would be picked-up - Robert Holding had no provided shelter or provisions,witnessed through those 12 and a half months the time-to-time deaths of 15 of the original survivors.
on 9/16/2003, 12:03 pm
203.98.50.21
Madelene Allen - died 13 Aug 2003 - Peacefully at her home in Canada.
I am very deeply saddened to know that no longer will I be able to share throughts and knlowledge of the Aucklands with that vibrant lady of Canada who lived so very far away, and yet was so very near, through Members3.
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