LOCAL PROFILE
Andrew Jones By Liz Clark
Andrew Jones is one of those fortunate people who has made a permanent move to Anglesea because he has such fond memories of the idyllic life he spent here as a child. He is one of our local passionate, hard-working volunteers. Andrew’s early memories of Anglesea centre around his father’s purchase of land in Parker Street in 1954, when a colleague, Dr Kent Hughes decided he had too much land and offered a block for sale to the Jones family. The family’s first holiday there was spent in a van and a tent, with a two-bedroom shack being erected in 1956. On Boxing Day each year, the family of five children (which later grew to seven) were packed into their old Citroen – three rows of seats, no seatbelts, Mum and Dad and one child in the front, children in the second row, animals and luggage in the third row. From the moment they arrived till the last hour before they left, the children were at the beach or the river, surfing on blow-up surfboards, fishing off the rocks and the beach, making their own rods with bamboo sticks
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and twine, working out ways to attach their Christmas present reels to their new rods. They learned how to read the waves and keep safe, with Mum sitting on the beach keeping track of the children by counting heads. Although it was no holiday for Andrew’s mother who still had to cook and wash and clean with minimal facilities, it was his father’s release from a very busy life as a doctor. However not completely – there were four doctors in surrounding houses in Parker Street, and each was available for medical needs as required during the holidays as there were no doctors in Anglesea. When it was their dad’s turn ‘on duty’, he used the loungeroom for any consultations.
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