taken out of school to travel with her mother to Ceylon. In 1931 she was taken to England for six months to live in Whitehall Court, where she was tutored by a governess while her mother considered a marriage proposal. Returning to Melbourne in 1931 Betty went back to Clyde. She remembered not liking cabbage at dinner and would tuck it into her black velvet jacket pockets to avoid eating. She left Clyde in 1933, aged seventeen, with her Intermediate certificate.
Betty McKay Grainger (Hunt/Jones) (Kidd) 2 February 1917 – 12 December 2013 Clyde 1926-33 Betty McKay Kidd was born at home in Brighton on 2 February 1917, the only child of Mrs Hilda Mabel (McKay) and Mr Cleveland Kidd, hardware merchant and ironmonger (J S Kidd and Co., Melbourne). Betty’s father died of TB, aged 35 on 17 December 1923 when she was only six years old. During Cleveland’s illness, the Kidds had moved to live with Betty’s maternal grandfather, Hugh Victor McKay, agricultural machinery manufacturer (McKay’s Sunshine Harvester Works) and philanthropist of Sunshine, near Melbourne. H. V. McKay’s home was the magnificent Rupertswood in Sunbury which he had bought in March 1922 from Russell Clarke.
In 1934 Betty was sent to finishing school in Paris for a year, after travelling with her mother via Hong Kong, Shanghai, Peking, Los Angeles and the Panama Canal to England. Still only seventeen, she met her future husband Vere John Urquhart Hunt, a 28 year old London barrister. While at school in Paris – 14 Avenue Gourgaud – Betty enjoyed trips round Europe, visits to museums, opera and the Ypres battlefields. She also learned to speak French and became a wonderful cook, starting with chocolate éclairs. In February 1936, Betty and a group of Clyde friends including Viva Derham, Doreen Jowett and Margaret MacLeod were presented to the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Aged nineteen, Betty married Vere Hunt at Toorak Presbyterian Church on 3 September 1936. Two of her three bridesmaids were Clyde friends – Dorothy Wilson (Raws) and Betty Sheppard.
Rupertswood was staffed by a butler, housekeeper, kitchen maids, housemaids, nine gardeners and a chauffeur. Betty’s early education was at Rupertswood by a succession of governesses, and every week she walked into Sunbury to attend Sunday school. She saw little of her mother, lived in a room apart from the rest of the household and ate separately with her governess in a special dining room. Betty loved one governess, Miss Hamilton. ‘Miss Ham’ taught Betty to ride on her horse Trixie, took her on chauffeur-driven trips to Melbourne for shows such as Peter Pan, or on seaside holidays to Mt Martha where she went to swimming, tennis and fancy dress parties. Betty went horse-riding in Toorak, Frankston and Deepwater, sometimes out all day with her horse and a packet of sandwiches. She became used to being alone which served her well in later life. Betty’s grandfather H. V. McKay died at Rupertswood on 21 May 1926 leaving a bequest for the development of agricultural education and a grant of 2,000 pounds to the Australian Inland Mission, thereby ensuring the creation of John Flynn’s Flying Doctor Service.
Betty and Vere settled in the UK, living at his bachelor flat at 154 Grosvenor Rd SW1 overlooking the Thames. Betty resisted the idea of moving to Friarstown, the reputedly haunted ancestral Hunt family home in County Limerick, Ireland. It was sold, and in 1937 they bought Bradfield Place on ten acres near Manningtree in Essex. Betty and Vere had two sons, Vere David (1939) and Robin Vere (1946). During WWII, Vere Hunt served in Europe in the British Army Intelligence Corps. Betty was sent back to Australia with young David, suffering years of separation from her husband, who wrote to her every day. They were reunited in 1945, but their home in Bradfield had been severely damaged by army occupation and had to be sold. They bought Lone Oak, Little Wick Road, Horsell in Surrey. On a holiday trip to Italy in the summer of 1952, Vere died at sea of a heart attack, aged fortyfour. Devastated, Betty returned to the UK with the children. Betty had to sell their UK family home and in 1953 moved back to Australia with her two young boys, aged thirteen and seven.
Betty’s extroverted and gregarious mother Hilda (known as ‘Rudd’ on account of her red hair) later married George Stevenson, eventually earning the title Dame Hilda Stevenson DBE for her philanthropy and community work, as founder and trustee of the Sunshine Foundation which she chaired after the death of her brother Cecil McKay. Betty was sent to board at Clyde in 1926. At age nine, she was the youngest child in the school. She ‘hated every moment as it was always cold’ and she felt she did not excel in anything. However she enjoyed hockey, took part in the Ingleton house entertainments and made lifelong friends. After her grandfather’s death, Betty and her mother moved to Cliveden Mansions in Wellington Parade, East Melbourne. Aged twelve, Betty contracted scarlet fever and was 37