TRAVELS WITH EDNA - On and off the beaten track
Edna was widowed through unexpected circumstances, and Frank recently divorced when they met for the first time. Although half way through their lives, each with children, and from opposite sides of the world, they have been inseparable ever since.  Sharing an indefatigable curiosity in the world's people and cultures, they began making lively journeys to a mix of destinations. These have continued for four decades. This perceptive travel book tells of the people, places and encounters along the way, rather than final  destinations.  Dizzying expeditions on foot have taken the two travellers to remote regions in Nepal, Kashmir, Turkey and France. Landcruisers with sturdy gear boxes have carried them across the great deserts of Libya, and also the awesome landscapes of Yemen, where they travelled  under armed guard.  The excitement and art treasures of the world's great cites, especially  St. Petersburg, New York and London have been explored on foot. Nevertheless, these travellers have lavished more time in smaller cities such as Cusco, Srinagar, Sana'a and Valletta. The legendary river port of Seville through which the gold of South America poured for centuries, and where Edna once lived for four years, is a special favourite.  Told with wit and good humour, this eventful story contains some unlooked-for adventures, which in retrospect mostly become  entertaining.	In Store Price: $27.95  Online Price:   $26.95 ISBN: 978-1-921731-50-1     Format: Paperback Number of pages: 248 Genre: Non Fiction
Author: Frank Brabazon Rudd Publisher: Zeus Publications Date Published: 2011 Language: English

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY 

Frank Rudd is the author of Half a Lifetime, a memoir describing his early life in Outback Queensland, now in its second edition. Travels with Edna is his second book and continues the story of his eventful life. He lives on an acreage property on the western edge of Brisbane with his wife Edna, from where they enjoy contact with their ten children and step-children and seventeen grand-children, many of whom share their passion for travel.

Acknowledgements 

This book is not mine – it belongs to Edna. She endorsed each journey and then put up with me as we travelled together. Later, when I decided to write this memoir, she helped with recollections and provided the splendid photographs. I owe her an enormous debt. 

We both sincerely thank the long time friends who have travelled with us, especially Nick and Peachy Caris, Neville and Pam Patterson, George Kalivis and Gella Kehaia, Justin and Marjorie Welch, Kirrill and Judy Kosloff, Graham and Shelia Williams and Peter and Joy Hopkins.

We are also grateful to those who entertained us en route, and in some instances provided lodgings. They include Hubert and Gisela Hungerle, Paddy and Mary Shortall, Jack and Xenia Brabazon, Nicholas and Carol Fontanillas, Patrick and Peggie Biggie, Caco and Chantal de Oteyza, and John and Yvonne McInnis.

Many others have helped, including our writer friend Glenda Hogg, who read the completed manuscript. Her input helped considerably to knock the book into shape.  

I especially thank my copy editor Coral Hartley, who is responsible for many helpful editorial comments. Without her guidance, this would have been a much longer and more boring book.

Also a big thanks to the team at Zeus for their assistance in the publication of this book from the submission stage through to editing to design and to marketing. 

Most importantly, in the year 2000, after we had been together for twenty-five years, Edna became my wife. I dedicate this book with love and gratitude to her.

READ A SAMPLE:

Necessary  Journeys

dna and I acquired our first taste of travel on wartime steam trains. Although coated in gritty coal dust, crowded with service personnel, and often late, we thought them grand. Messages to assist the war effort were posted inside their rackety timber carriages, and one notice we both remember was a reminder about shortages of manpower and coal. Prominent on railway stations as well as in the trains themselves, it asked ‘IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY NECESSARY?’

It was many years before the two of us came to compare our first journeys, as our homes were on opposite sides of the globe. In fact, decades were to pass before we even became aware of each other. Nevertheless, when we eventually met, it emerged that the first long journeys for each of us had been to and from boarding schools on wartime trains. The best of them when travelling home for end of year holidays, bursting with excitement.

Edna’s journeys took her from Dolgallau to Oswestry in Wales, and skirted Bala Lake. She said a tradition for those girls leaving school was to tear the brims from their Panama school hats and skim them into the lake from open carriage windows.

A very different ritual took place on my homeward journeys from Toowoomba to Aramac in Queensland. Early the third morning, while our engine took on water at Alpha, girls from all the schools decorated its brass fittings with crepe paper rosettes. These added to the impact, later in the day, when we thundered into towns further inland where our parents were waiting. To add to our jubilation, the driver tooted his whistle as we flew paper streamers from the carriage windows. 

h

Edna’s story really begins in the late 1920s when Edmund and Mary Davies emigrated from their beloved North Wales to Canada in search of employment. Through hard work and frugal living in the New World, they planned to save and return one day to Wales to buy their own farm. All went well until the Great Depression shattered their dreams. By 1931, they had been forced to leave the land and were in an upstairs flat in Isabella Street, Toronto. Like millions of others across North America that year, they got by on whatever jobs they could find.

An amiable midwife rented the flat downstairs, so they took scant notice when cries from a newborn baby drifted up one August night. A few days later, the midwife appeared at their door with a baby girl in her arms, offering them money to care for the infant for a few hours. Unaware their neighbour feared an imminent police raid on her flat, they agreed.

As expected, detectives arrived soon after to search the downstairs cellar for an illegal still. Prohibition was in force in the nearby United States, making the unlicensed production of gin a tempting sideline for a cash-strapped midwife. A newborn baby without a mother could have led to further complications.

The following morning Mary was told the baby’s mother was a university student from a good family. It later transpired the girl was unmarried. Then, as the days went by, Mary and Edmund came to realise they had literally been left holding the baby. Being in their mid-thirties and childless, they fell in love with the bonny tot, and like a story from a fairy tale, formally adopted her within a month.

Their act of neighbourly kindness led to the rescue of a baby from an almost certain orphanage childhood, for her natural mother was never heard from again. The cuddly new addition to the family was promptly christened with the fashionable names of Edna Mary.

Within eighteen months the small family were back in North Wales, not as farmers, but as lessees of the Sun Hotel in Llanrhaeadr ym Mochnant, a village of ivy covered houses on the Rhyader River. Edna’s adoptive mother was a staunch Pentecostal, so hers was a temperance hotel. She relied on good food and clean rooms rather than alcohol to attract guests. Edna’s adoptive father, as a result of recurring health problems, was reduced to taking casual jobs whenever well enough. He doted on his only child and carried her on his back to the village school when there were deep snowfalls. It was here, at the age of five, that Edna began studying English - for Welsh had been her language since her first words.

As time went on her purposeful mother became dismayed by her daughter’s broad Welsh accent and small village ways. Her solution was to arrange for elocution lessons in addition to the usual school subjects, before packing her off to Doctor William’s boarding school for young ladies in Dolgellau. Among this well regarded school’s outstanding past pupils was the wife of Lloyd George, the ‘Welsh Wizard’ who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War One.

h

At about the same time as Edna’s first rail journey to school through the snow covered mountains of North Wales, I was on a train rattling across the sweltering Mitchell grass plains of Western Queensland. Mine was a three-day journey to a primary boarding school in Toowoomba. Until then, my mother had taught me from correspondence lessons on our outback sheep station.

Edna thrived on boarding school in spite of stringent food rationing and overcrowding from evacuees from the London Blitz. Nevertheless, she found it hard to subdue her rebellious nature to adapt to school discipline. As soon as the war ended, the family moved to the seaside town of Aberystwyth, where the Catholic convent was regarded as the best high school for girls. Mary Davies held strong protestant beliefs, but she wanted her daughter to have the best schooling, so suppressed her dislike of the Pope long enough to sign the enrolment papers. Although Edna missed her school friends from Dolgellau, she pushed ahead under the influence of two talented nuns who encouraged her already strong interest in English and Art.

When settled into this new school, Edna’s parents felt obliged to tell her she had been adopted. Her response was to spend all of the next day at the Welsh Youth Centre. Here she shut herself away from family and friends to try to comprehend what had happened. Fortunately, her happy nature came to the fore during the several weeks it took to adapt to her altered status.

Her new home was another private hotel, with twelve bedrooms rented to overseas students by her energetic mother. In the topsy-turvy, post-war years, the well-regarded Faculty of Agriculture at Aberystwyth University attracted scholars from around the Commonwealth. Among these students was fresh-faced Bryan Short from New Zealand, who applied to Mrs Davies for two years’ accommodation.

Already a graduate of Christchurch University, Bryan had arrived to write a thesis for a Doctorate in Animal Genetics. But before long he found his research work was no match for the charms of his landlady’s daughter. He and Edna became smitten with each other when she was still seventeen, and married the following year.

The newlyweds set sail for Sydney on the Mooltan two years later. By then they had a brand new daughter called Bethan, and Bryan had gained his PhD and an assured job with the CSIRO in Sydney. With the experience of his outward passage behind him, Bryan felt he was a practised sea traveller. Edna, by contrast, revelled in the novelty of her journey after years of restraints imposed by her austere post-war lifestyle in the UK. She marvelled at exotic Colombo and at the luminous phosphorescence around the ship on black tropical nights. She said Bryan’s excitement when he first sighted the Southern Cross in the evening sky heightened her own anticipation of things to come.

But Fremantle, on first contact, left conflicting impressions. The emptiness of her new country struck Edna like a hammer blow. Upon stepping on to the street outside the dock, she saw only a solitary male in riding boots leaning against a post. He was squinting into the glare from under a wide hat. What sort of place have I come to? She wondered.

Her mood changed soon after when she and Bryan chanced upon a corner store stocked with delights still unavailable in Wales. To celebrate their arrival, the two of them found a nearby seat and consumed a packet of orange cream biscuits on the spot. 

h 

Edna’s first impressions of Sydney were also mixed. A weeklong heat wave heavy with bushfire smoke lessened her excitement in setting up house in the semi-rural community of Castle Hill. But settle in they did; so much so, that six more beautiful children arrived over the next twelve years. There was just one more girl, Shan, and five boys — Glyn, Alwyn, Trefor, Gareth and Griffith. All were given Welsh names, continuing an idea begun with Bethan back in Aberystwyth.

Their young mother fortunately loved children, so these were happy times, even though tempered by the usual tribulations and near exhaustion of raising a large family. Bryan helped at home whenever he could, while building his career with the CSIRO Division of Animal Physiology. In 1965, enticed by a larger salary, he accepted a position in Uruguay as a sheep and wool adviser with the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN.

 Because he was required to start immediately, Edna was left to hurriedly sell the family’s car and surplus belongings. She then set out for South America with seven children, the youngest a mere two years old. Owing to the then limited range of aircraft, and her unusual destination, her trip extended over several days. She recalls overnight stops in Auckland, Papeete and Mexico City, plus long refuelling stops in Bogotá and Santiago. 

To crown their welcome to Montevideo, Bryan took them to an impressive house he had rented near the city centre. Within days, the family were settled in well enough for the older children to resume their schooling at the surprisingly large British School. The new arrivals were frequently surprised by the extent of British influence in this predominantly Spanish country. The British had intervened in 1828, for instance, to enable Uruguay to separate from its warring neighbours, Brazil and Argentina, and to become an independent republic. They then proceeded to build the new country’s railways and some large factories.

With two maids to help in the house, Edna found she had time to teach herself Spanish. With her ‘ear’ for languages, she learned as quickly as her children. She also had time to interest herself in how her fast-growing youngsters spent their days. In this regard, she promptly put a stop to Glyn and Alwyn having lunch each day with Uruguayan friends in a café serving wine near their school.

h 

For the four years of their stay, Bryan was stationed 170 kilometres up country at a sheep and wool research station. The family looked forward to his sporadic breaks in Montevideo, when he and Edna could at times accept invitations to embassy parties with other expatriates. In the process, they became particularly friendly with the British Consul and his convivial Welsh wife.

Edna fondly remembers a weeklong trip with Bryan to Paraguay, including an exploration of the jungle-shrouded Iguaçu Falls before the days of mass tourism.

Bryan was by now a highly accomplished sheep and wool expert. In 1969, the success of his work in Uruguay led to an offer from the World Bank of an assignment in Seville at a higher salary. The family therefore moved to Franco’s Spain in an era when it was virtually cut off from the rest of Europe, and almost a cultural island. One report of the time described Spain as still a country of church bells, castanets, landed dukes and charging bulls.

Four years later found most of the children in boarding schools in England, and their parents well adapted to the easy-going lifestyle of Andalusia. Then suddenly, to the shock of his incredulous family, Bryan was struck down by cancer at just forty-nine. Succumbing quickly to an aggressive strain of the disease, he died in Seville and was buried there in the walled British Cemetery.

His stunned family moved to Wales to be near Edna’s mother.    

Chapter 11
The Ancient Kingdom of Sheba

Part Sample 

ews of any kind about Yemen and its seventeen million inhabitants was hard to find in the Western media. Even so, we came across a review of Middle Eastern airports in a London newspaper. The brief entry for Yemen offered this advice: ‘The customs and entry procedures in Sana’a are lengthy and chaotic.’

As though taking its cue from this article, Edna’s bag went missing on arrival. We stayed close to the baggage man while he completed a lost luggage report in Arabic, anxious he might become distracted by an ooze of overflowing sewage. Fortunately, however, he paid no attention to the stinking swamp which slowly encircled us. All in all, our arrival in what the historian Strabo called the ‘Arabia Felix of the Ancient World’ was hardly the captivating experience we had hoped for.

Individuals were not allowed to travel outside Sana’a in 1997 because of a recent civil war between the Islamic north and the Marxist south. Although the war had ended three years earlier, the new government had not yet fully restored law and order. The seizing of foreigners was still prevalent, and two kidnappings had taken place in the month preceding our arrival.

Nevertheless, we went ahead with our travel plans on learning all the hostages had been released unharmed. In some cases, they had even received apologies and gifts from their tribesmen captors. The foreigners seized had been used as bargaining chips to win government money for particular tribal areas; or as explained by local people, ‘for economic reasons,’ meaning ransom. Little did we then know three British and one Australian visitor would be killed within months. They had the misfortune to be seized by militants rather than tribesmen.

h

We were part of a group of ten organised by Max Leonard of Sydney. As soon as we met with him in our hotel, our first question was: ‘What will happen if we’re abducted?’

‘I haven’t been in a kidnapping, but it would play hell with our itinerary,’ he said. 

Max was not the type to be easily rattled. He led tours to unusual destinations like Ethiopia and Madagascar, and was planning another to the remote volcanoes and icy wastes of Kamchatka in a Red Army disposals helicopter. But he assured us that Yemen, where he had been seven times, was his personal favourite.

Max was far from a typical leader. He often left us to find our way and our own meals in strange places, and seemed unconcerned about many things other guides emphasise. But as time went on we realised he was tireless in ensuring we visited what he considered to be Yemen’s most interesting places. This was not easy to manage in a country where clocks were little used. Appointments were made for morning, afternoon or evening. Any time within a few hours of a deadline was regarded as close enough.

Once we had a few hours to walk the streets by ourselves, our apprehensions all but vanished. By bedtime, we had seen enough to realise that for those of us who long for places where tourism has made little impact, Sana’a was the capital city of our dreams. Its unique multi-storied brick houses decorated with white gypsum took our breath away. The whole place was a living, breathing work of art, with an air of wonder about it. And because it housed such a highly conservative society, it was very different from anywhere we had ever been.

When we set out two mornings later in a cloud of dust, I felt the traveller’s old excitement stealing over me — or as Graham Greene once described it: ‘The feeling of exhilaration which a measure of danger brings to the visitor with a return ticket.’  

To deter kidnappers, the government provided us with a Toyota pick-up as an escort. It had a heavy machine gun mounted on a steel post welded to the centre of its tray, and soldiers to use it. Within an hour, we had stopped on a dirt road to look up at the Dar al-Hajar, a five-storey summer residence of an Imam, perched high on a sheer basalt rock. A photograph in a British Museum leaflet of this splendidly decorated building had first alerted us to this bizarre country.

Further on were fields of sorghum growing on 3,000-metre mountainsides. The terraces dated from the sixth century. We spent the night in the mountain town of Hajja, which boasted the first ever traffic light in Yemen. No one seemed concerned that it had long since been knocked over and trampled into the dust by passing trucks and donkey carts.

h

A special excursion began the next morning, when Max directed our three drivers to climb a very rough road to the Wednesday market in the mountain-top village of Mabian. One of our Land Cruisers was damaged on the way up, so we stretched our legs while the twisted part was hammered back into shape. There was no traffic until a pick-up with a dozen men standing in the back squeezed past us. Two old men seated on the bonnet had their backs against the windscreen, all but obscuring the driver’s vision. To us it seemed that only trust in Allah was guiding the vehicle and its many passengers slowly downhill.

The lively market in Mabian offered an array of dates, spices, cheap shoes and bright cloth from India, as well as a butcher’s shop. This consisted of a chopping block on the ground with butchered goat’s meat spread on the animal’s wet skin. Dogs, kite hawks and flies circled tirelessly to pounce on any off cuts.

Edna delighted in her haul of frankincense, turmeric and kohl. My only purchase was an ugly plastic mosque clock with a strident call to prayer as its alarm, which was to go off accidentally in our room around midnight.

The two of us then headed up a hill and came across a little girl with a tin of water on her head shepherding some sheep. I caught two by tempting them with a bruised banana, and found they relished the skin more than the inside fruit. Edna soon had a bunch of schoolchildren with lovely dark eyes around her, exchanging Arabic and English words.

Early next morning a breakfast omelette followed by unleavened bread, cherry jam and tea, set us up for a descent from the mountains to the Tihama, the hot and sandy plain bordering the Red Sea. Although the heat was stifling, it was forgotten once we arrived at the busy livestock market in Bajil. Hundreds of cattle and smaller animals were for sale in what seemed to us the most disorganised way possible. Nevertheless, the market had served these people for generations. I was intrigued to see a lady checking the condition of a sheep before buying, in the same way I had been taught as a child, by feeling the joints in the underside of its tail to test how fat it was.

Click on the cart below to purchase this book:                 

HOME PAGE