Grace

GRACE - fourth and middle child of August Hein and Annie Graf

Grace (pictured above when 16) was the second child born into August and Annie’s home at The Ridge, near Glenburnie, on 19th September 1901. Their fourth child and fourth daughter, only seventeen months after the birth their third daughter, Martha who arrived at the end of their long journey from the selection of land they once worked in Roma, Queensland.

 Now a family of six – parents plus a newborn and a seventeen-month-old toddler, and the two older girls, Gertrude and Ida, aged six and four.

 Grace went to the OB Flat Primary school with her siblings when she was old enough. She saw another baby girl, Mabel, born into the small house at Limestone Ridge before the family moved to a larger home in OB Flat in about 1904.

 As the middle child, Grace had older sisters to follow and saw her mother through three pregnancies and the arrival of three healthy babies.

 At about the age of sixteen Grace became known to a man eleven years her senior, Henry Walker. Henry, always known as “Jake”, was the son of William and Anne Walker and they lived in Millicent on Ruffrock Road at a property called “The Wattles”. He was a fisherman. He was the fifth of eight children of William Walker and his wife Annie (nee Wallis) and had two brothers and five sisters. His two brothers married and had sons who carried on the Walker name. Four of his five sisters married and had children (surnames Mohr, Boase, Morris and Fitzgerald).

 At eighteen Grace had to confide to her mother that she was pregnant and it appears Jake wanted no part of marriage or fatherhood. Sixteen days after her nineteenth birthday Grace gave birth to a daughter whom she called “Betty Lorraine” and Betty Lorraine, of course, had her mother’s surname of “Hein”.

 Grace and her daughter, Betty, stayed home with her parents, August and Annie. At the time Betty was born, Annie also had her two sons, aged 14 and 9, to care for. After a chance meeting with Grant Kerr the family decided to relocate to Waikerie in the Riverland area of South Australia. It is said August suffered from arthritis and wanted the warmer climate; or maybe part of their plan was to remove their daughter Grace from the influence of the very irresponsible Henry “Jake” Walker.

Grace worked the farm at Waikerie alongside her mother, father and two brothers. When her daughter was three years old Grace met a carpenter who was working on Lock two, near Waikerie. The following year on the 27th June 1925, four months before her daughter’s fifth birthday, Grace married Richard Baker Manning at the Methodist Parsonage in Waikerie. Grace was 23 and Richard was 29.

 Grace and Richard lived with Grace’s parents and the following year, 25th June 1926, their first child together, son Geoffrey, was born. Lock two had been completed and the couple moved to Peterborough after Geoffrey was born, as Richard had secured work there. The following year, 1927 their daughter Wanda was born.

 These were the early years of the Great Depression and Richard was fortunate to secure work with a power company in Adelaide and he moved his wife and their three children to a house in Albert Street, Mitcham in 1928. They later moved to Montpelier Street in Parkside where Geoff and Wanda went to Parkside Primary School.

 In 1934 Richard became ill with prostate cancer and the family moved to 4 Gloucester Street in Norwood to live with Richard’s widowed mother. A crowded home with an elderly woman, a gravely ill husband and three children would have been a trying situation for Grace who was then 32 years old.

 Richard died in July 1936, two months after his 40th birthday. Grace was left a widow with three children – Betty 15, Geoff 10 and Wanda 9. Grace’s mother, Annie, had died two years earlier, in July 1934; Grace took her children to live with her widowed father at 16 Whel Street South, in Mt Gambier. She and her oldest child, Betty, went out to work to support the family. Grace cared for her father, until his death in 1940, and Geoff and Wanda went to school.

 After her father’s death she also cared for her younger brother’s daughter, Joan, then four years old.

Grace raised her three children and helped her younger brother Andrew where she could. She reconnected with her daughter’s biological father (Jake Walker) when she returned to Mt Gambier and they stayed in contact until his death in 1975. He never married. She never re-married.

 Grace spent some time living with both her married daughters Betty in Adelaide and Wanda in Melbourne; she had some live in housekeeping positions, and she spent her final years in one bedroom apartment in a retirement complex in Somerton Park supported by her daughter Betty who visited every week.

 Grace died in 1981 and her daughter, Betty, arranged to have her buried in the Mt Gambier Cemetery. 

Grace ‘Jo’ Maude HEIN, b. 1901, near Glenburnie SA m. 1925 Richard Baker MANNING (1896-1936) (40) in Waikerie, d. 1981, Adelaide (79).

Three children

Betty ‘Bet’ Lorraine HEIN – b: Mt Gambier, 5 Oct 1920 – d: 22 Jan 2013 (92)

Her father was Henry Charles ‘Jake’ Walker (1890-1975) (85), never married to Grace.

m: 14 Mar 1940 - Francis ‘Mac’ Henry McLEAN b: Gawler, 7 Dec 1916 d: 14 Sept 1975 (58)

Married at the Port Pirie Registry Office 

• • Dennis Wayne McLEAN, b. 1943, Mt Gambier, d. 1947, Monash (3). Buried as Denny McLean in an unmarked grave in the Berri Cemetery.

  • Susan Denese McLEAN, b. 1948, Berri SA, m(1). 1970 Michael PANNOWITZ (1947-1997) (50), div. 1976, m(2). 1977 Gary WOODMAN (b. 1948), d. 2014 (66). Buried in Cheltenham Cemetery.

    • • Louise BOSWORTH, born “Amanda McLean” 1967 (father Gary Ryan). Adopted by the Bosworth family. Searched for and reunited with her birth mother in 1990, aged 22.

        • • Isla Walsh, b. 2005 in Chester, UK, living in Whyalla, SA

      • Michael Francis PANNOWITZ, b. 1971.

      • Neil Andrew WOODMAN, b. 1978.

  • Sally Lorraine McLEAN, b. 1951, Berri SA, m(1). Denis Michael HAYDEN (b. 1948), div. 1974, m.(2) 2013 Barry Michael HEWLETT. Sally is one of the authors of this web site and lives in Mt Barker.

    • • Jennifer HAYDEN, b. 1972, Rose Park, d. 1972.

      • Paul Samuel McLEAN, b. 1984 Ashford, father Paul Emmerich Duin (b. 1949, Vienna, Austria).

Geoffrey Haydon MANNING, b. 1926, m: Gwendolyn BENNETT (d. 1992, buried at Centennial Park Cemetery as Gwendolyn Bessie Manning), adopting her 2 daughters Shelby and Bronwyn), lived in later life at Sellicks Beach SA. Lived later in life with his son Haydon, at Sellicks Beach. He died at the Aldinga nursing home 12 September 2018 (92).

Geoffrey Manning was an author who wrote many books, with probably the best known being on South Australian place names. His autobiography is to be found here. There is also a Wikipedia page for him here. His niece Sally McLean has written about Geoffrey Manning  and it can be found just below on this page.

• • Haydon Richard MANNING b. 1958. Haydon Manning was an academic at Flinders University. There is a Wikipedia page for him here.

    • • Samara MANNING, b. 1988

        • • Barlowe Geoffrey BERCE, b. 2013

Wanda June MANNING, b. 1927, m. 1953 John Leslie ‘Les’ DWAN (b. 1928), Brunswick Church of England, Brunswick, Victoria, d. 10 July 2021 at the Box Hill hospital, of heart failure (age 94).

• • Paul DWAN, b. 1960, adopted, married, 2 children.

  • Michele Louise DWAN, b. 1963, never married, no children.

Geoffrey Manning's Story, by his niece Sally McLean

1926 Geoff’s story

Grace met Geoff's father, Richard Manning, when he was working on Lock 2, near Waikerie. They were married on the 27th June 1925 in the Waikerie Methodist Parsonage. Geoff was born a year later on 25 June 1926 and his sister, Wanda, was born the following year, June 22nd 1927.

 Grace, husband Richard, her daughters Betty and Wanda and son Geoff, continued to live with Grace’s parents at their home in Waikerie until 1928 when Richard secured a job with a power company in Adelaide. They moved to the Adelaide suburb of Mitcham and their rented home was adjacent Brownhill Creek which was a favourite spot for young Geoff, and his older sister Betty, to catch frogs and tadpoles.

 Geoff started school in 1931 at the Mitcham Primary School and Wanda and Geoff went to the Parkside Primary School when they moved to Montpelier Street, Parkside in 1933.

 By 1935 all three children were at the Rose Park Primary School. Grace’s husband was gravely ill and the family moved to 4 Gloucester Street, Norwood to live with Richard’s mother, Ellen Manning.  Richard Manning died, 22 July 1936, aged 40.

 Grace took her three children and went to live with her widower father (August Hein) at 16 Wehl Street South, in Mt Gambier. Grace, 35, and daughter Betty, 15, went out to work to support the family whilst Wanda (9) and Geoff (10) continued their schooling.

 Geoff was politically and socially aware from a young age and the lack of support for his father after the war, lack of support for his mother and siblings after his father’s death, together with the day to day tribulations of the depression years moulded him into a young man with a strong sense of social justice and firm political views.

 Geoff attended school in Mt Gambier with his final year being 1941. After leaving school Geoff moved to a boarding house in Gilberton (a suburb of Adelaide), with assistance from the Legacy Club, to find work. The Legacy Club supported the children of returned servicemen and it was a lifelong commitment. Betty’s Legatee (her assigned Legacy officer) visited her throughout her life and even attended her funeral.

 After some time of menial work Geoff sat for an examination to join the staff of The Savings Bank of South Australia and was successful. Geoff had a lifelong career at the Bank with two years of service in the Australian Navy (1944-46) where he was trained as a signalman. He was on the Corvette the Pirie anchored off the coast of Guam on his 19th birthday and was anchored in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrender was signed on 2 September 1945.

 Geoff’s letters home to his mother from the Pirie are in the War Memorial in Canberra and are reproduced in the book The Corvettes, by Iris Nesdale. He was discharged in November 1946 and returned to the boarding house in Gilberton and to his employment with the Bank.

 Geoff spent 36 years as an employee of the Bank – starting as a Ledger Keeper and ending up in senior management. Whilst working as a relieving teller in Port Pirie he met his future wife, Gwen Bennett and they had 36 years of happy marriage- he adopted Gwen’s daughters, Shelby and Bronwyn and had a son together, Haydon (b. 1 Mar 1958).

 Geoff was active in the Banker’s Worker’s Union and was awarded Lifetime Membership of the Finance Sector Union in 1999.

 After retiring in 1982 Geoff became very active in researching history and was almost a permanent fixture at Adelaide’s Mortlock Library – arguably one of the most beautiful libraries in the world.

 Delving deeply into the history of people and places he has produced some fine books – possibly the best known being The Romance of Place Names of South Australia (1984) later revisited and republished as Manning’s Place Names of South Australia, From Aaron Creek to Zion Hill, Gould Books. (2006).

 A list of his publications appears below. There is a wealth of information on Geoff Manning on the internet and his biography can be found at  https://geoffmanning.info 

* History Note: Geoff served on the HMAS Pirie and HMAS Gawler  - two of sixty Australian Minesweepers (known as Bathurst class corvettes) built during World War II in Australian shipyards.

From February 1945 until hostilities ended the HMAS Pirie was almost constantly at sea acting as an escort vessel to units of the Fleet. On 31 August 1945 Pirie entered Tokyo Bay, being the third Australian warship to enter Japanese home waters since hostilities commenced; in September, she proceeded to Hong Kong and was engaged on local patrol duty. In November 1945 Geoff was transferred to the HMAS Gawler and discharged from the Navy one year later.

Books by Geoffrey H. Manning

- Hope Farm - Cradle of the McLaren Vale Wine Industry

- Whisky Makes You Well - The Biography of Frank Maiden

- Hope Farm Chronicle - Pioneering Tales of South Australia

- The Romance of Place Names of South Australia (1984)

- The Tragic Shore - The Wreck of the Star of Greece and a history of the Jetties of Port Willunga.

- Worth Fighting For - Work and Industrial Relations in the Banking Industry in South Australia  (In association with his son Haydon R. Manning)

- Manning’s Place Names of South Australia (1990)

- 50 Years of Singing - A History of the Adelaide Harmony Choir

- The Grange Golf Club

- A Colonial Experience - 1838-1910 - A Woman’s Story of Life in Adelaide, the District of Kensington and Norwood together with reminiscences of Colonial Life (three volumes)

- Manning’s Place Names of South Australia, From Aaron Creek to Zion Hill, Gould Books. (2006)

...Geoff died in a nursing home in Aldinga on September 2018 aged 92...

Grace in 1923.

Betty and Grace in 1921.

Annie and Grace plucking chickens in 1922.

Grace and Richard Manning in 1927.

Geoff Manning, centre, at age 15, about to go to Adelaide to work, with sisters Betty, left and Wanda, right.

Grace and Sue in 1948.

Grace Manning in Mount Gambier in 1948.

Grace's grave in 1981.