Story of Charles Henry Walker
Charles Henry1 Walker; born 1846 at London, England, UK; married Esther Henderson, daughter of (--?--) Henderson and (--?--) ?, 1873 at London; died 1930 at Grange, SA, Australia.
His great grandmother, Charlotte Durand, a French Huguenot, came to England to escape religious persecution and married an Englishman.
Charles was diagnosed to have T. B. and was advised to move to a warmer climate in order to recover. He was an accountant when he left England for a similar job in South Australia. On arrival he found that the job wasn't there any more, because the firm had crashed in the depression of the 1880's. The SA government was advertising for educated ladies and gentlemen to act as schoolteachers. He got a job as a schoolteacher at Yankalilla in the Adelaide Hills (he later became a teacher at Innman Valley, Manoora and Bridgewater.) Charles took his responsibilities as a schoolteacher so seriously, that he gave up smoking and drinking alcohol - so as to be a good example to his pupils. He boarded with a family there. The lady that he was going to board with wanted her husband to make a toilet (dunny), but he said no, he can go out in the bush like the rest of us, so she set to and built the dunny herself, so that the gentleman from London wouldn't have to go out in the bush. Esther went back to work in London to earn enough money for her and Millie and Regie to come out to South Australia. They lived at Yankalilla, but his salary wasn't enough for them to live on. They had had another baby, Connie. So when Connie was a few months old Esther got a job teaching music at a nearby school. However she could not ride a horse to get there so her son Regie, who was eight or so, rode one horse and led the horse his mother rode to her school. Millie was left to look after Constance and go to school there.
When she was about twelve to fourteen she became a pupil teacher; teaching the younger children while being a student herself.
By the time of the First World War, Charles had retired, but came out of retirement to resume teaching, because of the lack of teachers.