My Dad left us when I was 8. I will never understand what my father saw in Maudie (Iris was her real name), the barmaid he hung around with for years. Dad had the pub in Forbes, in the late 60’s and  Maude was living with him then, too. The holiday I went on, the year or two after Dad visited us at home, was my very first meeting with her. 

I returned home from that very first time away, a teenager (almost 18) with my Dad. It was like some kind of reality check. Here I was, back with my Mum who had cared for me all the years when Dad was away from us. As I stood there hugging Mum - I bawled my eyes out! 

Sometime later Dad pulled up stakes again, and they had a time at Oberon, a cold uninviting place, in the Winter, and its only fame being Sapphires. The next move was to Grawin Opal Fields. You can see that my Dad was always looking for that elusive “Pot of Gold at the end of the Rainbow.” There was a yarn, (or True story?? Not sure) - they would tell, about the opal miner putting his drill through a $AUD50,000 Black Opal,  just under the surface. They say he ended up getting about $AUD5,000 for the opal pieces but I don’t know if that was true or not!

When I would visit up at Grawin, Maudie was always continually complaining about Dad not taking her anywhere.  You have heard the saying, “any old barn looks better with a bit of paint on it” well, sorry, Maudie could lippy and powder herself up, as much as she liked; she was still as ugly as ever and had the voice of a banshee, to go with it. She was also a chronic chain-smoker, to boot. We all know how smoking can make even young girls look like 80 by the time they are 30. Yeah I know, I was prejudiced against her.

After Maudie, it came to Joyce. (Not the Joyce, sister of Iris from the Pub days.) Talk about "chalk and cheese" - she was almost totally opposite to Iris (Maudie!) Cutting a long story short, Joyce’s big problem was, she was “too tidy” for Dad. We, the sons of Dad, needed someone like Joyce. 

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Moving forward, to the early 80’s  - post-Maudie, and post-Joyce; to a time of Dad expressing interest in getting back together with my Mum. This is after more than 20 years apart, and Mum never stopping loving Dad in spite of his wanderings with other women as above. I still don’t really know why Dad wanted to get back together with Mum. 

The Mission society Mum had gone out with, to Africa, for the second time,  had encouraged her to divorce Dad. As they, maybe rightly or wrongly, said it was a bit silly asking his permission to leave the country (as required by law in this country) – having been apart for so long, but still legally married. So she divorced Dad back in the mid-Seventies.

I am doing a collection of my Mum’s “Megoirs,” as they will be called, from her Mission days, as well as later after she and my father were rejoined in Matrimony. There is more on that issue, for later. Only to summarise and say - there were objections to the re-marriage, from other members of my family either vocally, or behind their backs.  

I think the reason my siblings were against it was a kind of ‘control’ my eldest brother and my sister, (eldest of all of us) especially, enjoyed over my Dad. Mum had all sorts of ‘flack’ against the reunion, from her “Christian friends.” They wanted to dig out the "unequally yoked" scripture, and it amazed me, these folks, who insisted on using Modern Perversions of the Bible, in a lot of cases - were so particular, as Modern Perversions were probably not so particular about real rules of marriage. So these "do-gooders" trot out the "unequal yoke" scriptures, when in fact, it was not going to be an "unequal yoke" at all.

God does not recognise divorce. On that point, me and Rome (RCC) agree; if on absolutely nothing else. In God’s eyes, they were still one flesh. Ok. Dad wandered, and sowed some wild oats – no, there was no other progeny, thank God, from his extra-marital affairs. And Mum would have been quite within her rights to divorce him for his infidelity. But it was up to her if she wanted to forgive the old "so and so", and as I said, she still loved our father goodness knows why. Maybe it was all a part of God’s plan, to see  Dad, eventually come to Himself, as we believe he did some weeks before he died.

All this is to bring us to the subject I want to discuss, now.

Dad and Mum got re-married, as I said - but he was still my father, and there was no change in him, from the reprobate who left us in 1959. My Mother knew him better than anyone else did, but she was prepared to take him back, even in spite of all that. The following scriptures are an introduction, to where I wish to go, in this story of my life, and my view of my family...

Exodus 20:5   Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

Exodus 34:6   And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

Exodus 34:7   Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

Deuteronomy 5:9   Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.

The following is a fresh new piece of info I only just received off Facebook today, from a dear preacher friend, (on 17th Nov 2013). I thought this was a good addition here.

"Because, one does not inherit righteousness from their earthly parent, but they do inherit THEIR DEPRAVED NATURE AT BIRTH – and if GOD doesn’t intervene they go to a devil’s hell like these did."

My comment to the friend's post: My family is so full of evil and sin and debauchery. But all these have been under the sound of the gospel some even claiming salvation but then living in sin. The parents of these claiming salvation and living in sin also!...In at least one case.

All the above is to illustrate how far down a pecking order sin in a family, can go. I shared in some chapters way back, we are not sure whether illicit lifestyles in my family may have started with my paternal Grandfather, but it certainly spread through most levels of my family, to the "third and fourth generations" as the verses above say.

I don't know how far along it was, into Mum and Dad’s new, reunited, relationship. However...

The occasion, was an Easter Weekend gathering,  up at Grawin, with Dad and Mum hosting all those of the family, who wanted to take part. I am no aware, completely who, or how many, attended.
 I do know my sister and her son, my Nephew,  James, and his girlfriend, whom he later married, fortunately, were there. Mum had commented to Dad in the privacy of their own bedroom, that she was not happy about  (my Nephew)  sleeping with his girlfriend, that weekend. I have been helped with a brief snippet of a Youtube file of Charlie Rich's "When We get Behind Closed Doors." (Check the Author's notes below.) Here are some of the words.
                                         "When we get behind closed doors,
                                         Then you let your hair hang down,
                                          And there's no one else around
                                          And no-one knows what goes on behind closed doors!"
My Mother believed, as I thought most couples, also, would have believed, that anything discussed in the privacy of one’s bedroom with one’s husband or wife... Should remain within that bedroom.  I wanted a scripture from the bible to cover this, and the best one I could come up with is the following:

Hebrews 13:4   Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.

I guess you are all saying, ”ok what’s the point?” My point, as I explained, above, is; my Father had not changed. He delighted in sharing with the number 1 child in his life, my sister, what my Mother had said IN PRIVATE! One wonders just how ‘fair dinkum’ as we say in Australia, or ‘genuine’ his promise was to my Mother as they again were joined in marriage. He did not respect Mum’s wishes, and again, was looking to be right in there with all the other reprobates, all tools of Satan, against  Mum.

I am glad I was not there, for whatever reason. I also have to wonder; what, really, was his true, deep, reason for asking Mum to take him back. I think it was the fact of getting older, and wanting someone to look after him in his final years. This terrible thing at Grawin was the beginning of the end of their new relationship. It was sometime in mid 80’s Dad had his massive stroke and ended up in a hospital for quite a while.