The lost story of Jock Alexander

Fairly recently I wrote about Jock Alexander, Val's maternal grandfather, about whom no-one seems to know much at all.
One of his daughters is Joan Fisher, nee Alexander, living at Modella on a much-loved agistment place until very recently. In a tidying-up of her shed Andrew Fisher, her son, found a wooden box that contained what appeared to be the sort of detritus that comes from cleaning out a workplace desk. (This column will make more sense for those who've read part one).
The box is about a yard long, about eight inches across and about six inches deep. It has three sliding trays along the top of the opened box. It is a very well made example of woodwork, too.
I thought that, from the box I would be able to find out a fair bit about him, but we've got a long way to go. I do have a few hints and possibilities.
We know he had five daughters, Doris, Betty, Nancy and the twins, Joan and Myrtle. We know that the family moved to the Modella area just before the Second World War – or do we? We know that he worked at the Williamstown Dockyard before the move to Modella, but was that before or after the war?
What made a Scottish naval draughtsman come out to Australia, and then turn it up to go farming. Or did he come onto the Swamp to go farming and then return to the dockyard to take up his original profession?
Let's go back to the box and see what else we can find.
There was a 1953 diary, produced for the Australian Wire Rope Works in Newcastle, NSW. Usually a diary will tell so much. This one did not have a single entry. Not so much as a name written in.
It did have 28 pages of technical data about wire ropes and cables, including "Galvanised Shipping Ropes" up to a diameter of a shade under two inches. Was this why Jock had the diary? That would make sense, but family history, such as it is, suggests that he'd left the dockyard and was farming at that time. That did not tell me much.
There was George VI tuppence ha'penny stamp. I looked it up and it was issued in 1950, which tells us nothing.
There were a number of pens with nibs (that took me back to Longwarry State School and the inkwells in the desks) and there was an silver tin that looked a lot like a Zippo lighter, but was actually a holder for spare nibs.
There were some fishing sinkers and I thought they might have been used to hold large plan sheets flat, but they are all round ones, so that cannot have been the reason.
There was a slide rule that had seized up and there were three heavy cardboard rulers with his name stamped on them, allowing the measurements to be scaled – such as 3 and 5/8 of an inch to the foot, or one and a half inches to the foot, and so on. All these told me that they were the tools of his trade on the drawing board – and that he must have had very good eyesight. There were three wooden rulers, one of which measured in sixths of an inch and opposite that were inches marked off in ninths. It also had a protractor printed on it. It was named, too, and I wonder if "B. O'Connor" ever found out where his clever ruler went.
They're what I think were called French Curves, light strips of wood with curving edges in steadily changing radii, so a true curve could be drawn by finding the part of the curve that was right for the job and using that small part over and over until the curve – perhaps of a ship's hull - reach the desired point. There is a very real skill to using these, so know that he was capable of very fine work, which does not mean too much because it is self-evidently a necessary skill for a draughtsman.
I found two maps from the Shell Touring Service, one of Adelaide and one of all South Australia. There was nothing written on them and no marking out of a route. With them was "Your Car", the Shell "Book of Hints for Motorists" dated Summer 1960.Was he planning what was back then a significant drive? Did he go? The maps are in excellent condition and I'd hazard a guess that the trip did not happen. Perhaps he needed the dream? We'll never know.
There was another notebook and again there was nothing written in or on it, but two pages had been torn or cut out. What did that signify, if anything?
There were two beautiful pairs of dividers, nor more than three inches long, with three points instead of two and with two adjustment screws that would, with their very fine points, allow very, very accurate work. Then there was a compass, again with very fine point and an adjustment and locking screw. These were beautifully made, and I can imagine Jock Alexander using only the most accurate instruments. Does that make him a conservative sort of bloke? A perfectionist? We can't really know.
I found a ration ticket called a Dockyard Smokers' Coupon, a small card about the size of the old cardboard railway tickets. It had MALE printed on it – were there different rations for men and women? The card read "Entitles Holder to Purchase Declared Ration for ONE WEEK" with a large black 20 beside it. Can we conclude that he was a smoker, albeit a light one? No, I'm afraid not. We can say it seems likely and that he was probably a very light smoker.
Happily, though, we can now place him at the Williamstown Dockyards during the war or during the short period of tobacco rationing just after it.
The next interesting piece was "The Australasian Reporter's Notebook", with 200 fine-ruled pages, and with the first page titled "J. Alexander, Naval Architect". Does this mean he was more than just a draftsman? Does it mean he was training for qualification as a Naval Architect? That would tell us he was both skilled and ambitious. The notebook is filled with the most complex mathematical notes and some very complex formulae. From that I think it is safe to say that was a very intelligent man.
So the search ends, for the moment, and what I had thought would be a treasure chest of information about a man whose story has been lost, it simply was not. I will widen my search, but we might remember that every life is part of our collective history, and that every life, therefore, should be documented, at least in its broader outlines.