The family said they came from Fitzroy. Collingwood, where Ron was born, is the suburb on the other side of the road.

Ronald went to South Africa looking for building work in 1895 when there was a big depression in Australia. He made money there and bought houses and factories on mortgage. He brought his parents and brothers out to South Africa but not his sisters because they were already married.

The last thing he bought in South Africa was a newsagency in Sunnyside in the Transvaal - there’s a photo of him in front of it, taken on 30 January, 1906. He had to sell out to the Cape Times because he was warned by a large competitor that otherwise they would set up next door to him and put him out of business anyway.

The family accumulated £27,000 in South Africa but lost everything during the Boer War. During that war Ronald was in the Cape Guard. One morning they got up to find that the flag they were guarding was gone and a Boer flag was flying in its place.

Ron had a girlfriend in Cape Town but she married his friend. (When their baby was black, her husband accused her of “having it off with a Kaffir” and started divorce proceedings. She was innocent and turned out to have a Kaffir ancestor but her husband didn’t go back to her.)•3

After the Boer War Ronald and his brother, Charles, went via South America (Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro) to New York, USA and New Brunswick, Canada in 1906. They worked in New York until news of the big earthquake which had hit San Francisco. Then they went to San Francisco looking for work. They arrived in San Francisco two days after the earthquake. Shovels were put in their hands and they were told “two days work or get out”.

After “no more than two years” in North America, Ronald and Charles returned to Australia. They were going to Hamilton looking for work but stopped in Willaura where they were told that there was plenty of building and carpentry work there. Ron was living in Main Street, Willaura, when his father died on Xmas Day 1910 in Melbourne.•5

In Willaura, Ron met and married Aileen Mary INCLEDON. They were married by license by a Catholic priest in the sitting roomof the Coffee Palace. The bridesmaid was Lorna INCLEDON, sister of the bride, and best man was Charles McNAUGHTON, brother of the groom. All signed their names. Ron gave his age as 36 but he was really almost 38, Aileen was 29 •2

After their marriage they lived in Willaura until about June 1913, when their first child was 14 months old. They probably owned their house in Commercial St., Willaura, since it was said that Ron “painted everything white except the old woman”. Commercial St was a back street of Willaura. The town had a main street with shops and about 6 residential streets. It had the largest wheat stack in Victoria. A fire destroyed many of the buildings in the main street in about 1913 and the e town never recovered.

Ronald and his family left to look for work elsewhere. Charles went with them. They lived in a rented house in Rose St, Box Hill, for six months while Ronald built a house in Harcourt St on the corner of Wesley St, Upper Hawthorn (near Kew), then they moved into the new house. That house is still there (1993) and has not been altered on the outside.

They lived at Harcourt St until 1922 or 1923, when they moved into an old house in Darling St, South Yarra. This was one of the original houses in the area - it was between the South Yarra station and the Yarra River, on the embankment, overlooking the railway line. Over the next seven years Ronald renovated the house while they lived in it; then he sold it making a profit of £1000.

They next moved to a house in Howard Rd, Caulfield, where Ron's brother Les was already living.

During the Depression, Ron and Aileen lived at 104 Almar Rd, Caulfield. Ron built this house and divided it in two. Ron and Aileen with their children, Sid and Geoff, lived in the back and Ron's brother, Les, and sister, Em, lived in the front of the house. Sid married in 1940 and moved to Ormond. The rest of the family stayed at Almar Rd for about 2 years then moved to Bambra Rd, South Caulfield in 1941 . This house had been previously bought by their son Geoff, with money he made playing football. He let the house to tenants until his family moved there. When Geoff married he and Joyce lived in Bambra Rd and his parents moved to 35 Capitol Ave, McKinnon where Aileen and Ron lived until they died.

The general pattern was that Ron built a house, they moved in and put the house on the market. They lived in the house with Ron and Sid working on the garden until it was sold.

After Ron died Aileen never quite recovered and would have weeping spells. Her brother, Jim Incledon, and his wife, Jean McDonald, (married late in life) moved into the house at 35 Capitol Ave. to keep her company. Aileen's daughter-in-law, Margery McNaughton, didn't approve of Jim and Jean but she agreed that the arrangement was good for Aileen.

Aileen left the house to her son Geoff, the business R McNaughton & Son having gone to her older son Sid on Ron's death in 1953. •4

•1 Unless otherwise specified this information comes from Sid McNaughton
•2 Marriage cert & news cutting on back of wedding portrait owned by Keith McNaughton.
•3 Vera McNABB née INCLEDON
•4 Keith McNaughton
• Birth cert #15626
Death notice gives date & place
•5 James death cert