By the time Len was born, his oldest brother John (Jack) was 16 and Frank was 14 years old. Lucy had gone to live with her grandparents and the other children were all working or at school. Generally children didn’t go to school for long, maybe up to year 7 and then were expected to work, contributing to the household income. Girls worked with their mothers and the boys with their fathers. However, Annie, (Peg) was lucky in that life had changed somewhat by the time she was going through school and she managed to stay on into her senior school years. Len’s letter to the Southern Cross Children’s pages reveals quite a lot about the family. Carrow is a small town, located on the eastern side of the Eyre Peninsula, between Whyalla and Port Lincoln, and was where the family had moved to from Eurelia, as William was now sinking bores for a living. He continued doing this on their move to the Riverland as well. Carrow was originally settled around 1873, and was renamed Port Neill in 1940. Yeelanna is 60 km from Pt Neill, further inland. The sister who had died was Alice, who died in 1900 aged 4.

The Southern Cross was a publication from the Catholic Church and carried news and events and personal notices for Catholics. This was a children’s page.

Once the family moved to Berri, around 1916, Len began working in an experimental farm in Berri. He used to ride a bicycle to Berri from Puddletown where the family had settled down. Puddletown, near Katarapko, was a settlement midway between Berri and Barmera, the road into Puddletown still exists. Barmera was not a town at this time and was more a temporary stopover for people travelling across land with sheep or cattle, Overland Corner being more settled with a Hotel and Police Station. Sometimes he drove a horse and spring cart dray to Barmera to shovel gypsum and take back to Berri. Len shifted to Barmera in 1918 and lived in a tent on the lake, where the family had set up their first “boarding house” - a series of tents with food supplied, established on the shores of Lake Bonney. Around 1925 Elizabeth opened a real boarding house in Laffer St in Barmera. By 1921 the beginnings of the town in Barmera were established and Len and Frank, on his return from the war, worked for the government. They grew and supplied and shipped veggies to locations that needed them in the Riverland. Len owned a Model T Chevrolet by now, and being enterprising, used the Chev to transport veggies through the week, and on the weekend, ran a transport service, taking people to the Berri Hotel on a Saturday afternoon.

Southern Cross (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1954)  Fri 22 Aug 1913  Page 17    THE CHILDREN.

Paddy (Austin) by 1930 owned a butcher shop, which Len took over. Len also had several thousand acres at Katarapko running sheep. He sold his share of the butcher shop to Sandy Wright, who went on to win huge contracts with the government to supply meat to the Loveday Interment Camp when that was establisehd in 1940. Len was married in 1932, and after his venture with the butcher shop and sheep, bought the cool drink factory from Mr Causer in 1944. As a new drink factory owner, Len had to obtain a Marine Stores Collectors License from the Police. Marine Stores was the name given to empty beer bottles that sailors threw overboard, and somehow this name came to be given to any recyclable material, including glass, bottles, metal etc. Len had to obtain this license to be able to buy recycled bottles necessary for the factory.

Doris or Dorrie, as she was known, met Len after working for Elizabeth helping her run the boarding house in Laffer Street. Dorrie was the eldest daughter of Ethel and James Doig, who lived at Overland Corner, after having moved from Cowell on the West Coast. James was a Singer Sewing Machine repairer and a chef. Dorrie had a younger sister Daphne. James left the family when Dorrie was about 10 years old - he kept in touch with the girls but never saw them again and died in Norwood when he was 50. When Dorrie and Len were married, Henry Danvers walked her down the aisle.

Len and Dorrie were much loved members of the community, being involved in the local Catholic Church, various sports associations, and attending balls, dances and the local races. They, like all the McBrides, contributed to charity organisations, Dorrie still volunteering with the local hospital into her 80s. When Brian came into the drinks business and started taking over more of the manufacture process, Len used to do the “round”. He ran a home delivery service, and would spend hours on the road with the ute loaded with crates of drinks, delivering to homes and blocks within the area. Many of his clients in the 60’s and 70’s were Greek and so Len started learning to speak Greek, so he could more easily talk to the ladies who were his customers. Len worked literally, until the day he died. He never retired, he just slowed down a bit.

Len and Dorrie both loved animals, and were always rescuing animals that they found either injured, abandoned or neglected. Len sometimes came home from his round with a dog or cats that he had found, Dorrie would take them and look after them - sometimes they kept the animals, sometimes they found homes for them. One of the loveliest dogs was a border collie pup Len brought home in the late 1960s. He still went out to Katarapko where he knew the sheep farmers - the pup was one of a litter that a farmer wanted to train as a sheep dog. Unfortunately, the pup was terrified of sheep, and when confronted with a flock, tried to climb a tree. The farmer was going to shoot it, as it was of no use to him. Len took that little dog home and kept him and trained him to go in the ute on the rounds. Ginny, the beautiful black labrador was also a rescue dog and was the last dog Len had when he died. Brian took Ginny to live at his house then and Ginny lived for another ten years. Amongst all the animals they had, was a rather wonderful galah. One day in the mid 1960s when Len and Brian were at the factory, a tame galah flew into the yard, and Len called it over. The galah sat on his shoulder and was Len’s from that day forward. But the story didn’t end there, the galah belonged to the Prior family, who, visiting the factory a couple of weeks later, heard the cocky calling. They recognised it as theirs but realised that Len and the cocky were attached and so gave him to Len. Len loved that bird and taught it to talk, and also taught it the whistle commands he used on the border collie. The galah used to whistle up the dog and the dog would run around doing what it was being instructed to do, without Len being there. Sometimes the galah would whistle up the dog to come and sit near him, and the dog would obediently sit by the large cage. Cocky was only in the cage at certain times, Len would have him out in the back yard of the house or sitting on his shoulder talking to him. Cocky lived for some years after Len died, and died after he ate barley grass in the back yard.