SCISSORS, MANICURE

This manicure set was used by Lillian Ursula Skeet when she lived in Forrestdale in the early 1900s. Lillian, or Ursula as she was known by, was born to Lillian Maude and Alfred Tunbridge Skeet in 1919 at a maternity hospital at Highgate Hill. Ursula was Lillian and Alfred's fifth and final child.
Ursula grew up on the family farm which was located on the shores of Lake Jandakot (today Forrestdale Lake) in the locality of Forrestdale. Her father was one of the first British settlers to take up land in the region in 1885. Her mother came over from Melbourne with her parents and sister in 1892 before purchasing land in Forrestdale in 1908. Her parents married in February 1912.
Ursula helped out around the farm and when old enough helped her father run the Forrestdale Post Office which was located in one of the front rooms at the family home. Her eldest brother Alfred is now running the farm but Ursual is possibly looking after the chooks as she enters eggs and chooks into the 1938 Byford Show winning a number of first and second place awards for the eggs, Leghorn, Australorp and Orpington chickens and for her separated cream.
When her father died in 1945 Ursula and her mother move to Fourth Avenue in Kensington and Ursula is recorded as working as an office clerk. Her sister Maude is living in neighbouring South Perth at this time.
By 1958 the family have sold the Forrestdale farm as Alfred and his family have moved Belmont where he is working now as an aircraft engineer.
Ursula loved to write and entered and won numerous creative writing competitions. In 1953 Ursula had two short stories published in the Western Mail, 'The Path of Mars' and 'A Name from the Past'. That same year Ursula was helping a local committee collect names or those who gave their lives in World War II and Korea and who came from the Kensington, Collier district. The memorial was being organised by the Memorial Church of St Martin-in-the-Field in Kensington.
In 1962 Ursula was appointed as a Reviewer of Revenue for the National Parks Board of WA and the zoological Gardens Board by the State Government. Her duties including doing the pay run, which meant delivering the wage packets, to staff at John Forrest National Park, Yanchep National Park and the Perth Zoo.
Following the death of her mother in 1967 Ursula moved to Alfred Cove.
In the early 1980s Ursula met Royston Hunt and in 6 March 1984 they married.
Lilian Ursula Hunt (nee Skeet) passed away in 2006 age 87 years.