Oral history kit : Reginald Lewis 2006

Mr. Reg Lewis, born in 1924, grew up in the home his father built around 1910 which still stands today next to the Gosnells Hotel. Mr. Lewis speaks of his parents and grandparents' history and about growing up in Gosnells with his older siblings. He talks about the Canning River which bordered their property and helping on his parent’s orchard. He describes the layout of the property, the furniture in the house and other properties in the area. He mentions the shops along Albany Highway, the quarry starting up on the hill behind Gosnells, his first day at Gosnells Primary School and travelling everywhere by train. Mr. Lewis’ further high school education, possibly at Perth Modern, was curtailed with the death of his father and he left school in 1940 enrolling in the navy the following year. He eventually returned to the Gosnells area on a permanent basis taking up 8½ acres at the junction of the Canning and Southern Rivers where he and his wife brought up their own family until his retirement in the early 1980s.