2. Edward Semer Brown

Top: Daughter of Edward and Bella Brown, Junee Brown, on her wedding day with husband Rod Waites.
Edward Semer Brown (pictured above with wife Belle and children Johnny &
June) was born in Woodend, Victoria, in 1907, the second of eight children born
to Jack Brown and Charlotte Willett.
He was educated at Yarrawonga Primary School and Elementary High, and as a
young man and adult worked at various jobs, including labouring, painting and
sleeper cutting with his brothers in East Gippsland.
Known always as ‘Ned’, Edward Brown married Isobel Rosalie Willett, who was his first cousin twice removed (she was the daughter of Ned’s great-uncle,Stephen Willett, and Stephen’s second wife Elizabeth Hickford...one of a mere eighteen children born to Stephen by two wives!) They were married in 1932, when Belle was 21 and Ned 25.
Three children were born to Belle and Ned Brown:
1. John Edward “Johnny” Brown born 18 December, 1932, Yarrawonga. Johnny served in the Korean War from April 30 1953 to April 6, 1954 with the 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment,
2. Robert Maxwell Brown b c. 1936-7 in Yarrawonga. Robert died when aged only four years, on March 12, 1941, at Mooroopna Hospital. His usual place of residence was 57 Welsford Street, Shepparton, and his parents were named as Edward Semer Brown, painter, and Isobel Rosalie Willett.
Robert’s cause of death was given as “Pulmonary tuberculosis, some days or weeks, and mitral stenosis, some years. The latter is a narrowing or blocking of the opening of the heart’s mitral valve, which separates the upper and lower chambers of the left side of the heart.
Robert Brown was buried in the Church of England section of the Shepparton Cemetery on March 13, 1941.
3. Patricia June “Junee” Brown b c. 1942.Pictured above with husband Rodney Waites. ‘Junee’, as she is known, was only 14 years old when her mother died in 1957. She went to live at Telford Street, Yarrawonga with her aunt and uncle, Ivy and Norman Oakley, for a time.
Junee and Rod Waites were blessed with a beautiful son named Dane in 1974,and their lives have been devoted to him and his conquest to battle Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism. Junee’s book, ‘Smiling at Shadows’ is a wonderful portrayal of parents’ love and devotion to their child, and fascinating for me to read of a side of my family whom I hardly knew. Following is a passage from the book depicting Junee’s life before the death of her mother:
“ A visit to Echuca on the Murray River, where the old paddle steamers are moored, revived happy memories of the time I had spent on a steamer with my parents. They had worked transporting red-gum timber to the saw mills and backloading general supplies to timber cutters and small settlements.
In late Autumn, when the water level was too low for navigation, we’d move to an encampment of tents on a sweeping sandbank. I remembered my mother carrying me over the sand to swing in a rubber tyre hanging from a tree. I remembered soaking rabbit droppings and squishing the mess through my fingers to make mudpies in the absence of mud. My mother had died when I was twelve, and I found myself listening for the sound of her voice in the gentle murmuring of the river.”
Isobel Rosalie Willett Brown died on May 26, 1957, at Lakes Entrance, Victoria. I
don’t know why she was away from her usual family home at Nowa Nowa, in East Gippsland, where her husband and his brothers worked as sleeper cutters, although it may simply have been that the nearest hospital was at Lakes Entrance.
The cause of her death as determined in a post mortem carried out by Dr. B. Stratford was a basal aneurysm. Her children John Edward and Patricia June were aged 25 and 14 years respectively.
Isobel Brown was buried in the Church of England section of the Orbost Cemetery on May 29, 1957. Sadly, it was the second family funeral the Browns would have attended in the matter of four months....brothers Jack and Ned Brown both lost their wives in 1957- the former buried wife Anne in January, and the latter farewelled wife Belle in May.