Racing through life

My mother Thelma was born in Woodstock on 7th February 1904. Her father, Conrad William Grauss, was of German extraction, a stock agent who owned properties around Woodstock. H e came from Gundagai where he had started his working life as a bullock-drover. As a child, I remember his leather riding leggings and the stockwhips in his house which had played a significant disciplining role in Thelma's youth. She was always conscious of her father's background because whenever she asked a favour, he justified his refusal with stories of his own hard upbringing - reminiscences of sleeping under the stars with wheat sacks full of burrs for blankets.