One-way ticket to an African adventure

MUM was just 22 when she made a momentous decision. It was 1947 and she was working as a nanny in Brighton when she spotted an advertisement in the post office for a passage to South Africa.

The ship departed within days and Mum, who didn’t even have a passport, decided she’d be on it. Armed only with a sense of adventure and the naive confidence of youth, she booked a one-way ticket.

As a child, she’d always loved elephants — ‘elephants never forget’ was a mantra throughout her life — and here was a chance to see them up close under the African sun.

Born the youngest of nine in Ludlow, Shropshire, Mum’s determination to better herself was formed at an early age.

Her mother came from a wealthy Welsh family but after marrying a ‘commoner’ — a manual worker from Birmingham and a socialist to boot — her parents cut her off and there was very little money. There was even less after her father died when Mum was 12. Following school, she trained as a nurse and worked in Coventry and London during the war.

Mum loved children and became a nanny after the war, but she was always restless and that ship to the southern hemisphere was the opportunity she was looking for.

She had the £100 required by the South African government to settle there but hadn’t banked on quite how much she’d spend on the six- week passage. On arrival in Durban, she had only £50 left and wasn’t permitted to disembark.

A tough few days followed and Mum (pictured) remembered trying to keep warm at night in her lamb-skin coat and sneaking off the ship to find food.

Then she got lucky. The wife of a wealthy landowner arrived at the port in search of a nanny for her three children. Mum got the job and worked for the family at their sugar plantation for six months before resigning to move closer to Durban. There, she met our father Clifford Morris. He was 19 years older to the day and they married in 1950 when mum was 25. Delia and I came along over the next five years. Mum had put down roots in South Africa but travelled whenever she could, often back to the UK to visit her large family. After our father’s death in 1991, she returned to England, settling in Hereford close to two of her siblings. Fiercely self-reliant, she lived independently until a fall this year. We hoped that she would enjoy her new life in a supported care environment but it was not to be. Having lost her mobility and independence, she no longer wished to embrace life and passed away less than three months later — dying, as she had lived, on her own terms. June MorrIS, born June 1, 1925, died July 26, 2018, aged 93.