Sylvia Tate

Sylvia Tate left her native Portsoy as a 19-year-old, carrying her suitcase, a wedding cake and three bottles of whisky. She was bound for Australia and a New life as the wife of the young Royal Australian Air Force pilot who had stolen her heart at home in the North-east of Scotland.

It would be another 65 years before she would return to her beloved Banffshire coast for good, her ashes carried back by the daughter who created a one-woman show in tribute to her mother’s adventure as a war bride and the thousands like her.

The young Sylvia, the daughter of Christina and Alexander Middleton, had attended the local primary and Fordyce Academy, once known as the Eton of the north, before becoming a clerkess in the village’s branch of the Bank of Scotland.

The country was already at war for a second time in a generation and she would later recall those days when she was a member of the Scottish Girls Training Corps, going to see Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in gone With The Wind and helping her mother to bake cakes to feed the hungry, lonely airmen from nearby Boyndie Aerodrome.

She also enjoyed eightsome reels at local dances and met her future husband, Rex, at Portsoy Dance Hall. He courted her for six months, often flying over her house in Durn Road in his Oxford plane, revving the engine three times. They were separated when he left for service in the Middle East and wrote to each other for nearly two years before Rex proposed. They did not meet again for another two years.

Having accepted his proposal, she embarked on the six-week, 12,000-mile journey to Australia as a war bride in 1946, climbing the endless gangplank of the Stirling Castle at Tilbury Docks, carrying a heavy suitcase full of clothes, presents, the wedding cake and bottles of malt from her hometown. Her daughter, Christine, who devised the show, Memoirs of a Scottish War Bride, in tribute to her mother, who died aged 83, and the thousands of others who went to Australia to marry post-Second World War, said: “She talked of the strangeness of the Australian vocabulary and customs on her arrival, the joy of being introduced to pavlovas, of everybody having difficulty with her ‘brogue’ and the long adventure of learning to be a housewife and mother in a strange new land.”

She married Rex at the Sandringham Presbyterian Church in Melbourne on November 5,1946. In 1954 they relocated to Alexandra, with their children Stephen and Christine, and built a house they named Deveron.

A fine Scottish cook, who loved to make pies, fruitcakes and pancakes, she became a business woman, running a café and later a ladies clothing shop which she named The Doric – the name of her native North-east dialect. She was also a fine needlewoman and created some wonderful patchwork quilts.

Her parents and late brother, Stephen, migrated to Australia from Portsoy in 1952 and she and her family visited them regularly.

She and Rex were married for 64 years and last year they were thrilled to be in the audience to see the story of their romance unfold during their daughter’s show. Her wedding dress and other mementoes belonging to the couple were also on display at the performance venue in Portarlington, Victoria.

The show, which was the result of years of research and features letters, photographs and wartime memorabilia, was also performed by Christine as part of the Scottish Traditional Boat Festival at Portsoy three years ago and again this summer at Portsoy’s museum, The Salmon Bothy.

Sylvia’s last wish was to be returned to the historic fishing port where she was born and her daughter and granddaughter Kristy duly carried her ashes from Australia to Scotland.

On July 8 they ensured that the innocent but brave young war bride, who set sail alone to marry her Aussie Flyboy, had her request granted at Portsoy Cemetery, escorted to her final resting place by the strains of a piper.

She is survived by her husband Rex, their children Christine and Stephen and grandchildren Kristy, Shae and Matthew.