It Started in Mum's Kitchen

When I was a child, I was fascinated by my mother's childhood memories, growing up in North Manly during the war, shared with me in Mum's kitchen.

I write this blog a year after my mother's passing in July 2021, when Australia was in COVID lockdown and had closed its doors to incoming flights. Living in Norway, I was not allowed back home to take care of all the things you need to do on the passing of your parents. It was the worst experience of my life, and it took a year before I was finally allowed to come home and take care of business and lay her to rest, back on the Northern Beaches, where she belonged.

War-Time Childhood

Mum was born in Narrabeen in March 1939, as the world was entering the second World War. With that came stories from her wartime and post-war childhood—when butter was scarce, rations kept families going, and dripping on bread was normal. Mum’s oldest brother, born in 1934, recalled the soldier camps down the road at Millers Reserve, where desperate housewives took desperate measures to put food on the table. Hard times led people to make hard choices, and everyone simply did what they felt they needed to do to get by.

Family, Roots & Local History

When mum married and raised her family, our home was 1.5km from her childhood home, up Allambie Road, in Wyadra Avenue, still in North Manly, but closer towards the beach, and Mum’s grandparents lived a kilometre eastward from us. We walked past their home in Soldiers Avenue, Freshwater on the way to Freshwater Beach. Old man Claus Clausen, a Norwegian sailor from Bergen, who ‘jumped ship’ in Newcastle in 1901, walked his way along the Great North Road to Sydney, where he got a job on the docks at Walsh Bay, and within five years was married and had his first child, my grandmother, Edna, born in Glebe. At this time, Freshwater Beach had a dubious reputation as a ‘party town’ where city dwellers would descend on the beach for revelling among the sand dunes and build themselves wooden bungalows, which quicky became a camp. Claus, from a long line of gifted carpenters, built himself a two-bedroom house in Soldiers Avenue which outlasted much of the other campers’ dwellings, and still stands today, having been renovated and rendered beyond recognition, yet the original wooden house, still stands, at its core.

The Clausen’s lived there through two world wars, the great depression, and the birth of many all of their grandchildren, and great grandchildren, enter me, in 1965. Claus and Stella died six months apart in 1966, and 67, so I never got to know them, but it was the mystery of Norwegian Sailor Claus, that led me to Norway in 2004 where I married my own Norwegian ‘viking’.

From our front yard in Wyadra Avenue, we could see the tops of the four tall oak trees that stood outside Mum’s childhood home in Lyly Road, which was high up on the corner of Allambie Road. That fascinated me and all this, sparked my lifelong passion for history.

Now that I live in Norway, I carry an inner yearning to return to the place where I belong, and sad I'm the first generation of my family in over 100 years who no longer live on the Northern Beaches—but always with the longing to return, as did Mum. We often spoke of returning together when I ‘come home’ Norway, but that was never to be.

The Calendar Tradition

Mum and I sent each other calendars every Christmas. She’d order a half-dozen Northern Beaches calendars from Humphreys Newsagents on The Corso and post a couple to me overseas. I’d send her one from Norway—where her grandfather was born—or from wherever I travelled. It was our thing.

That ritual inspired me to start my Lost Manly Calendars. The threatened early retirement of the Freshwater-class Manly ferries became the catalyst that kickstarted my calendar production back in 2020—just in time for Mum to see and receive two years’ worth, which she loved.

Looking Ahead to 2026

And so I continue. As we head into 2026, I’m back with another meaningful collection and will keep going for as long as people want them. It’s a cut-throat, competitive market with escalating printing and postage costs—a labour of love, not a path to riches. But these calendars carry meaning for me and many others: nostalgic reminders of a wonderful place we were born, bred, or lucky enough to live.

And I need your support to keep making them—because there’s no point if nobody’s buying them. So spread the love and gift your friends and family a calendar for Christmas. They are practical, beautiful, and always appreciated—like a 12-month postcard.

Ah yes… my next project…

View the selection of 2026 Calendars

👉 https://www.lostmanly.com.au/collections/2026-calendars-maritime-coastal-photography