A long time resident of the Forbes/Gooloogong area, Theo Tweedie passed away 11th August 2021 at the age of 94.
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A funeral service was held at the time, but only ten people were allowed due to the COVID19 lockdown. It was anticipated that we would hold a Memorial Service on the 8th January 2022.
However once again COVID hit one of Theo's sons and the event had to be postponed.
The Memorial Service will now be held on Saturday 28th May 2022 at the St Johns Anglican Church in Forbes, at 3pm.
Theo was born on the 7th January, 1927 at South Strathfield in Sydney. She grew up in the Depression years, in the late twenties and early thirties.
Her family struggled somewhat to make ends meet for a while and lived in an old humpy in Prospect area of Sydney for a while during the Depression.
She attended school at Greystanes until they settled down at Werrington, where she attended Kingswood Public School.
Theo later attended Parramatta High School and was a Girl Guide as well. After leaving high school she had a job as a stenographer at Liverpool Hospital.
As time went on, in 1947 she met our father Don Tweedie and within 12 months they were married.
They went for their honeymoon on a flying boat to Grafton, on the North Coast of NSW. They bought a farm there and their first two sons (Geoffrey and Terry) were born in Grafton.
However, they moved back to Penrith area after three years as Don was suffering from war related traumas and needed help.
They lived on another small farm at Orchard Hills south of Penrith in a small farming community. After 10 years at Orchard Hills they moved to Forbes in 1962.
The Forbes district was to be our mother's home for the next 60 years. They both loved the Forbes area and loved the communities of Forbes and Gooloogong.
Theo and Don lived in Gooloogong from 1980 to 2001 where at one stage Theo was the President of the Historical Society.
One role she carried out was to produce oral histories by recording interviews with older Gooloogong residents. Theo was involved in assisting in the production and printing of the "Voices of the Village" "Reminiscences of Gooloogong".
Theo Tweedie was an amazing woman as she could put her hand to anything and build or maintain objects with ease.
All self-taught, she could repair old Bakelite radios, was a first-class exponent of wood working and leatherwork, she could make the most intricate model trains, she constructed TV aerials, timber canoes, snooker tables, different items of furniture and much more.
We always believed she was way ahead of her time, as evidenced by her developing a strong interest in home computing long before home computers became commonplace.
She was also the founding "Akela" of the 2nd Forbes Cub pack in the mid to late 1960's.
She attended TAFE courses on how to fix radios.
Apparently the tutor at TAFE asked a question about radios one day and everyone was a little oblivious to the answer, except our mother who came up with the correct answer. Most students were young teenagers.
The Farrah brothers were good friends of the family.
They owned a General Store in Forbes. John Farrah mentioned one day that he was in awe of our mother's ability to fix radios. What a compliment that was, from someone who knew all about radios.
Our mother had an old ex-naval short wave radio and that is how we found out about the assassination of John F Kennedy, prior to the news breaking in Australia.
She even attended a Motor Mechanics course at TAFE for a short period to learn how to maintain and fix cars.
Her first car had been a black Oldsmobile. Mum learnt to drive cars as our father's eyesight and hearing prevented him from obtaining a licence.
Our mother had a number of cars including Oldsmobile, VW, Vanguard, Torana and a couple of others.
While at Forbes she attended church of a Sunday with all of us kids at St Johns Anglican Church in town. She was in the Mothers Union there.
She was a very adventurous lady as in the mid to late 1960s she drove us boys up to Coonabarabran for a camping trip in the Warrumbungles in a small Volkswagen Beetle. There were four boys and Mum in this car.
She developed her interest in the use of computers in the late 1980s to 90s and at that time became interested in Family History. She was amazing in the knowledge she obtained in using computers.
Our mother Theo Tweedie would have been a great structural engineer or even electrical engineer if ever given the chance.
She taught herself how to do all these activities by researching books. She was a quiet lady and kept to herself a lot and never liked the limelight.
She was a very practical person who would get in there and get things done without any favour or fuss. As an example, she actually built a TV aerial in the early 1960's, just so that we could pick up an additional TV station.
We would like to pay tribute to Jemalong Retirement Village as they were so good to our mother while she was being cared for there before she passed away.
The staff would ask her questions and she would answer them in a very straight but humorous way.
I think our mother may have entertained the staff there in a lot of different ways.
Thankyou JRV for looking after our mother.
In summing up, Theo was a wonderful mother and mentor a legend in her own right.