Michael was the first child of Fred Clarke and May De Prose.
Michael was born in England mid-War. And he nearly came into the world with a bang. In January 1941 (probably 10 January), the 8-months-pregnant May was in a bomb-shelter in the back yard of the house they lived in, in Grayshott Rd, when the house next door was destroyed by a bomb from a passing German aircraft. Not only did the front room of their own house (the all-important music room) go with it, but the bomb-shelter was buried in rubble and it took a few hours to dig May out.
Michael came to Australia with his parents in 1948, arriving shortly before his 7th birthday.
After Portsmouth (1941-48), he lived in Kingaroy (1948-75), Tara (1975-1989) and Bundaberg (1990-1995).
During the first half of the 1960s he was a Go-Kart driver, and competed at events around south Queensland, including in Bundaberg, where Roger saw him race a couple of times. This map shows the territory.
He worked as a technician with PMG which later became Telecom (and nowadays is Telstra).
m1. Lorraine Elizabeth Arthur 13 Feb 1965
Children 1 and
2
Lorraine left in the early 1970s
div. 1973? Lorraine
did not re-marry.
m2. Anne Ellen Staines 8 Mar 1975
T
hey moved to Tara (south-west
of Dalby) in 1975
Children 3 and 4
The family moved via Dalby to
Bundaberg in 1989-90
After they'd moved to North Bundaberg, Fred and May
moved
there from Maryborough (c. 1991), and lived in the same street.
Michael was very involved with Craig's cricket and Kristine's hockey - even becoming a coach and treasurer of the hockey club. Kristine wrote "He loved playing with electronics, especially CB radios and computers. He was always the handy man, building anything!! If you couldn't find him, you'd find him in his 'room' buried under all his work!! He always took a lot on - too much I think - he always had a list a mile long to do around the house/yard - but not much got done in place of his hobbies".
Michael died of an 'aortic dissection' (a form of aneurism), working on his car, at the very early age of 54.
His youngest daughter, Kristine wrote that "Dad died 5 mths and 5 days before his 55th birthday in 1995, 15 days before my 15th birthday". Spooky?
Fred and May moved back to Maryborough some years after his death (c. 1998).
Anne stayed in Bundaberg, and remarried some years after Michael's death, on 15 Apr 2000, to Peter Charles Smart (b. 19 Apr 1940), divorced c. 2012.
Here are Michael's children and (to date) 10 grandchildren, only 1 of whom was born in his lifetime:
The text here draws on my own knowledge of the family, plus more from Michael's sister Anne, and a lot more from Michael's daughter Kristine.
This a page within Roger Clarke's Family Web-Site
Contact: Roger Clarke
Created: 6 Apr 2008; Last Amended: 6 Apr 2015, 4 Feb 2017 (corrections from Kristine)