- Clyde Alexander Bruce (1866-1937) - Life Events
(The Armidale Chronicle, Sat 21/12/1918)
Clyde Alexander was a good student and shared his father's apparent love of machinery. He studied to become a maintenance fitter and motor mechanic in the Hillgrove mines, and then at the age of 24 years went into partnership in a motor garage in Guyra.
In 1920 Clyde married Josephine Davies, a trained nurse who lived across the Gorge in nearby Metz. Josephine had trained at the Hillgrove Cottage Hospital and when the couple wed she was nursing at the Vegetable Creek Hospital at Emmaville. Family folklore tells how Josephine would hear Clyde start up his motor bike across the gorge in Hillgrove as he came to visit her.
Austimer
The winding-down and closure of the mines led Alexander, wife Josephine and new baby Sylvia Millicent (known as Muffy) in about 1920, moving to Austinmer south of Wollongong. The family lived in a cottage in Moore Street they named "Hillgrove" while Clyde took up a position as maintenance fitter at North Bulli Collery Ltd at nearby Coledale.
Clyde Alexander and Josie's son, Cylde John Thomas Bruce, was born in 1921 and the family spent many happy years in Austinmer.
Clyde later worked at Clifton as collery fitter and engineer's fitter until November 1931 when his employment was terminated due to a collery strike. This prompted Clyde to leave the mining industry and move the family to Hurstville in Sydney.
Hurstville
The 1933 NSW electoral roll shows Clyde and Josephine living at 183 Dora Street, Hurstville in Sydney's southern suburbs. Dora Street was only a few streets away from his uncle, Alexander Bruce's house in Clevedon Road, and which most likely explains the location for the new family home. But by 1937 they had moved again, stiull in Hurstville, to "Glamis" at 27 Edith Street even closer to Celevedon Road.
Clyde continued working as a fitter with a number of companies and was still recorded as such in the electoral roll in 1963 at the age of 69 years.
Josie died at home in 1974, aged 77 years. Clyde married Julia Clare the following year but within a year he died at Edith Street aged 82 years.