Obituary: Sylvia Tate, war bride and businesswoman

When Sylvia Tate's ashes are interred in her beloved Portsoy today, she will finally have returned home for good, 65 years after leaving for Australia as a teenager to become a bride.

Throughout those years, her heart had always been in two places - her adopted Antipodean home and Scotland, the land of her birth - after it was won by a young Australian airman.

The love of her "Aussie Flyboy" took her 12,000 miles away from the North-east coast, into the unknown, and a world away from her childhood memories of eating McCowan's "Coo candy", picking "spinkies" or wild primroses and savouring the aroma of oatcakes baking in the farmhouse kitchen.

Born in Portsoy, on 10 October, 1926 the daughter of Christina and Alexander Middleton, she attended the local primary and Fordyce Academy before becoming a clerkess in the village's branch of the Bank of Scotland.

The country was already in the grip of the Second World War and she would later recall those days: being a member of the Scottish Girls Training Corps; going to see Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone With The Wind; helping her mother to bake cakes to feed the hungry, lonely airmen from nearby Boyndie Aerodrome and enjoying eightsome reels at local dances.

She met her future husband, Rex, a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) pilot, at Portsoy Dance Hall and watched him hop around the dance floor like a kangaroo. He courted her for six months, often flying over her house in Durn Road in his Oxford plane, revving the engine three times.

After they were parted, when he left for service in the Middle East, they wrote to each other for nearly two years before Rex proposed. It was to be another two years before they were to meet again.

Having accepted his proposal, she embarked on the six-week, 12,000-mile journey to Australia as a war bride in 1946 and later described climbing the endless gangplank of the Stirling Castle at Tilbury Docks, along with 1,000 other passengers, carrying a heavy suitcase full of clothes, presents, a wedding cake and three bottles of malt whisky from her home town.

On the voyage, where she was one of the youngest on board and was known as "the kid", she played competition deck quoits with Australian cricketer and cartoonist Arthur Mailey and recalled the soldiers on a passing troopship, travelling east to go home to England, lighting their cigarette lighters all at once and shouting "You're going the wrong way" and hoping they were wrong.

Her daughter, Christine, who created a one-woman show, Memoirs of a Scottish War Bride, in tribute to her mother and the thousands of others who went to Australia to marry post-the 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 didn't know what a lamington was, or a pikelet, the latter being called a pancake in Scotland."

Rex married his bride at the Sandringham Presbyterian Church in Melbourne on 5 November, 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, fruit cakes and pancakes, she became a businesswoman, running a caf and later a ladies' clothing shop that 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.

Sylvia died in Australia at the age of 83, and her last wish was to be returned to the historic fishing port where she was born. Her daughter and granddaughter Kristy duly carried her ashes from Australia to Scotland.Now that very innocent but brave young war bride, who set sail for a country unknown and untried, to marry her Aussie Flyboy, will have her request granted today at Portsoy Cemetery.

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