Three loves fill Ted’s life

TED Baghel is a centenarian with a cheerful trove of memories that he rolls out with a clarity as if they happened yesterday. For Ted, it seems that they did just that and on Friday, 28 February he celebrated his 100th birthday luncheon at Fowles Wine with close friends and his son John. A sharp man and quick off the mark, Ted has much to say about the three loves he has had in the world. One of those loves – over the course of an afternoon spent with him at Euroa’s Granite Hill – sounds worryingly like an addiction when he confesses to being on first-name terms with his 'dealer'. A Mercedes Benz dealer that is, but an addiction all the same with Ted having long lost count of how many Mercedes Benz cars he has owned. “There’s only been ten or fifteen,” Ted said. “But I quit driving about three months ago, and I sold my car, because it was too much temptation for me to drive.” After a life-long affection for cars, Ted is pragmatic about the need for him to stop driving and now enjoys just talking about them, the conversation too filled with passion for any hint of melancholy to find its way in. His all-time favourite Merc he names in a heartbeat. “I can tell you that, without hesitation – the C200K. “Now, if you're not an enthusiast [this correspondent is], you wouldn't know what that was [this correspondent drives one], but it was the only supercharged, not turbo, that Mercedes made [correspondent in slight error]. “And it was a smallish car.” The story behind another purchase leaves any doubt about this gentleman’s Merc-bent in its dust, when he tells of his disappointment when his latter-day partner refused to go on a motorhome holiday with him around Australia. “She said ‘well, I'm not coming on the trip’, and I thought, ‘well, stuff you'." Ted met again with his dealer to salve his habit. "For years if I was feeling a bit depressed, I'd go and buy a new one." He journeyed around Australia on his own in a new Mercedes and stayed in motels. A smile and chuckle are never held back as this man’s life story unfolds. “It might be my son’s inheritance money, but it’s also my weakness.” Ted’s automobile adventures also saw him racing Bugatti cars in his post-war years and becoming long-time friends with the late Grand Prix driving ace Reg Hunt. His wheels are now attached to what he refers to as a ‘go kart’ which is yet to join him at Granite Hill and which unfortunately has no reliable German suspension. “I got the best one that I could, and I reckon I've got to look at my teeth when I get back from driving it to see if any of my fillings have come out," he said. “Well, I thought it was the best suspension I could see in any of them.” Pre-war is when Ted's first link with Euroa was nurtured when, as a child on a trip with his parents at a time when family outings required school uniform, he left his school hat at Mrs Rose’s Tea House in Clifton Street. “Mrs Rose read the name my mother had put inside the hat with an address, and she posted it back. “And that was my first contact with Euroa.” His second trip was more adventurous. “A long time later, there was a group of us in an accountancy and dental network – you're either in dentistry or accountancy – and we used to go in the winter for a weekend at Marraweeney," he said. “And we had a weekend of getting drunk and performing all ridiculous things. “Then in the summer, one of them had a fairly large cruiser on Lake Eildon, and we'd go there and water ski. “Then we all got drunk again. “And that's how I found Euroa, really, for the second time.” Several moves back and forth to Melbourne over the years finally saw him settle on the town. The story shuffles back to 1939 when, at the outbreak of war, some ill-luck proved providential for the 18-year-old army recruit, as a bout of dengue fever steered his path from the frontline to elsewhere. “I did my infantry training at Cowra in New South Wales, then I did my jungle training. “I was waiting in the transit camp (to go) and I got bitten by a mosquito.” Ted said he spent so long in hospital that on discharge he learned that his unit had gone to war without him. “I don't know why, but it must have really upset me – my mates had all gone, all those fellows I trained with. “I never saw any of them again.” A transition to making prosthetics for soldiers with severe face injuries saw out the war for Ted before he became a dental technician. “At the end of the war I worked at the Facial Auxiliary and Plastic Dental, as it was called, and we made noses, ears, eyes and any part of the face that had been damaged." His second love – and deepest – soon followed when he and enlistment-buddy Sam ventured to Sydney by car at war’s end and needed to book accommodation with a travel agency. A chance encounter in an office that started with a smile plunged Ted headlong into a love story that began with determination after first laying eyes on June Bergen. “I saw this woman on the counter, and I said to Sam, ‘Have a look at the doll down the end’. “ ‘Leave this to me Sam, I'll do the talking’; so, we went straight to her. “I can remember she walked past me, and she had on a tweed suit, and I looked, and that figure!” The day he returned from Sydney, a smitten and determined Ted made a beeline back to the travel agency and wasn’t perturbed by learning June was not there. Given her home address (“you could ask for that back then”), he pursued June until he bounced her boyfriend (“that didn’t deter me of course”), having already started the love story by asking her to lunch, to say thanks for making the holiday booking. “That was my excuse anyway.” They married in 1949. “I had a wonderful marriage – I absolutely idolised my wife,” “That's her over there.” He nods to a framed picture of a blonde woman of striking beauty. “She was gorgeous, and she was also smart.” Of the many pauses in hearing Ted’s story, this was the longest. June Baghel proved to be a groundbreaker in local politics by becoming the second woman elected to the Waverley City Council in 1968 and its first female mayor in 1972. She also had an impact on Ted's family in a positive way after some envious rivalry within the clan which had much to do with her beauty and her smarts than her character. The details of one incident can remain sketchy in publishing, but enough needs re-telling as it stirred in Ted his most moving words about love. When it seemed newborn son John was not going to have a chance to be held by Ted's ailing paternal grandmother due to some familial over-bearing, June stepped into the breach as would any hero while the aged matriarch stood with arms stretched out to nurse the baby, and handed John to her. "It upsets me now when I think of it," Ted marries the depths of melancholy and of love with tears. "The poor old lady looked at baby John and she said something I never forgot. He catches a moment. "They breathe their own love," he said. "Breathe - they breathe their own love."

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