I am grateful to Leonard and Peggy's daughter for supplying most of the information below.

Leonard Andrew Woodage was born at Hatherley Gardens, East Ham in 1912. After attending a local primary school he was educated at Raine's Foundation School at Whitechapel near where his father worked as an accountant for Buck & Hickman. It is thought that this was arranged so that father and son could travel together each day but this reduced the opportunity for Len to make friends with his classmates. His parents were both musical and his mother taught him the piano.

On leaving school (1928) he joined Ardath Tobacco Company (clerical and accounting duties). He left in 1937 and joined Ryvita Co Ltd as an assistant departmental manager, later becoming departmental manager. He met Peggy at a ball at East Ham Town Hall and they married in 1940. He left to join the RAF in 1941 and was engaged mainly as NCO in charge of technical stock records. On his release from the RAF in 1946 he commenced clerical duties with the War Office in Warwickshire.

In 1949 Len & Peggy and their 2 children emigrated to Australia. Peggy was the driver in this move: her two brothers and father were already in Australia. Len was sorry to leave England and never returned although Peggy did several times in later years. On arrival in Australia they were put up by relations while they had a house built (using Len's inheritance as both his parents had died 2 or 3 years earlier).

He found a clerical job with Johnson & Johnson but left in 1953 to join the Sydney Morning Herald as Assistant Reader which was better paid. He left that in 1956 to buy a shop with the intention of finding work while Peg ran the shop. However, no work was available and so they bought a larger shop about 12 months later.

Soon after Len became ill with Motor Neurone disease, Peggy tried to keep the shop going but eventually she had to close it down and find work elsewhere.  Len died in 1965.

Peggy moved into a granny flat with her daughter and family and later into other accommodation nearby. In her final years she suffered from stomach cancer and then a stroke which necessitated her going into a nursing home which she hated. She died in 2010.