In the port town of Ardrossan on Scotland’s Firth
of Clyde, Alexander Shearer and Annie Tyre
grew up one street apart - close enough that the
backyards touched. He went to sea; she waited.
They married in Sydney in 1914, two days after
she stepped off the ship. He died in rural New
South Wales in 1921, aged thirty-three, his
youngest daughter not yet born. She lived on for
another fifty-eight years - returning to Scotland,
running a store, remarrying, and outlasting them
all. This is their story.