On the 5th June 1926, Robert, Louisanna and Robert Jr. set sail on the S.S. Bendigo bound for Australia. The voyage was troubled by neither serious weather nor Kraken attacks (officially). It would be the first of many Anglo-Austro journeys Robert would make in his lifetime, this first one occuring when he was just three years old.



The family settled in Sydney's North Shore, where Robert Sr. bought a milk run, which in those days included horse and cart. Years of modest returns were halted with the coming of the Great Depression. Being the charitable soul that he was, he continued to deliver to many customers with the understanding they would pay later.

Payments which would never eventuate.

So, for Loisanna, the grass which had seemed greener in Australia, turned ever browner. Maybe the Old Country was not so bad. Maybe the weather was not as cold as remembered and surely jobs would be easier to find now. So she packed up the family yet again and sailed back to Tyneside.

The family of three would return to England in 1937 only for their second new life to be interupted by yet another world changing event.

"...this country is at war with Germany"

Robert was visiting relatives when the war broke out, but was too young to join up right away. He enlisted in the RAF in 1942, and it is no coincidence that this was the same year in which the fortunes of the Allies began to turn. He attended navigator training school in Canada. Upon returning to England he was posted to 613 Squadron flying Mosquitoes. His squadron mainly bombed railway lines and also participated in the bombing runs ahead of the D-Day Landings at Normandy in June 1944. Robert always said that he liked being in the Airforce because at the end of each mission you came home to a hot meal and clean sheets.

Robert Snaith

“The life of a navigator was one of long stretches of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror"


Flight Lieutenant Redhead received the 1939/45 Star, France and Germany Star, Defence Medal and the War Medal 1939-45. Despite the war ending in 1945, Robert had to remain in France flying as part of the British Forces of Occupation. One of his prized possessions from the war was a piece of Royal Copenhagen porcelain given to him by the Danish Ambassador for his involvement in a Diplomatic Mission to Copenhagen. After being demobbed in October of 1946, Flight Lieutenant Redhead resigned his commission in February 1947.

Starting a Manly Life

After the war, Robert joined the NSW Police Force and later became a prosecutor. He rose to the rank of Superintendant as Chief of the Police Prosecuting Branch. But it was in meeting Margaret that Robert would finally have a life changing event that was not brought on by his mother or Nazis.


After a whirlwind romance, they would marry in Manly on 12th June 1948. After buying a house in Harboard and having two daughters, it seemed as though Robert had managed to build himself the life Louisanna had come to Australia hoping to forge over twenty years ago. An illustrious career in the Force came to an end when Robert retired in 1982, eventually moving with Margaret to Tuncurry on the NSW coast.

There, he passed away on Christmas morning 1994.

A favourite pastime in his later years was to invent games and riddles for his grandchildren. A foolproof technique to keep the boys quiet was the simple introduction to a story that did not exist.

"I'll tell you the story of Jack and the Glory if you don't speak in the middle of it"