Three children were born to Henry Priest and Sarah at Kojonup; Henry, Melita and George. Sarah's daughter Ethel from her previous marriage to Sunter remained at Katanning with the Old family so that she could attend school.
A copy of Sarah and Henry's marriage lines reveals that they were not married officially until 1901 at Katanning Baptist Manse when Sarah was thirty-five years old and Henry, forty-one.
This was seventeen years after Sarah's first husband, Sunter, was declared 'missing, presumed dead'.
There was no township at Kojonup; it was merely a watering place for the mail-coach horses and few clergy came that way.
At the time of Melita's birth in 1893, Henry could not be found.
Sarah gave a man her last ten shillings to go out and look for him. He was found caring for some small children at a farmhouse twenty miles distant.
Their mother had gone to Perth to settle some legal business concerning the death of her husband.
As there was no telephone or any other way of letting Sarah know, Henry decided to stay with the children, hoping to get home before Melita was born but she was several days old when he returned.
Once when there was a sick child, Henry rode the twenty-five miles to Katanning on horseback to get the doctor.
The doctor came back with Henry and as he dismounted in the rain and hurried to the tent, Melita heard him say, 'Put a bag over my saddle, Priest.
Henry rode back to Katanning with the doctor to get the prescribed medicine and then home again to Kojonup that night, some hundred miles in all - with a change of horses at Katanning, of course.
