Life: bits and pieces
Crossing wobbly bridges
Photo by Sven Hulls at Pexels Sometimes it seems that stepping forward into the future is like crossing a wobbly bridge. There may be things of beauty ahead, a vista in the distance we can see. But to get there, we must put our faith in a bridge built by others. Is it strong enough? what if the wind picks up and knocks us sideways? what’s below, in that deep ravine?
As each year draws to a close I often feel like that. An ending and a beginning, with no guarantees the beginning will be better than what we’ve just had. It might even be worse!
That’s the wonder of being human. Out ability to keep going, stepping into the future despite the doubts and the many questions we cannot answer.
There is a lot in the world that is sad, frightening, or brings me to rage or tears – or both. There are also many things that bring joy, pleasure, gladness.
I think the job of being a human is to find those wonderful things and, perhaps, help others to do so. Not shutting our eyes to problems or dangers but to seek out the things that spark wonder, delight, love in ourselves and others.
I try to do that as Christmas and New Year approach.
And like most of us, I step forward across that bridge, trusting that it will support me, hoping that I keep my balance and reach the other side.
However you celebrate the Christmas/ festive season, I wish you beauty and love in the new year ahead.
Lucie Liz at pexels 
Studio Naae at pexels 
Ron Lachi at pexels Paul Kelly says it all: here’s to Christmas
I can’t think of a better way to sum up all the things that make Christmas, Christmas than Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy: family, friends, food, silliness, loss, laughter and the bittersweetness of thinking of those we miss.
Go on, treat yourself to this gorgeous video of Aussie Christmases and beyond while listening to Kelly’s timeless song.
(have some tissues handy)And may you and your beautiful ones enjoy a festive day and much love at Christmas 2023.
The beauty of finding your ‘tribe’: Historical Novel Society of Australia conference
I was craving connection with fellow lovers of historical fiction. To talk books, history, writing.
In 2019 I’d found my happy place at the Historical Novel Society Australia (HNSA) conference, held at Parramatta. Two days in the company of my tribe: people like me who adore reading and writing stories set in the past. Here’s my summary post from that weekend.
Then COVID. Say no more.
This year, the conference organisers decided to make it a hybrid event (both in-person and online.) Thank you!! I was unable to attend in person due to a family medical circumstance, so thank you for making sure that I and others did not miss out.
Okay, so online is not the same as being in the room. You can’t go to have books signed by your favourite author, or chat to another aspiring writer/dabbler in the coffee line. You can’t applaud vigorously to show your appreciation for a particular speaker or topic.
But you can listen to two days of absorbing discussions and debates about all things history and books. Bliss.
My highlights?
Top of my list is the welcome emphasis on truth-telling and uncovering hidden or lost stories. This included a compelling Welcome to Country by Gadigal woman Madison Shakespeare, a discussion with award-winning writer Melissa Lucashenko, and listening to Claire Coleman (Noongar, Western Australia) and Monty Soutar (Maori academic and writer from New Zealand) on blurring the line between realism and fiction when writing about ancestors and First Nations experiences of colonial rule.
There were some great tips on building memorable characters in the session called ‘Angels and Demons’ from Nicole Alexander, Kelly Rimmer and Victoria Purman. These authors, and others, work at bringing to life the stories of women in the past, which I particularly enjoy.
This year’s Guests of Honour were Tom Keneally, Anna Funder, Judy Nunn and Melissa Lucashenko: all writers of absorbing, varied fiction.
Some quotable moments:
- Melissa Lucashenko: You think you know a place but maybe you don’t…As Aboriginal people, as we walk around in the contemporary world, we think of what was here before bitumen and skyscrapers. We always walk in two worlds, past and present. This (her latest book ‘Edenglassie’ about the origins of the Queensland city of Brisbane) is my attempt at telling an Aboriginal truth about what happened in the mid 1800’s.
- Katrina Nannested (author of a trilogy for middle grade readers set in WWII Europe : It’s exciting for a writer to come across a story that hasn’t been told before…The real power of historical fiction is that a story can be the start of a journey of discovery and learning. (Yes! Every time I read a fiction book set in a place or time or canvassing events I’m unfamiliar with, I get busy with Google, to find out more.)
- Jock Serong (author of trilogy exploring stories of colonial Tasmania): I was struck by how human behaviours keep on occurring and how we fail to learn.
When I come across the ‘do not write this’ moment – it shows what people had chosen to write down or not. As a writer I want to restore that moment. It’s a kind of bearing witness. But the joyful process of being an historical fiction writer can become a very dark process.
Thank you to the HNSA committee and the conference organisers for a value-and-ideas-packed, absorbing conference. Even though I could not be ‘in the room’ I was (at least virtually) in the company of my tribe.
The 2023 HNSA Conference was held in-person at Sydney’s Hurstville, and online, on 21/22 October. You can find out more from the website and on Facebook to keep in touch with upcoming events.
- Melissa Lucashenko: You think you know a place but maybe you don’t…As Aboriginal people, as we walk around in the contemporary world, we think of what was here before bitumen and skyscrapers. We always walk in two worlds, past and present. This (her latest book ‘Edenglassie’ about the origins of the Queensland city of Brisbane) is my attempt at telling an Aboriginal truth about what happened in the mid 1800’s.
A meander through love: ‘My Year of Living Vulnerably’ by Rick Morton
A follow up of sorts to Rick Morton’s earlier work One Hundred Years of Dirt, this book is a purposeful meander through life and what happened when he decided to allow love – in all its forms – into his life: to feel it, express it, talk about it. It’s not just about ‘romantic love’; the book touches on many things about the world, about living and being human, that he marvels at, has been touched by, or considers essential to life.
It’s a very personal book. Childhood trauma that changed him and his family forever are a constant backdrop, and he explores how the effects of this has lingered and how he set about to get better (not cured or fixed, just better.)
The topics traversed include touch, forgiveness, wonder, beauty, toxic gender norms, aloneness and loneliness, kindness and doubt. I was reminded, at times, of Julia Baird’s Phosphorescence, which similarly discusses some of the things that make life worth living and give meaning.
There is great beauty in the prose, verging on poetic at times, and also laughter-inducing moments, such as the hilarious description of cephalopods.
If you enjoy a book that invites you to think, and that remains with you long after you have read the final page, this would be a good one to add to your ‘TBR’ list. I’m now going to search out a copy of One Hundred Years of Dirt, wanting more of the Morton brand of philosophy, observation and wry humour.
My Year of Living Vulnerably was published by Fourth Estate in 2021.
‘Don’t Hold Back’: a Mother’s Day message
In Australia, Mother’s Day is celebrated in May. It’s a bittersweet day for me and for many people I know, as we remember our absent mothers (and stepmothers, grandmothers, and those special women who held a treasured place in our lives.)
I was recently brought to tears when listening to a song by Australian singer and song-writer Adrienne Coulter with the Nu Now, titled Don’t Hold Back. What brought me undone was the part in the song where she’d included the voice of her mother, who had died in the past year. You can listen to the song here.
Her mum had left a message on the singer’s phone, ‘just checking in’ as mothers do. It brought back to me the way my mum would answer a call from me with ‘Yes love, what can I do for you?’ Always looking to be helpful, to offer something, to give rather than take.
Listening to this lovely song I was mindful that I don’t have a recording of my mother’s voice. Why? With the voice and video recording options available on smartphones, why did I not create a memory of that voice for the future, when my mum was no longer with me?
At my dad’s funeral several years earlier, my son put together a beautiful photo and musical tribute to his beloved Grandpa, and right in the middle, there was my dad’s voice, recounting how he met my mother. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry – perhaps I did both.
So this Mother’s Day message is for those of you who still have that person in your life who you regard as ‘mum.’ Take the photo, make a short video or voice recording. Share a lovely lunch or outing, perhaps just for the two of you. Do those things while you can, because you can never know when the ability to do so will no longer be available.
And tell her that you love her. Do it on Mother’s Day and do it often.
Thanks to Adrienne Coulter for permission to link to her song.
Photo by Evie Schaffer at Pexels.Travels with my ancestors #2: Darkness and light in family history
Photo by Raphael Brasileiro: https://www.pexels.com/photo/shadow-of-a-person-2920850/ Every family history contains its shadows: people or events we might prefer to remain in the dark.
The problem with ignoring them is that we are only getting half a history: rather than the full story of our ancestors and the worlds they lived in, we get a trimmed, sanitised, unsatisfying narrative. We are no closer to understanding the context of our ancestors’ lives and the times in which they lived.
In my family history writing, I have chosen to incorporate information which can be confronting, because I want to present a richer, more truthful story of their lives.
I haven’t done this to make anyone feel guilty or resentful. We can only understand the wider history of this country and its people if we are mature enough to look at the darkness as well as the light.
There is the inevitable theme of ‘land grants’ given by colonial authorities to many of my ancestors, who came here either in chains or as free immigrants. It is important to remember that this land was taken by the British government as theirs to give: however, it was never ceded by those who came first—indigenous Australians. All land purchased by non-indigenous people since colonisation in 1788 is therefore based on the same error.
In writing about my ancestors, I have tried to refer to the places in which they lived by the original names, the ones used by the First Nations of Australia, as well as the names commonly used today. I have consulted maps and online sources for this: any errors are my own.
Indigenous Australia map by AIATSIS Canberra The so-called ‘frontier wars’ of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (more accurately called the wars of resistance, or Australian wars) were widespread and prolonged. They were the result of First Nations people being forced off their lands, away from livelihoods, history and sacred places: the Country to which they had been deeply and profoundly linked for millennia. The wars featured horrible violence, massacres, and sickening atrocities. As with any war, violence was perpetrated on both sides.
I have no evidence that my family forebears were directly involved in such acts of violence. It is possible that some were. But what is undeniable is that by arriving here (willingly or unwillingly) and settling on land, building homes, fencing off land for livestock or crops, and changing the landscape, they contributed to the dispossession of First Nations people.
I believe it is possible to stay with the discomfort of simultaneously feeling proud of what our forebears endured and achieved, while recognising the part they played in this fracturing of ancient cultures and ways of being.
It’s all part of our real, collective Australian story. By acknowledging it, even if that is difficult, we can better understand our own place here. To feel truly Australian, we must connect with all parts of Australia’s past—even the darker ones.
Travels with my ancestors #1: Things they would want me to know.
When I look at my family tree, going back seven or eight generations, I am astounded at the number of lives represented there. Each little icon, male or female, on the Ancestry.com screen, or names I’ve pencilled in on my hand drawn charts, is—was—a person. A person who was born, grew up, perhaps married, had children. A person who earned a living, learned stuff, developed likes, had their loves and their hatreds. Someone who eventually grew ill or suffered an accident or met their death in some other way. They left people who mourned them, remembered them, laughed with others about happy or funny moments, cried about the sad or terrible ones.
How many ancestors? I haven’t stopped to count them all. Trust me, there are many.
Every one of those individuals had to have lived and reproduced for me to be here. Every decision, mistake, accident of history has led to… me.
How amazing.
I am the unique product of all those people. My own experiences, decisions and actions have led to who I am, but so too have all the actions of past generations. Their DNA, mixed in the marvellous cocktail of life, resulted in: me.
That’s astounding, don’t you think?
Why then, do we weave or stomp or trudge or dance our way through life, giving scarcely a thought to the people who made us? Our parents, of course, usually get our attention; perhaps because they are there; perhaps family resemblance is strong enough for us to recognise the link that joins our own generation to theirs. Grandparents, too, can be more visible, due to proximity, or appearance in family photo albums, or in family stories.
Go back another generation and, well…the scene is a bit emptier. Great-grandparents and beyond: we might know names, and have a vague inkling of eras, if not specific dates when they lived, but most of us are unable to describe what sort of people they may have been.
Unless, of course, you get bitten by the family history bug.
In this, I was lucky. I grew up with many diverting stories about ancestors. My father was one of a huge number of Australians proud to claim a particular Second Fleet convict; my mother had several convicts in her family tree, plus some tantalising hints of romance and some murkier stories buried in the dry records of births, marriages and deaths. They had done much of the groundwork before me: constructing family trees and digging out those records (in the days when nothing was online, and everything had to be found in person at libraries and archive repositories.)
So, I suppose you could say I was bitten by the bug at an early age. Though it wasn’t until I’d left full-time work and had the time (and internet connection, laptop, and subscription to a family history platform) that the passion really took hold. Covid-lockdowns gave me plenty of time to dive down rabbit holes searching for that one person I needed to fill in on the tree, that one missing record or date, that hidden story.
Oh, the stories!
Romances, murders, deserted wives, divorces. Poverty, bravery, wartime heroics. Quiet fortitude and deep despair. People loving, birthing, fighting, killing, growing, leaving, losing, and winning. All of life, there in my family trees.
At the risk of sounding fanciful, I have come to believe that they would want me to know. Every story is part of the whole. Each person had their own story, important to them and to those who loved them. Something urges me to uncover their stories; while there are no doubt things that some ancestors, were they able to say, would rather that I didn’t know (crimes committed, mistakes made) I nevertheless believe I honour them by discovering and then telling their stories.
Beyond myself, the stories of my ancestors are threads that contribute to the tapestry that is Australia today. In both positive and negative ways, the ways in which they lived their lives, the choices they made and the results of those choices: all contributed to the big picture of this country I call home.
By uncovering these threads, I have a greater sense of belonging here, in this island nation on the other side of the globe from where my ancestors originated. Why did they come here? What circumstances, decisions or accidents led them to travel across the world to this place? Why did they stay?
If they had not come here, survived, stayed, married, and had children, then I would not exist. A twist of fate, or a small part of an ordained plan—I’m happy for that to remain a mystery.
I’m not happy to leave their lives to the mysterious past. I want to learn about my ancestors, and the part they played in the complex sequence of events that resulted in me.
I like to think they’d be happy about that, too.
Come with me on the journey as I travel with my ancestors. There may well be something in their stories that ignites something in you: a spark of recognition, or a longing to know more about your own family tree. What are its patterns, what characters and events are represented there? What are some of the stories of your ancestors?
What’s around the corner?
Picture by Pixabay I’m sure I am not alone in reflecting with amazement (and some dismay) on the past three years.
As we approach Christmas, I realise that this is the fourth consecutive Christmas season where life has been profoundly affected.
In 2019, Australia endured the shocking ‘Black Summer’ of out-of-control bushfires that burnt out huge swathes of the continent’s east. For those of us living in fire areas, we faced a Christmas during which we were not sure if we’d have a home by the end of it – let alone a Christmas tree or gifts. For those not directly in the flame zone, the air was polluted by choking smoke and fumes for weeks at a time.
Just two months later, Covid-19 arrived. Lockdowns, masks, toilet paper shortages, vaccines and anti-vaxxers. Restrictions on visiting elderly in nursing homes, protests. For three years, on and off. Dreading the inevitable arrival of a new variant, just in time for Christmas get-togethers. This year makes the third Covid Christmas. In a row.
Ever optimistic, most of us hope for a better year ahead. New Year’s resolutions, plans, wishes and dreams. I’m doing the same (though I’ve learnt, over the past few years, to write in pencil on my calendar.) Perhaps that’s having a bet each way. Perhaps it’s seeing the future as a ‘glass half full.’ Perhaps it’s simply being realistic.
Anyway, I do wish you and yours a happy festive season, however you choose to spend it.
And I fervently hope for a 2023 with – well, not so many surprises. Or at least, only the happy kind.
Exciting news: 2021 E.M.Fletcher Writing Award
I am beyond thrilled to share the news that I have been awarded the 2021 E.M.Fletcher Writing Award, for a short story based on a tragic event from my family tree – the drowning of twelve members of the Eather family in the shocking Windsor floods of 1867.
The competition is coordinated by Family History ACT and is in remembrance of Eunice Fletcher, an enthusiastic member who loved both family history and writing – a woman after my own heart!
My story, The Bitterness of Their Woe, will be published along with the highly commended, commended and shortlisted entries, in the December issue of the Family History ACT journal, The Ancestral Searcher.
My thanks to FHACT, the Fletcher family and the judges for organising this unique writing competition, which encourages people interested in family history to dig out and write about the stories they uncover.
I am so excited and honoured that my story was chosen and I can’t wait to read the other shortlisted entries.
Travels with my mother XXIV: Postscript
This is the twenty-fourth in my Travels with my Mother series. If you’ve not read earlier posts, this is the first one in the series for context.
Grief is a strange companion. My mother died in late May. We had the funeral—thankfully with next to no restrictions—and then the Delta variant of Covid19 began to make its presence known in cities and even some regional areas around Australia.
It has served, at times, as something of a distraction. The routines of the daily briefing from authorities on latest case numbers and new public health orders. Remembering to take a mask and do QR check-ins whenever I leave home. In reality, leaving home rarely, other than for a daily walk. Attempting to keep exercise levels up, along with a healthy diet. Sometimes, resisting the urge to open a bottle of red wine and / or a chocolate bar takes a lot of focus. Keeping busy; projects that require considerable time and attention now absorb my daylight hours.
But other, older, routines still keep me company. Around 9.30 or 10 am each day, my hand wants to reach for my phone. That was the time I usually made my morning phone call to Mum. Mornings were best: by the afternoon her mind was fuzzier and she was tired. They were quick calls because Mum could no longer sustain a long conversation, apart from occasions when she would venture out on one of her ‘travel stories.’
I remember quickly, of course. Mum is no longer there. And the space in my morning is filled with other tasks and activities. Sort of. That daily connection, while meant to nurture Mum and assure her she was not forgotten, was possibly just as important to me.
My awareness of that Mum-shaped gap in the world is very real and, while the pain is not acute now, it lingers. Despite my knowing and understanding that her death was, as some told me, a ‘blessing.’ She had so little quality of life and comfort in her last weeks and months that I often wished she could just quietly sleep and not wake again. That’s almost what happened and for that I am grateful.
There is much to be grateful for. Mum did not die from Covid, stuck in a Covid ward where her family could not reach her. She is no longer in a locked down situation in her nursing home, with no visitors or (at best) ‘window visits’ with her family. She does not have to experience the bewilderment brought about by the upheaval caused by this latest wave of Covid. I feel for every older person and their family going through these this right now.
I am very glad about all of these things. But still I wish, sometimes, that Mum and I could go on one last travel together.
Photos by Jess Bailey Designs and James Wheeler from Pexels
