June 2026
Excursion to Templestowe
Sue and I both remember our grandparents’ Templestowe house. Sue even remembers walking from the house with our grandfather: down to the…
Family history and research
Genealogical research, records and inherited history.
June 2026
Our Family in Wartime
We are Baby Boomers, the generation conceived and born, as normal life picked up again, after the end of the Second World…
November 2024
Infant Jesus Catholic Church, Koroit
Jono and I were on a journey to view our new camper in South Australia, Murray Bridge. Our first stop, for a…
November 2023
Are You Related to the McCormacks?
Over the years Sue and I have been writing our family stories, we have developed our own little tradition of excursions. We…
July 2023
Families Along the Goulburn
Recently we discovered a bit more about the Molesworth branch of our dad’s family. Down the rabbit hole we went. It took…
February 2020
Tuesdays at Number 10 – Appraisal and Reflection
Since we began to tell our family stories in September 2015, the day has changed from Wednesday to Tuesday, the world has…
November 2018
Stella Park
Guelda and Polly Pyke were Jono’s father’s first cousins; and were always very much part of Jono's and his sister Anne's life.Polly…
August 2018
Poowong Footage
We introduced, in the previous blog entry, the recently unearthed visual chronicles from my first husband, Fred. Leafing through old photograph albums,…
April 2018
Decade by Decade
Five hours of Alice and Marge’s family stories finishes with an overview. Strikingly, Alice did most of this by herself, without notes.…
July 2017
The Pakenham Bourkes 1939 – 2017 Part Two
The property along Toomuc Creek was sold in 1854, and Michael and Catherine spent the remainder of their lives at Bourke’s hotel.…
June 2017
Pakenham, the visit
Research is interesting and exciting as new snippets of information come to light. Our research into Pakenham, and our family’s important role…
April 2017
The Pakenham Bourkes 1839 – 2017 Part One.
Michael and Catherine Bourke of County Limerick, Ireland, our great great grandparents were part of the very early settlement of Victoria. They…
August 2016
War Service
Lest we Forget. When we were children our pacifist mother disapproved of the “glorification of war”, characterised, in her eyes, by remembrance…
June 2016
“Cut out of the Will”
Growing up we had heard many times how our father had been ‘cut out of the will’ by his father because he…
June 2016
The Poor Little Thing
Marge and Alice, with great drama, tell the story of our great, great grandmother whose name they do not know, and her…
May 2016
Grace McCormack, our other grandmother.
Until last week we knew very little about our paternal Grandmother, Grace. We both had the feeling from our father that she…
March 2016
Alfreda Maria Holm, our maternal grandmother: the first seventeen years
We remember little of our maternal grandmother as a person. She was rather a remote figure, tall, elegant, well dressed but she…
November 2015
Great Great Grandparents
Alice and Marge in 1990, as they sat with their cassette recorder, told as much as they knew about their grandparents and…