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…
Recollections archive
Stories
Every currently imported Recollections story, including project-history posts, is now available to read.
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…
February 2025
Fire and Storm
MY COUNTRY By Dorothy MacKellar ‘I love a sunburnt country,A land of sweeping plains,Of ragged mountain ranges,Of droughts and flooding rains. I…
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…
September 2024
Books of Our Childhood
Books have always played a large part in our lives and I cannot remember a time when we have not had a…
May 2024
Pins and Needles
SUE Although I have grown up with sewing and sewers in my life, it has never captured my interest, until recently. I…
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 2023
Hair
Our plan was to write about hairstyles. Many of our family photos feature the hairstyles that were popular at the time, so…
October 2022
Women’s Work
Like women throughout history, most of the women in our family have had the primary job of parent and homemaker. Those homes…
April 2022
Corona Virus – an annotated vocabulary
“Where were you when the world changed?” we wrote, a year ago, under the heading “The Year of Covid”. The world did…
March 2021
The Year of Covid
Where were you when the world changed? As we begin work on this new post, the first one since February, babies conceived…
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 2019
The Built Environment – Box Hill
We grew up in Box Hill South in close proximity to Surrey Hills where our family has had an association for five…
July 2019
The Built Environment – Hawthorn
Our forebears have been part Melbourne since the 1850s. They came from Europe, Ireland and Great Britain, arriving at the Port of…
March 2019
Auntie Bert, a “sterling character”
These three young women are our grandmother Alfreda on the left, with her two younger sisters, Beatrice in the middle and Berta…
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…
October 2018
Drouin Christmas, 1975
The Christmas of 1975 was a huge and exciting enterprise. Jono and I were living in a beautiful house just outside Drouin.…