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,…
Recollections archive
Stories
Every currently imported Recollections story, including project-history posts, is now available to read.
July 2018
Fred’s films
My first boyfriend, later husband, Fred, has been out of our lives for a long time. Sue and I have written about…
June 2018
The Croydon Years
Our mother’s and aunt’s formative years were spent in Croydon. Alice was six and Marge nine when they moved. They remember the…
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.…
December 2017
I can hear sleigh bells
Christmas has always been special time in our lives. It is not surprising, I suppose, as the whole of society gears up…
November 2017
The Farm
About 1950, our mother’s aunt, Beat, and her husband Bill sold up their grocery store and their Balwyn house, took their youngest…
September 2017
Meat and Three Vegs
Like many families, we were fairly poor as we were growing up. There were four children, only our father worked and "stuff"…
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…
February 2017
A Great Sorrow
Our mother's sister, Marge, who had been close to marrying an American Serviceman during the war, had had a whirlwind romance with…
December 2016
Primary School Teachers 1950s
MARGARETLike everyone else I started school in “Bubs”, aged five. The baby boom was in full swing and there must have been…
November 2016
The Demon Drink
Alcoholic drinks hardly ever entered our world. We were aware that the communion “wine” used by our own Presbyterian church was actually…
October 2016
“Are you up to it?”
All the kids in the neighbourhood walked to school. It’s what kids have done for ever. We went to Bennettswood State School…
September 2016
Family camping
Our grandparents and parents had camped as young adults, so living in third world conditions in order to be able to enjoy…
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…
August 2016
Heather Farm, Kilmore Junction ,1879
Stories we heard as children paint a picture of the lives of our great, great grandparents, Joachim and Martha Dau and the…
July 2016
Twenty-Eight Moore Street
Alice describes the acquisition of the land in Box Hill South in 1946: Dad built the house over the following six years,…