Family Tree Frog

Alan from Sepia Saturday says: As a general rule, if you take a daft photograph and then let it soak up eighty years of history it will become even dafter. This is certainly true of this 1930 photograph of the Swan Maiden's Carriage at the Grace Brothers Ball in Sydney, Australia. Grace Brothers were - believe it or not - a famous Department Store, and the strange scene depicted in this photograph (which comes to us by way of the Flickr stream of the Powerhouse Museum) is as strange as anything you might have seen in an episode of "Are You Being Served?". Possible themes for Sepia Saturday 256 include festivals, floats, feathers and fair maidens. Ah Grace Bros....now that brings back memories.  When I was a slip of a gel (hard g), we used to live in Glebe and then I moved to Chippendale to my first share house.  I would walk past Grace Bros just about every day and admire it's cupolas.  Here are some views ... and yesterday...well not yesterday...

It's such a lovely big old world and we are so lucky to have the internet.   Have you ever wanted to start family history but didn't know where to begin? Today I learned that the University of Tasmania - right down the bottom of the world - is offering a free course - Introduction to Family History as per here.   To enrol for free you do have to be an  Australian citizen or a student holding a Permanent Humanitarian Visa or with a Permanent Resident Status. And you need to study it in their Spring Semester which starts 8 December.  Applications close 16 December.  But what if you already know a bit about Family History and want to know a bit more? I have enrolled in several courses through the lovely Pharos Tutors  who are pretty much at the top of the world. At the moment I am studying a 3 week course in World War Research with Simon Fowler and it is great.  Yes...THE Simon Fowler! No, not that Simon Fowler...th...

When I've had too much to eat or have had "an elegant sufficiency" as my mother used to like me to say, I say instead:  "I'm up to Dolly's wax".   This is a phrase borrowed from my maternal grandfather.  It refers to the junction between the dolly's neck and the rest of her body - where the wax began and ended so to speak.  I think the heads were made of wax and the bodies made of china or some such.  Someone correct me or agree with me for goodness sake. I'm a bit of a bower-bird, truth be known, when it comes to language and turns of phrase.  After I've worked with someone for a while I tend to adopt their mannerisms or parts of speech, if they take my fancy.   A boss I worked with many years ago at the ABC had some great turns of phrase - they were Cockney in origin I think -  "Shall we hit the frog and toad?"  he used to say to me cheerfully.    For those unfamiliar with this lingo, it means, sha...

Alan from Sepia Saturday says: The title of this old photograph - which comes from the Flickr Commons stream of the National Archives of Estonia - is "Eveline Maydell making a silhouette, with her models. Indianapolis 1931" Eveline Adelheid von Maydell (1890 - 1962) was a German-born silhouette artist who lived in the USA from 1922 onwards. She was described as being ambidextrous : a Milwaukee newspaper article from 1942 said "she sketches and designs with her left hand and with her right snips with minute scissors the silhouettes..." Sepians also need to be ambidextrous - composing words with their left hand whilst assessing old images with their right - and we invite you to contribute all these skills to your contributions for Sepia Saturday 255.  In May last year I figure I used up just about all my silhouette photos.  But I don't think I've shown you this one. It's a bit blurred, I know.  But I like the idea behind it.  I think it i...

We're a bit excited here at the thought of participating in Troveia tomorrow night. We're studying hard as you can see. We've registered our team - Moreton Monitors - and hope we win a prize or two. It's Trove's 5th Birthday and what is a birthday without some games? Some kids play Pass the Parcel or Pin the Tail on the Donkey. We're playing Hunt the Newspaper or Journal Article instead. What do you need to play?  Well you should probably be familiar with Trove. And you should probably have a Twitter account. For all the information on how to register and play go here. Some friends to help you would be good too - friends with good searching skills and persistence. The fun begins at 7pm AEDT in Australia.  We live in Queensland so that will be 6pm. Happy Birthday Trove!

Cake! In August last year I posted several photos on a blog post of my maternal grandfather Thomas Mcloughlin and his brothers.  The meme for Sepia Saturday that week was photos of men in striped trousers or neckties or suspenders.  Little did I know when I posted that photo what would unfold as a consequence.  It really was the ideal cousin-bait though it wasn't really pre-meditated as such.  I put the wrong names of the brothers under the photos and boy ! didn't that drag the cousins in ! ;) Lovely new-to-me cousins Marilyn and Mary-Ann came to my rescue and put me on the straight and narrow as to which brother was which - bless them.  And then the idea for a family reunion was born.  Marilyn generously hosted it last weekend and I flew down to New South Wales to meet some of the cousins.   I have never been to a family reunion before and so I was a bit perplexed as to what to take.  I had a 7 kilo hand-luggage allowance with Virg...

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the following post contains images of deceased persons. Alan from Sepia Saturday says: I have to confess, I have never been a fisherman. The thought of sitting next to some damp river bank waiting for some obliging fish to bite leaves me cold. The thought of having to push a sharp hook through some non-obliging worm leaves me frozen. I am much happier with an old photograph of some fishermen, and that is just what we have for Sepia Saturday this week. It is a photograph that dates back to 1916 and which has been shared via Flickr Commons by Alberta Archives. All you need to do is to cast your digital hook into your collection of old images and come up with something that may or may not match our theme image. You might want to go with miners or with anglers, with fishy tales or with three men : whatever you go with just post your post on or around Saturday 8th November 2014 and add a link to the ...

Alan on Sepia Saturday says: It was a big day in the history of Dollinger Steel of Beaumont, Texas. It was their 50th anniversary dinner and countless guests had been invited to the celebratory dinner. And the photographer had come along as well to record the event. Back in the days when photographs were about more than just an idle click of a mobile phone touch screen, events and photographs went together. Weddings, birthdays, gatherings, anniversaries and parties : none would be complete without the burst of a flash bulb and all those practised cheese-smiles....we are asking you to feature an event, a tent, a cooking pot or even a name-tag. Let your freedom of interpretation be as extensive as a hungry diner queue and as voluminous as a generous cooking pot.  Right - so today's post is going to be short and sweet because I'm heading off for a girls' weekend up on the Sunshine Coast.  We will be battling the Noosa Triathlon traffic on the way up for sure.  O...