Family Tree Frog

The focus of Sepia Saturday this week is prams - or perambulators as they were once known.   I have shown pictures of prams before on my blog.   This one only a couple of weeks ago ....my mother is in the pram. This one of my mother with her doll's pram was posted six years ago. This one of her cousin's son Doug in a pram (and what a very smart pram it is) five years ago. If you look carefully at the photo of Gladys and Cecil Maloney in this photo posted a couple of years ago , you can see another pram So it was a real challenge to find a new photo...but here it is! Me and my doll's pram which I suspect we still have somewhere in the attic. My grandmother brought back this dress for me from Hawaii however the photo was taken in Edinburgh Scotland.  Gee I loved that pram.  It took a lot of beating.   I dug up a couple more recent photos of my children. Me and Bel in her pram - actually I do...

"Our theme image this week features mill workers in America in the early years of the twentieth century, and it is an image that has a very personal connection for me. Whether you, like me, have mill workers in your family tree or not, the fabric of our theme can easily stretch to encompass any aspect of the world of work. Or machines, or fabrics, or .... whatever your imagination wants to do with it."  Alan Burnett on Sepia Saturday   Today's post is going to be very weavy, windy because that is how my brain is at the moment.  Very weavy, windy.  Not windy.  Winedy.  So I set out with the intent of talking about my Forfar ancestors, because I believe they worked in mills in Bannockburn, Scotland.  When I googled Bannockburn, I came up with a Bannockburn in Queensland.  How about that?   It's just south-west of Yatala (where you can get some delicious pies) and is part of Logan City Council.  You can find out more ...

Don't these women look relaxed in this boat?  It's a long weekend this weekend in the land of Oz.  The Queen's Birthday weekend to be precise.  And I fully intend to relax.   When I searched for photos in our family collection of women in boats, I came across this one. I didn't think much about it to be honest.  I have no idea when it was taken or who that little girl is.  I am now wondering if it was my mother's cousin Joy.  I think it is certainly my mother's mother Kit sitting on the left with the hat.  This is one of my maternal grandfather's photos.  No writing on the back to help me.  So I'm going to guess sometime in the early 1930s before my mother was born in 1935.   The name of the boat certainly did help me.  As I blundered my way around Trove and Google, I have now come to the conclusion that this must be a speed boat.   My grandfather loved horse-racing so it is not too far a str...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, all I ever wanted for Christmas was a swing.  Did I get one?  No.  And now I am old I would still like a swing - probably a more sedate one like this.  My grandmother had one of those swing seats and I thought they were grand.  I still want one.  If anyone is listening.  Anyone? Sigh. Here are some photos of people on swings for consideration, from my mother's albums again. Swings come in all shapes and sizes.  Look at this beauty.  Taken in Newcastle me-thinks. Dolly, Kit, Shirley, Barbara I have no idea who Dolly is.  She must have been a friend of Kit - my mother's mother.  I think Dolly has her back to us.  All you can really see of Barbara is a little face between Kit and Shirley.  They are on the left-hand side of the swing facing us.  At a guess, I would say this is taken about 1939.  Perhaps Belle, Kit's twin sister took the photo.  Maybe she...

I am having a great deal of difficulty staying on theme today.  Here is my photo which probably just scrapes in on the 30 years old Sepia Saturday rule; although the "rules" on Sepia Saturday have always really just been guidelines with plenty of room for wriggle. Jim and Alex en route to Melbourne circa 1990 I'm pretty sure this was taken on a trip to Melbourne with my parents just before I got married.  That is the weekend Australian I am reading and if I was holding the paper straighter, we might have been able to read the date.  Oops I'd better make it sepia hadn't I?  There you go. If you read my blog last week, I am excited to report that there is an update on the photo of my mother and the dog Pete and that we have been able to locate where the photo was taken so head on over and have a look at the postscript. Here are some other photos where I am unable to place them but they called to me this morning from the album.  All thoughts...

Sepia Saturday   this week encourages us to consider the dogs in our life or past lives and maybe the training thereof.  I could bore you witless with tales of the Adorable Arwen. Adorable Arwen She is, without a doubt, the Apple of my Eye and walking companion par excellence.  She has us wrapped around her dew claw and we have to be careful not to give her too many treats or she will end up as tubby as me. Let's have a look at some other puppies in the family tree. My mother and father both grew up with dogs.  I desperately wanted a dog when I was very little.  A black spaniel, Dino, was duly purchased and given to me when I was about six I think.  But Dino did not like me one little bit so he had to go.  Then the dachshund across the road bit me on the knee when I went to visit Elizabeth-Anne, so I was a bit shy of dogs after that.  My friends had dogs who were all very lovely - Jill's beagle Jip and Judith's endless success...

School days.  Good morning everyone. Good morning Mrs So - and - so.....said in a long drawn out sing-song voice.   I have spent a restless night, waking frequently to hear wind moaning as it snakes its way in through door and window crevices.  It's not good.  There are fires raging around south-east Queensland and parts of NSW.  I am worried for the good folk at Binna Burra, Stanthorpe, Applethorpe,  Tenterfield and Armidale. All this week, as I have driven from Brisbane to the Gold Coast, I have been driving through smoke haze from about Helensvale onwards. We've had a dry end to winter a nd the climate outlook for the remainder of the year shows an increased risk of bushfires. When I looked for bushfires and schools on Trove, I found photos of the Hornsby Home Science School which was destroyed by bushfire on 30 November 1957 .  It wasn't the first time the school had been threatened by a fire.  Newspaper articles give ac...