Short story blog
My first experience of “Italian” food was my mother’s spaghetti with bacon, onion, tomato and grated cheddar cheese. As a child, I thought it was really delicious, but my father was not so enthusiastic. After all, he had tasted real Italian food. My father would recount in great detail the spaghetti dishes served at Mama […] Read more…
During a visit to Croydon last year, my husband and I spent time exploring the historic Croydon Cemetery. Gazetted as a cemetery in 1889, the heritage-listed Croydon Cemetery is the only one of ten cemeteries in the district still in use today. Croydon is a former gold mining town in the heart of northwest Queensland’s […] Read more…
On Anzac Day, Tuesday 25 April 1944, the citizens of Rockhampton together with service men and women and returnees from both wars came out in their thousands to pay homage to the district’s war fallen. World War II – and the Pacific War – was still raging, and a large contingent of service men and […] Read more…
This short story is about my late mother Evelyn and her faith in the One whom Mary Magdalene met in the garden on that first Easter morn. It’s a companion piece to My mother’s latter years: Living with dementia (March 27, 2021), in which I gave an account of Evelyn’s later life and the impact […] Read more…
This story is about my mother, Evelyn, her latter years and the impact dementia had on her and her loved ones. It’s a sequel to two earlier stories, My mother, a young woman (May 6, 2016) and A precious death (February 10, 2017). I’m sharing Evelyn’s experience – and ours – so that others in […] Read more…
Some of us have the privilege of meeting and getting to know our grandparents. I was fortunate to meet all four of my grandparents and to get to know each one, to some extent, even from afar. This story is about my maternal grandfather, whom I met and spent time with as a child. I […] Read more…
My Christmas baking this year has included a special Aussie Christmas treat: Chocolate Slice. I made this sweet slice for two pre-Christmas functions last week and, on each occasion, it was a great hit. So much so, many people asked me for my recipe. If you live in Australia or New Zealand, you’ll know what […] Read more…
As part of a recent road trip to Queensland’s northwest and central west, my husband Tony and I returned to Brisbane via the Barcoo Shire, stopping at Stonehenge, Jundah and Windorah. For Tony, our visit to Stonehenge was much anticipated, as his previous and memorable stopover at Stonehenge, as part of his schools ministry, was […] Read more…
This story is a tribute to the late Elizabeth Annie (“Betty”) Anderson, of Rockhampton. Betty died on 25 February 2020, aged 100 years 6 months. I met Betty when I was a child. She was a long-standing family friend. My mother Evelyn and Betty had known each other since their late teens. My husband, Tony, […] Read more…
Last October, during a visit to outback Queensland, my husband Tony and I included the tiny town of Windorah in our itinerary. What a good decision that was! We discovered a neat well-kept town rich in history and a community that honours its forebears and cares passionately for its extraordinary natural environment. In this post […] Read more…
Recently I tried my mother’s 1949 spiced meatloaf recipe. It’s a good example of home cooking of that era. I used her old mechanical meat mincer to produce the mince for the meatloaf. The mincer worked perfectly, and the meatloaf was a great success. I shouldn’t have been surprised, given that my mother Evelyn won […] Read more…
Easter celebrations figure large in the annuals of St George’s Church Aramac. How do I know? Following a visit to Aramac in October last year, intrigued by people I met and what I saw, I decided to explore the history of Aramac, in particular, the early days of Aramac’s St George’s Church. Do you know […] Read more…
In my recipe collection, I have an old-fashioned honey pie recipe. It’s the only recipe in my collection attributed to “Thelma Baker”. Every time I make this sweet pie, I think of her and thank God I had the pleasure of knowing her. Why? This dear lady, long deceased, was one of the sweetest people […] Read more…
For more than a decade in the 1920s and 1930s, a deadly disease menaced residents of Rannes and other small communities of the Banana Shire in central Queensland. My mother’s family, who lived on a property near Rannes (about 105 kilometres, or 65 miles, southwest of Rockhampton), was among those affected. This deadly disease was […] Read more…
I was a child living in Rockhampton in 1960 when the Midlander crashed into Medway Creek near Bogantungan, killing seven people and injuring many more. The Midlander was an air-conditioned passenger train that operated in Queensland on the central western line between Rockhampton and Winton from 1954 to 1993. Bogantungan is located 367 kilometres west […] Read more…
