Short story blog
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
The year 1871 began on a sorrowful note. Holiday festivities came to an abrupt end when it became known on Monday 2 January that His Excellency, Colonel Blackall, Governor of Queensland, had died. With this news a universal gloom settled on the entire population of the fledgling colony. Colonel Samuel Wensley Blackall had been in […] Read more…
During a visit to the Mount Morgan Cemetery in 2017 I came across the grave of EMMETT BEAUMONT McSWEENEY, an infant who died in 1921. At the time I was looking for the grave of my aunt THYRA GRACE BEAUMONT, also an infant, who died in 1920 and who was also buried there (read A […] Read more…
In December last year my husband and I visited the Banana Cemetery. It’s located on the outskirts of Banana, in Archer Street. The cemetery is no longer used for burials. Established in 1862, the Banana Cemetery holds the mortal remains (along with a few secrets) of many of the district’s early non-indigenous residents. The […] Read more…
On 5 May last year, 10 days after Anzac Day, I visited the Apple Tree Creek War Memorial. My husband and I were en route from Brisbane to Rockhampton when we stopped to take a break at the Apple Tree Creek rest area. The Apple Tree Creek War Memorial is situated in a fenced off […] Read more…
This story is a tribute to my father, Petar Salečić (also known as Peter Salecich), who was born in a small Croatian village on this day, October 16, 99 years ago. It’s an abridged version of the eulogy I delivered at his funeral service that was held in Brisbane (Queensland, Australia), on April 17, 2009. […] Read more…
In 1958, at 36 years of age, Anđelka Salečić (nee Tomašić) left her European homeland and all that was familiar to her to make a new life for herself and her family in Australia. For the next 30 years she called Australia home. A New Australian, she came to love her adopted land, and never […] Read more…
I never knew my aunt, my mother’s sister. She died long before I was born. There are no photographs of her, so I can only imagine what she looked like. But I do have something that belonged to her. It’s a lock of hair. A carefully preserved lock of hair, fastened with a tiny silk […] Read more…
Do you find it difficult to tell your father that you love him? Do you want to tell him while there is still time? This was my problem, 19 years ago. My father was in his late 70s and terminally ill. I suspected he had only months to live. I wanted to tell him how […] Read more…
In 2011 I had a revelation. It was Saturday 29 January. I knew I would be preoccupied the next day, so I decided to do Sunday’s Bible reading on Saturday evening. The set passage was Psalm 116. As I read the psalm, the following words jumped out at me: “Precious in the sight of the […] Read more…
