In 2019, during a visit to Birdsville, my husband and I explored the Birdsville Cemetery. It’s an iconic site. The Birdsville Cemetery is not only a sacred place but also a window into the town and district’s remarkable history. Buried … Read More
Who would have thought that a story about my great-grandparents and the house my great-grandfather built on “Mons” would create so much interest and add to my Beaumont Family history? Thomas Bloomfield Beaumont and Elizabeth Mary Ann Beaumont (nee Tancred) … Read More
Do you wonder what school was like for children growing up in Australia 100 years ago? My mother Evelyn, who grew up in rural Queensland in the 1920s, often spoke of her schooldays and the small one-teacher school she attended. … Read More
In Victoria between 1907 and 1923, four, possibly five, of the six siblings of the Lowe Family died after contracting tuberculous. All were young adults, in the prime of their lives. The first, in 1907, was a female, 23. The … Read More
I have fond memories of my mother’s two-layered Ginger Sponge cake. It was one of the cakes she included in her Saturday morning baking and slices of which ended up in my school lunchbox the next week. Another cake my … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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, … Read More
Last year I discovered images of a Moura café in my late father’s slide collection. These images date from the early 1970s. The collection also includes images of several other sites in and around Moura. As I reflected on that … Read More
