Digging a little deeper

28/02/2026

Earlier this month, I had a delightfully unexpected and long overdue catch up with my aunty Moon, and my father at a local cafe. When rapport is easy and familiar, conversations have a habit of jumping quickly from subject to subject, and we found ourselves talking about graveyard real estate. My aunt mentioned she knew someone who had purchased one of the last remaining plots at the Melbourne General Cemetery, and I said we have ancestors buried there. She wanted to know who, so I regaled her with what I knew. On my walk home, I thought I should dig a little deeper …

A public service announcement

07/01/2026

On Saturday 13 December, a crowd gathered in the ‘people’s square’ protesting potential job cuts at the ‘People’s Library’ (State Library Victoria). I was there in my capacity as member of the Professional Historians Association (Vic & Tas), and as a newly minted ‘former’ public servant.

People, Places

The spirit lives on: Glenferrie oval

14/09/2025

Presentation with footballers lined up on an oval with a flag pole in the foreground and packed crowds lining the oval perimeter.

The Hawthorn Football Club has gone back to its roots in Glenferrie this season to honour its centenary. The club, in collaboration with the Patient Wolf Distilling Company, released a centenary gin featuring native Yellow Box Eucalyptus growing around the club’s spiritual home of Glenferrie Oval.

My father, a lifetime Hawthorn supporter and teetotaller, told me he wanted a bottle of this gin for the mantlepiece.

I laughed, ‘But Dad, you don’t drink, and you don’t have a fireplace’…

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Places

The Great Hunger

11/08/2025

Historic two storey stone building with red trim details around windows and doors.

Buried in the Clonrush parish baptisms and marriages registry are minutes for a famine relief committee that bears witness to my paternal three-times great grandfather’s contribution to alleviate starvation during Ireland’s great famine, commonly referred to as An Gorta Mór. Would knowing what your ancestors did, influence you when history repeats?

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Places, Travel

Foreigners everywhere – Venice Biennale 2024

26/05/2025

White chalk writing on black wall beneath a fluorescent horizontal light with reams of paper forming geometric shapes in foreground. Four people are in the room viewing the writing.

Archie Moore’s epic, hand drawn, genealogical chart compelled me to visit the 2024 Venice Biennale for the first time last year. The artwork depicting family, sovereignty, colonisation, incarceration and universality responded directly the biennale’s theme, Foreigners Everywhere.

People

Family Recipe Book

06/02/2025

Flatlay of recipe book, old photograph, four plums, butter and a spoonful of sugar

Last month I received a letter from my niece. ‘Guess What! We officially have 5 recipes in our family recipe book!’ She was writing to update me on her new recipe journal, which was a Christmas gift from me. We started writing to each other during the pandemic lockdowns and it delights me that this way of connecting hasn’t fizzled out. Now there is a new shared interest: handwritten recipes.

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From the Archive

Passionfruit Tea Cake

31/01/2025

Digitised page of a recipe book Read more

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From the Archive

Plum Tea Cake

31/01/2025

Plum Tea Cake

People

Silencing of politics

02/10/2024

Postcard with a young girl looking directly at the camera with her hand over her mouth as a gesture of silence with theatre performance title 'The Word' printed across the postcard.

Picture a theatre performance about words at risk, in a space once occupied by hidden women, during a time of heightened historical, political and cultural conflict. Read more

People

Spring Treasures

09/09/2024

Every year, two tender thoughts about Spring flourish faithfully in my mind.* Like the perennial seeds they are, they blossom from my memory into a quiet smile every time I see the promise of Spring, and I treasure these memories.