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Digging a little deeper

28/02/2026
Photograph, headstone, bushland

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 …

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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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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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People

Spring Treasures

09/09/2024
Spring Blossom

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.

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People

What’s in a nick name?

02/02/2024
Graphic with handwritten nicknames: Lee-pup (Leo), Bumper, Hooker, Pup, Fizz, Jack, Liffer

I came across a photo my cousin posted of herself with another cousin of ours on Instagram captioned, ‘Sticks and Squid’. I smiled as I instinctively knew which one was which. The nickname Sticks is new to me, whereas Squid is not too far removed from the nickname we used back in the day, Squiff or Squiffy. Sobriquets are an interesting form of family code, and to be honest, I’ve had a lot of fun unravelling who’s who. Now that I know about Sticks, it’s only right that Sticks’ name should stick, right?

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People, Places

Nippers and Heroes

28/02/2023
Twin girls dressed in swimming bathers, kneeling on the ground with towels round their shoulders are looking directly at the camera and smiling.

Two open water swims taking place 145 km apart on Victoria’s coast on one of the hottest days in January 2023, heralded an unexpected communion of intergenerational Meagher family swimming. My late grandfather Jack – an ardent sporting enthusiast and proud patriarch – would have been tickled pink by this family conjunction.  Read more

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People

Mothers-in-law and enduring attributes

25/05/2022
Proud grandparents standing in the shade of a tree with their daughter-in-law and newborn grand daughter.

The November Spring morning shone through the stained-glass windows in the clerestory, bathing the congregation in a yellow light as they gathered in St Dominic’s Church, Camberwell.  My uncle David spoke briefly prior to his sons’ eulogy for their mother Cindy, his wife, and my aunt. David reflected on a conversation he had with his mother-in-law, my grandmother, Dot Meagher, twenty-four years prior.

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People

From the mouths of babes: four generations of children’s letters

07/12/2021
Boy with a football smiling at the camera.

Amid the first winter of the COVID-19 pandemic, I mailed two drawings of a garden scene to my seven-year-old niece (one coloured in, the other black and white).  I asked her to add to a story I started about fairies in the garden and requested that she colour the black and white picture and return it. We exchanged a few drawings and developed the fairy story before our collective effort fizzled out.

During the second winter of the pandemic, in-between lockdowns four and five, I unexpectedly received an email from my niece (via her mother’s inbox) with a word document attached and a simple message.

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