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From the Archive

A little tale of past history by Dorothy Meagher

28/03/2021
Black edged white memorial card with a photograph

Last month, I found a handwritten story in the archives written by my grandmother about her grandmother’s encounter with a bushranger in the 1870s. I could not resist sharing it for Women’s History Month! Dorothy Hogan Meagher (nee Donovan) was ‘Gran’ to me, ‘Dot’ to some of my cousins and ‘Doll’ to my father.  She wrote this story in 1996, when she was eighty years old, about a recollection – a little tale of past history – for my mother who was doing family tree research.

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People

Margaret McCormack (1848-1919)

28/03/2021
Black edged white memorial card with a photograph

Margaret McCormack, daughter of William Hogan and Julia McGuire was born c.1848 in County Galway, Ireland. At seventeen years old, Margaret, noted as a servant on the marriage certificate, married tollkeeper, Daniel McCormack, on 1st July 1868 at St Patrick’s Church in Kilmore, Australia. They had seven children: James Daniel (1869-1940); Mary Ellen (1871-1939); Julia (1874-1899); Bridget (1876-1877); Bridget (1879-1959);  Kathleen (1880-1961) and William Joseph (1883-1952). Margaret’s mother, Julia Hogan (1818-1886) lived with the McCormack family at Northwood, before dying of senility in 1886.

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People, Places

Rear Window Twist

29/01/2021
Illustration of a actor James Stewart peering over binoculars with the movie plotline reflected in the lenses and actress Grace Kelly in the background.

The lure of popcorn and a summer holiday matinee of my all-time favourite film, Rear Window (1954), playing at the Lido Cinema in Hawthorn proved irresistible a few weeks back. My dear friend Rebecca and her ten-year-old daughter, Anna, came along with me. They were seeing the movie for the first time.     Read more

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Travel

Just a line old chap…

02/12/2020
Black and white photograph of a landscape with a river, trees and small building on the river bank.

Melbourne emerged from a second lockdown in November. Restricted to a five-kilometre radius of one’s home for thirteen weeks, Melburnians had no choice but to get to know the local surrounds intimately. These restrictions kept many from seeing family and friends, and from travelling.

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Places

Ikerrin: Buying into the dream

26/08/2020

The ‘Great Australian Dream’ conjures a picture of a home of one’s own, suburban security, a three-bedroom brick veneer, trimmed lawns and backyard barbeques. This collectively held aspiration for home ownership gained traction in media and literature from the 1960s.

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People

Bachelor of Arts: a means to an end?

29/07/2020
A middle aged man named John S Meagher smoking a pipe is sitting in the sun on a verandah at a house called Ikerrin, reading a newspaper. A chair to his left has a pile of papers and a book.

In light of all the volatility going on in the world, I find myself pining for wise, age-old, counsel. I need to chat to someone who has been through it all and there would be no one better qualified for that conversation than my great grandfather, John Sheehy Meagher.

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People

You can never replace a mother

20/05/2020

“You can replace a partner, but you can never replace a mother”.

These words cut through the haze shrouding my existence. I was walking towards the gates of the Immaculate Conception Church, Hawthorn with a pastoral worker. Her words were spoken kindly, even maternally; it was followed with a genuinely concerned, “take care of yourself”. But the sentence, ‘you can never replace a mother’ seared my heart, and forewarned me of the pain ahead. Spoken by someone who knew deeply, the grief of losing a mother.

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