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People

A veiled tradition

26/02/2020

As a child, I would rummage through my mother’s sewing basket. It was a bright orange plastic box with a removable tray divided into little compartments. I was always curious about the contents collected over time. On one occasion, I asked my mother about a strip of beautiful beading sitting in the tray. She told me it was from her wedding dress, made by her mother. Years later, the memory of the beading was recalled sharply when a saleswoman suggested I could add embellishments to the shoulder straps of a wedding dress I was trying on. Tears stung as I thought of this beautiful, silent nod to my mother, whose absence was going to be keenly felt at my wedding just eight months after she died.

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People

Spanish Flu pandemic 1919

12/02/2020

My dear Liffer,

We are in the middle of what promises to be a very severe influenza outbreak…

On 12 February 1919, my grandfather’s sister, Mary Meagher wrote to her brother Frank, a doctor stationed in France, about an influenza outbreak in Melbourne. It was to become known colloquially as the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919, and it was a tragic postscript to the devastation of the First World War.

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Places

Old and new legends at Lorne

08/01/2020

My aunty Moon will be competing in the 40th year of the Lorne Pier to Pub swim, held annually every January. A competitive swimmer all her life, she was the State champion in 400 and 800m freestyle and this will be her 21st consecutive Lorne Pier to Pub swim.  Although the Pier to Pub swim event was established in 1980, the pier itself dates back to 1879 and the pub, the Lorne Hotel, was first opened to the public in January 1876. The Meagher family’s history also dates back well before Moon started swimming the Pier to Pub, her grandfather and uncle had quite a bit to say about that very pub over a hundred years ago.

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Places

Summer Holidays, Frankston 1922

05/01/2020

For many Australians, a January beach holiday is a quintessential summer tradition. The post Christmas migration to the coast is as Australian a tradition as the Boxing Day test.

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People

Yuletide and a nutty aromatic pig’s pluck

22/12/2019

Last year, I spent Christmas Day in Belgium, reconnecting with my old university friends and celebrating Christmas with their respective families. I enjoyed generous hospitality, food and conversation. It was a fitting conclusion to a superb three-month trip in Europe.
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People, Places, Travel

Knocking on a stranger’s door

23/10/2019

“Talk to everyone” was my mother-in-law’s parting advice before our trip to Ireland. Her advice was more for the great leads and new historical information that comes from talking to people and less for the fact that I’d rather hide in the archives. When we set off for a day trip from Templemore to cross over into County Clare on the western side of the Lough Derg, we had a whole day ahead of us knocking on strangers’ doors.

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Travel

EPIC Dublin

23/10/2019

I had been pondering the emigration question as part of my family history research for a while. Why did my great-great grandparents decide to emigrate to Australia in 1863? Was it hardship, love, famine, political unrest? I had more questions than answers, so I packed my theories into a bag and travelled to Ireland to seek out primary material to put these research questions to the test.

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Places

Ikerrin Homeplace

23/09/2019

Last year, I travelled to Ireland to visit the place where my paternal ancestors came from. The Irish call it the ‘homeplace’, and my family’s homeplace is close to the village of Dunkerrin in County Offaly. It’s a stone’s throw from the Barony of Ikerrin (Uí Chairín), the ancient homelands to one of the oldest Irish families, the O’Meachair/Meagher/Maher Clan.
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Places

An open door to Ikerrin Hawthorn

17/09/2019

A beautiful painting titled Ikerrin used to hang above the fireplace in my grandparent’s dining room. The watercolour depicted a freestanding gabled brick house framed by an ornately trimmed verandah and a lush garden in bloom. Ikerrin was my grandfather, Jack Meagher’s childhood home, named after the family ancestral lands in the Barony of Ikerrin, County Tipperary, Ireland.

In the lounge room was another curio, a small-framed sketch also captioned, “Ikerrin,” Wattle Road, Hawthorn. This monochrome sketch, anchored to a place by its caption, is almost abstract. I asked my grandmother about it, and she showed me the back of the frame complete with glued on card and envelope addressed to Miss D. Donovan. Read more

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