Tag

Jack Meagher

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’…

Read more

4 Comments
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?

Read more

2 Comments
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

2 Comments
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.

Read more

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.

Read more

1 Comment
Don't miss out!