July 2017
The Pakenham Bourkes 1939 – 2017 Part Two
The property along Toomuc Creek was sold in 1854, and Michael and Catherine spent the remainder of their lives at Bourke’s hotel.…
Family history and research
Genealogical research, records and inherited history.
June 2017
Pakenham, the visit
Research is interesting and exciting as new snippets of information come to light. Our research into Pakenham, and our family’s important role…
April 2017
The Pakenham Bourkes 1839 – 2017 Part One.
Michael and Catherine Bourke of County Limerick, Ireland, our great great grandparents were part of the very early settlement of Victoria. They…
August 2016
War Service
Lest we Forget. When we were children our pacifist mother disapproved of the “glorification of war”, characterised, in her eyes, by remembrance…
June 2016
“Cut out of the Will”
Growing up we had heard many times how our father had been ‘cut out of the will’ by his father because he…
June 2016
The Poor Little Thing
Marge and Alice, with great drama, tell the story of our great, great grandmother whose name they do not know, and her…
May 2016
Grace McCormack, our other grandmother.
Until last week we knew very little about our paternal Grandmother, Grace. We both had the feeling from our father that she…
March 2016
Alfreda Maria Holm, our maternal grandmother: the first seventeen years
We remember little of our maternal grandmother as a person. She was rather a remote figure, tall, elegant, well dressed but she…
November 2015
Great Great Grandparents
Alice and Marge in 1990, as they sat with their cassette recorder, told as much as they knew about their grandparents and…
October 2015
Twelfth Birthday Letters to Alice
Letter writing is all but dead. When we were cleaning out our mother’s flat, after she had died, there was a collection…