Friday, January 6th .....

I sometimes wonder why I write this blog. On the surface, I suppose it’s a just a modern form of the old diary which people used to write to keep a record of their lives and as a reminder of the interesting things which happen. I know that I sometimes read back and I enjoy being reminded of things that have happened, especially the trips we’ve had. But, because it lives on-line I have to be careful in what I say and always be aware that strangers might be reading my words and forming impressions of who I really am.

It’s easy to write the episodes when we’re travelling and there are always photographs to make the posts more interesting. On other days, something will have happened which is worth recording but there are days when I have nothing to say and so I write nothing.

In my mind, I write the blog for myself and I need to keep reminding myself of that point. The complication is that, because the blog lives on-line, it’s a public document and people might believe that it’s written for them. But does that give them the right to complain when I don’t give them their regular episode. What a bloody cheek! I’m not Charles Dickens missing out on an episode of Oliver Twist; I’m just a bloke putting down his thoughts when it suits him.

Although I’m starting to get involved in the process of organising the Craft Fair, I’m still very focused on the family tree. When I started the current development, I had 479 people in my tree. Now there are more than 770 and I still have more to add in. They’re not necessarily straight-line ancestors but they do flesh-out the families that I came from. Other researchers have been terrific in passing on information. Elva Reynolds lives in Melbourne. We have a shared ancestor in a family named Cree who lived and died in Scotland. Many of them were agricultural labourers but later became involved in the textile industry around Blantyre. My mother is a descendant of Elizabeth Cree who married James McNair in the 1840s. Elva’s ancestor, David Cree, came to Australia about the same time and worked as a ship’s engineer on coastal voyages. He died in 1891 when his ship, the Taramung, was wrecked on the Five Islands, off Wollongong.

I’ve also been digging around in the history of Marilyn’s family. Hilary Lofting came to Australia in 1915 with his wife May. A child, Paul was born in 1916 but around this time Hilary left May and took up with the author, Margaret Fane whose real name was Beatrice Osborn. May and Paul lived in Darlinghurst Road until, tragically, Paul was run over by a taxi, some say on his 13th birthday. I’ve found the report of the Coroner’s Inquest when the taxi driver was handed over to the courts and charged with manslaughter. May lived until about 1963 and it seems she might have won the NSW Lottery in about 1930.

Beatrice had several children to David McKee Wright and three children to Hilary Lofting. One, named Hilary David, died young and his name was recycled to Marilyn’s father. Beatrice may have had another son. I’ve found a war record of Alexander Edward Osborn who was born in 1913 and joined the Australian army, giving his next of kin as Beatrice Osborn. He was stationed in Malaya and became a prisoner-of-war, eventually dying in Thailand. Could he have been involved in the building of the famous Thailand-Burma Railway and the Bridge over the River Kwai? More research needed!