My Family

My parents arrived in Australia in 1952. After their arrival, they were first sent to Bonegilla Migrant Centre where all newcomers had to go.

From there they eventually made their way to Geelong where my father had heard, work was easier to get than in Sydney. He left mum and his two daughters behind in Bonegilla until he found work and a place for his family to live. Some time later he then sent word to my mother to make the long trip to Melbourne and then onto Geelong. Sounds easy enough but not when you cannot speak the language and have two young children with you as well as all your luggage with no other adult to give you a hand!

They eventually moved from Geelong to Albert Park and from there to Warrandyte not long after I was born.

My family is largely made up from cousins on my mother's side. My paternal uncle had two children who are much younger than me and my paternal aunt had one child who has remained in Zagreb and we met for the first time when she came out to Australia to visit her mother (i.e. my father's sister) in 1989.

We used to see my cousins regularly on weekends which we combined with seeing my maternal grandparents living in the same part of Melbourne. We also went camping together with my aunts, uncles and cousins on a number of occasions from the time I was 11 years of age which was fun. My cousins are quite a bit older than me and closer in age to my two older sisters but we still got on very well.

My maternal grandfather loved fishing and it was not unusual for us to sometimes go with him for a day's outing and swim in the lake while he went out in his boat with my maternal uncle to catch some fish. There is nothing like eating fish, freshly caught and cooked on the same day. My grandmother was a wiz at preparing fish and I will never forget the time we went camping at Hattah Lakes and there was so much carp in lake that they were spilling with the overflow of water into a section where we could stand and we caught them with our hands! Carp can have a strong mud flavour unless they are cleaned in the right way. My grandmother knew how to clean this fish to remove the mud flavour and it tasted delicious. Someone else at the camp, an experienced fisherman who was more than familiar with carp, could not believe the flavour of my grandmother's cooked carp.

In my late teens we used to go camping with family and our neighbours to the Snowy River near a place on the border called Willis (introduced to us by our next door neighbour). When we first started camping there, it was not National Park and we had easy access to the entire area. The day after we arrived, we gathered as many dead branches and dead trees which had fallen down dragged them to the pebbly beach which was a lovely broad area free of trees and vegetation. We got a fire going and it was burning non stop, 24 hours a day for the week or two weeks we camped.

We made one memorable day trip in the four wheel drives exploring the mountains via some incredibly steep 4WD tracks.

On this particular day trip, when we stopped for lunch, we noticed a snake hanging around. I cannot remember who killed the snake but it was then thrown onto the campfire by our experienced bushman neighbour and I tasted cooked snake for the first (and only time mind you) in my life.

The Snowy River in May is freezing cold and bathing or washing our hair was not particularly pleasant. When you stepped into the water, your feet would start feeling numb after a few minutes. Imagine how that felt on your head!

My father loved sitting on the beach, with his dalmatian and my sister's dalmatian to keep him company. He used flexible willow branches he had collected from near the river and soaked them in the water so he could use them to weave a basket around a bottle. I have one of these sitting on my shelf at home. This is just one of a multitude of skills my father possesses.

Meet more of my family: 

• Parents
• World War 2
• Sisters