The tale of Avis McVeigh - part 6 of a series

When I set out to look into the genealogy, it was confirming or denying something on the Arrernte (paternal) side of my family that was the driving reason. I obviously ended up confirming it, and doing so via a second family line, thus making it incontravertible. Yet as I kept researching, my maternal side ended up taking all my time. It was like I had solved the "one mystery" on one side, then discovered the other side was just non-stop mystery that needed to be found out. I hope to return to the paternal side research soon, though when I do, I will be focussing on the women in it. Nearly all the work thus far has been on the men, and mainly the white men at that, so a black and feminist lens will give more scope.

My maternal nanna's mother, Avis McVeigh, kind of ended up being the hero I didn't realise I needed. Yet, I wouldn't have realised just how much if Avis had lived in a time following the passing of no-fault divorce legislation. Don't get me wrong, no-fault divorce is essential, and no couple wishing to go their separate ways should have to lay all the sordid details on the table for the legal system to consider as grounds. It was a sick practice, and it's none of the government's business. But if these old school divorce papers hadn't existed when my great-grandparents were going their separate ways, I may never have known the strong-willed and independent woman whose mitochondrial DNA I carry.

To go back a bit though, Avis was born to John McVeigh and Eliza Louisa Hibbert in 1902. She was the third of four children, and their only daughter. I have already introduced these two, but to recap, John McVeigh was a bootmaker. He had been born in Surry Hills, NSW, his father's name was William, and on researching to the best of my ability, I believe his mother's maiden name was Mary Murphy. I also believe he may have had a sister named Margaret, and that his parents were both illiterate which is why tracking their details has been difficult. William came from Belfast and died in Australia a mere 12 years after he got here.

Eliza Louisa Hibbert's parents were Joseph Hibbert and Eliza Sarah Kipps from Panton Hill, Vic, according to both her marriage and death certificates. Yet as I have stated, I am yet to find a birth certificate for Eliza Louisa. Her mother was having children well into her 40s, including two brothers who were younger than Eliza, and would have been 46 when Eliza was born, but I can't confirm any of this via the registry. I therefore need to solve a mystery here, because in my view, she was either simply not registered by her parents (rare in Vic, but it did happen), she was adopted, or she may have been the daughter of one of her older sisters, born out of wedlock, hidden amongst the family structure. Certainly, she had sisters old enough to have been her mother. Any intel here would be gratefully received because, as I also stated in an earlier entry, she had an older sister with a similar name, and other descendants constructing the family tree have gotten these two girls mixed up even though there was about a 17 year age gap between them, and they married different men. Anyway...

"Avis", not unlike "Mina" in the Waller/Ondaatje line, is a name that was passed down the generations, and the first Avis I can find was via Eliza Kipps' line, going back to 1780. At least one girl per generation got the name Avis as a first or middle name, and this has continued all the way down to my generation, with one of my sisters scoring it. It means "bird", and in the case of Avis McVeigh, it was probably the most suitable name for her, because the woman did not like cages. 

There was a rumour in the family that my great-grandparents Avis and Harold Waller were not actually married, yet when I started digging, it was clear this was not correct. The marriage certificate and divorce papers laid waste to that theory quickly. What did become apparent is that they may as well have never married, as the two of them were lucky if they managed to spend a good 12 months under the same roof. They quarrelled, then Avis would shoot through back to her parents' place leaving Harold to do the same.

Harold filed for the divorce, 9 years after they separated, on the grounds of "abandonment". There was no opposing statement from Avis - she was more than happy to cop the "fault" and move onwards with her life. Avis had, nine years prior, packed up her belongings and those of my grandmother Lorna's, and shot through back to her parents' place. Why? It was simple really: Harold suggested that Avis should quit her job at the shoe factory, and be a stay-at-home mother. Avis wasn't having it.

Perhaps it's because I am a feminist reading these papers 90 years on from when they were filed, but unfortunately for Harold, I found the entire situation rather amusing. In his claims, he not only recounted that he got home one day to find the house untended and no evening meal prepared, but he details several times trying to reconcile only to have Avis stand her ground and refuse to be a housewife. If that wasn't bad enough, Harold worked with Avis' father John, and on the day she shot through for good, John informed Harold on the factory floor that "I wouldn't bother going home, mate" - I mean, kudos to John for backing in his daughter. There are other parts in this comedy of errors, but one part really stood out - from the beginning, Avis continually refused spousal support on the basis that she was an "independent woman who made her own money", and Harold was only ever expected to assist with the costs of raising his daughter, which he did. 

Harold was, by no means, some conservative old dude who felt women needed to stay in their "place". Indeed, when it comes to the accounts I have heard of his second wife, she too was a rather independent and strong-willed woman, so if anything, the bloke had a type. He was though a man building his life and family in the 1920s, and Avis was ahead of her time. The accounts of Harold was that he was dashing, that he was musically talented, and that a couple of whiskeys down and he would be enthralling the house guests with the best of vaudeville performances. Perhaps what really happened here is that two charismatic young people met, had a whirlwind romance, then married, tried to slot into their expected roles, and found they were utterly unsuited for them? By the time they divorced, they had both met their future second spouses, and so at the end of the day, the paperwork was a mere formality.

Anyway, when it comes to Avis, what becomes clear when reading her paperwork is that the woman had some pretty clear feminist principles, even if, at the time, she may not have labelled them that herself. She fiercely guarded her independence. She worked at that shoe factory on the machines until she retired, and she even took work home with her to finish. She got a lot of pride out of her work, and this pride in making items to embellish the appearance of others translated to what she wore herself - she was known to always be immaculately put together, and turned out in well-made coats and clothing items. She smoked cigarettes using an elegant hold. All purchased with her own money, and proudly so.

The next bit of paperwork I found with regards to Avis relates to her second husband Norman, and his divorce papers from his previous marriage. Avis and Norman had been carrying on an affair while he was still married, and while his claim against his wife Thelma was eerily similar to Harold's (he claimed that his wife had refused to quit her job - I couldn't help but think he used the example to just have something to throw on the table), her account was harrowing. In short, she detailed some abuse, finding out about the affair, a bit of gaslighting, and being left financially hamstrung. Rather than hide the affair, it seemed Norman may have flaunted it. The two women ended up getting to know each other quite well, and there was one rather harrowing experience they shared which I will not detail. In short, unlike Harold's account of his marriage to Avis, there was nothing to like or find amusing in this divorce-fault proceeding between Norm and Thelma. 

That said, there was one thing Thelma did detail which really struck me. An encounter happened between the women where Avis found out that Norman had not been providing Thelma with child support for their son, and this infuriated Avis. She ended up giving Thelma money from her own coffers to cover that child support, and ensuring that this did not happen again. That this was acknowledged in the divorce suit says that there was, at least, some amount of begrudging respect and solidarity between the women regardless of the awfulness of the rest of it all, and I had to admire this.

The final bit of paperwork I found related to Avis was her will. As mentioned, Avis purchased 19 Parslow St, Clifton Hill off her daughter's in-laws, and did so as a sole owner. Her and Norman lived there together, but it was her house. Avis clearly did her will a few years prior to her passing, and at a time when Norman was still alive, so she made provisions in her will that included him. These provisions were, however, just brilliant.

Firstly, on her death, she named her daughter as her sole heir and beneficiary, and therefore the owner of this property, along with all her other worldly goods. Fine, that's not abnormal, but had she died before Norman, according to her will, Norman was allowed to live in the house only as long as he paid the council rates, and took care of any bills and maintenance needs. If he didn't, his step-daughter, as the property owner, was entitled to turf him out. Avis' final statement to the world was to ensure not only the financial independence of the women who followed her, but also to ensure that they were never in a position of subservience to a man. It was magnificent.

There are a lot of restless and headstrong women that reside within this side of the family, myself being one of them. Women who are not terribly good at being told their place, and instead try to carve out their own ways. It is therefore rather lovely to find out that in my great-grandmother Avis, we have an example of such a woman who was doing this long before it was the done thing, and managing to thrive while she did.

19 Parslow Street, Clifton Hill - Part 5 of a series

 Digging through my mother's side of the family, and bringing certain things into light, one thing in particular has really struck me. In 1997, I moved to La Trobe University and lived on campus for three years, before ultimately settling in the northern suburbs of Melbourne (with a hiatis back in the south-east for as long as I could bear it). I have never lived on my Arrernte homelands, though they have formed a massive part of my life. Despite this, somehow, for the past 28 years, I have managed to lob myself in the middle of a number of family addresses related to my mum's side. Every day, I have been walking on streets they walked on, yet until I dug through their birth, death and marriage certificates, I had no idea this was the case.

Mum has mainly tied herself to Clifton Hill. This is where she spent her childhood, and where her grandparents lived. Yet there are numerous addresses in Collingwood, Northcote, Preston, Thornbury and Reservoir where her forebears lived. Indeed, with the exception of her Waller and Amor ancestors who were based around Prahran, every single other one of them lived in these suburbs at some point. They may have been born in Campbellfield, or Panton Hill, but they ended up here. And I have, in turn, lived in numerous rentals that have been a stone-throw away from some of these old addresses listed in the directories.

There is one address though that stands alone as a site of significance: 19 Parslow Street, Clifton Hill. This place saw more comings and goings of my mum's family than any other. It was a modest house, in a then-dodgy part of the suburb, yet it features continuously in multiple family records for about 60 years.

I have already introduced the first person I found linked to this address: my great-great-great grandmother Mary Purser died at 19 Parslow St, Clifton Hill, in 1915. I do not know when she moved there, though can hazard a guess: if you look at this property website, the house is listed as being built in 1910, so there's a good chance that's when she became an occupant. I know from her death certificate, that she was living with family, because her daughter-in-law Annie is listed as the witness to Mary's passing. Annie was married to Mary's son John, and John was interred with his mother and father at the Strathallen Cemetery - the old part of Preston General - when he himself passed away in 1947. Annie and John lived in nearby Walker Street, but digging around in the Sands and McDowell directory of 1910, I soon found out that the owner of 19 Parslow was Alfred Brown - Mary's youngest living son - and his wife Frances. 

19 Parslow Street was also the birthplace, and childhood home, of my grandfather Ernest, and his siblings. Ernie was born there a year after his great grandmother passed away, so some time in 1915 or 1916, the house changed hands from Alfred Brown, to his nephew (and my great-grandfather), Cyril Purser Tuttleby. Given Ernie was the youngest of four children, that means there was a four generation span moving under the same roof in short succession. 

When he married my grandmother Lorna in 1940, Ernest lived at 111 Westgarth Street in Northcote. Both his parents had passed away by that point, and I could not find who was in 19 Parslow following their deaths, so it would be reasonable to assume that the house had been sold and people had moved on. This wasn't the case - on grabbing the Sands and McDougall's Directory of 1945 and having a flick through, by then 19 Parslow Street was my grandfather Ern's listed address, and thus it was where my two uncles spent their early childhood years. I therefore believe it stayed in Brown-Tuttleby family hands in the intervening years.

Some time after my mother was born, the family had moved into a place in Spensley Street, Clifton Hill. On the selling of 19 Parslow Street, it could be assumed that this was the end of the line for five generations of my family in that one address. Instead though, an unusual twist happened. The next owner of this address was a Mrs Avis Turnbull, formerly Waller, born McVeigh - my great-grandmother - so the house changed hands to the in-laws. 

Despite being remarried, Avis was the sole owner of this property, and as stated, her life and antics were colourful enough that she is going to get her own entry. A key thing to note about Avis though was that she was fiercely independent. Her death certificate in 1969 lists this property as her address still at that time, her second husband had predeceased her, and given she only had one child, her sole inheritor of 19 Parslow Street was my grandmother Lorna. Avis' will though was, in short, a work of art, and will be examined later. Therefore, the final owner of 19 Parslow Street, after four generations, and a change-in-hands from one side of the family to the other, was the wife of the man who was born in it just over 50 years earlier. 

I am not sure when my grandmother Lorna finally sold this property and after such a long history with us lot, it moved on to house a new family. I do know that it would have been before 1976, according to the property history websites. The last time it was sold, this modest house, purchased on a single income, in a formerly undesirable factory-worker pocket of Clifton Hill, fetched over $2M. When I think of that, and the other places members of my family have lived in all over this rapidly gentrifying area, it does make me wish we had sat on even just one of these houses for a wee bit longer. 

And you thought the Titanic was a drama... - part 4 of a series

 Quite a few years ago, during the lockdowns, I stumbled across an article that had been written by a Carolyn Webb at Fairfax. It piqued my interest for a couple of reasons. The first reason being that Webb had the same great-great-great-grandparents as I did on my maternal side. The second being that it mentioned them surviving the wreck of the Sacramento ship at Point Lonsdale.

The survival of the Tuttlebys has been documented by Webb, and another cousin named Judy Baird. I am a descendant of Mary (nee Hockley) and Henry's son Alfred, who was born here, and married twice - his first wife Sarah Brown is my great-great-grandmother. Their son, Cyril Purser Tuttleby, was my great-grandfather. He married Bertha Robinson - a woman of Irish and English descent - and they had four children. Their youngest, Ernest Frank Tuttleby, was my grandfather. 

Due to this link, there are so many of my family members who are buried in unmarked graves at the Will Will Rook Pioneers' Cemetery. Mary Hockley remarried when Henry died and is buried out there with her second husband, under her married name of Bogle. Henry is also buried near her. Sarah Brown Tuttleby is buried there, having died young of kidney failure. I went walking out there, mindful of just how many family members I was probably walking over as I did so, but how I will also have no clue just where they are.

In her article, Webb details the strength and will of Mary Hockley, and it is quite an incredible story. By chance, I was contacted by Webb recently for a different article she was preparing. I mentioned not only the fact that we were related and shared these forebears, but that actually, I have a second set of forebears who survived that exact same shipwreck - Mary Purser and her husband, Joseph Brown. It is therefore a bloody miracle that we came to exist at all, let alone are still around, five generations later to tell the tale!

I have mentioned that I had to correct records in the Waller/McVeigh lines, and this was no different in the Tuttleby/Robinson lines. Because Sarah Brown was unwell and died quite young, for example, there are more living descendants from Alfred's second wife Mabel Palmer, and therefore, I think a couple of them may not have taken as much care checking Sarah's records (they were not as relevant to them). It also doesn't help that there was another Joseph Brown living with his wife (Margaret Rowley) in a similar area, and these two also called their first two daughters Sarah and Mary. It was therefore that I dug down into the births, deaths and marriage records, confirmed Sarah's parents names, and corrected this record.

Mary Purser and Joseph Brown were newlyweds when they boarded the Sacramento. From what I have been able to find out about both of them, they came from families of agricultural labourers in Kent. There was something else though: Mary's parents were Sarah Meen and Richard Purser. Both the Meens and the Pursers were kind of renowned for having extraordinary constitutions - Richard died the youngest of his brothers, the rest were in their 80s. There seems to have been one very clear reason why Mary and Joseph decided to move to Melbourne - she already had family here. It appears that her uncle, Edward John Purser, who had served as part of the colonial forces across the world, had settled with his wife and family in NSW, and he had, in-turn, become the first teacher in the Castle Hill district. 

Joseph Brown died at the corner of Regent and Spring Streets, Preston - mere minutes from where I live. He was discovered collapsed outside by a neighbour, and the cause of his death was listed as exhaustion and hepatitis. Mary never remarried, instead, she brought up her children, and did some domestic labouring to keep things going. 

I deduced that they were the Mary and Joseph Brown listed on the manifest of the Sacramento for two very basic reasons: firstly, the age profiles were correct - they were 22 years old. Secondly, it was the only ship they could have taken to have gotten here in time to have given birth to my great-great-grandmother Sarah at the "Merri Creek". For years, there was a letter in possession of members of my family, that had been received by my mother's cousin from the state library. While I think that people easily recognised the Tuttleby names in that letter as forebears, I am not so certain they also realised that the Mary and Joseph Brown listed were also our forebears. My correcting of these records meant that this became apparent.

It is my belief that Mary Purser and Mary Hockley, having survived the ordeal of the shipwreck, remained friends, or at least in contact, for the rest of their lives. I actually cannot think of another way that their respective children, Sarah and Alfred, could have met and married if they did not maintain this contact, as they were located in Preston and Campbellfield respectively. Alfred's final address was 45 Byfield St, Reservoir - again, not far from where I live now. 

Unfortunately for Mary Purser, half of her children inherited their father Joseph's constitution, they died quite young. Mary though, on the other hand, lived until 1915. She was in her mid-80s when she passed away from "senility" - dementia, in modern day parlance. At the time, she was living with one of her sons and his wife, and she became the first of four generations of my family to live at 19 Parslow St, Clifton Hill. It is this address which will pick up the next bit of this tale.

"Waller Waller, blackfella" - Part 3 of a series

 Unless you've lived it, I am not necessarily sure people would get this. But as a mixed-race person, and one who has grown up Aboriginal, in my brain there have always been two sides of my family: the black side and the white side.

The black side has, of course, been populated by my paternal side. Being visibly non-white, and growing up in this colony, it has also been the part I have had to fight hardest to be proud of. As I was growing up, there were plenty of forces and people who were ready to make me ashamed of it, plenty of school classes that erased it, plenty of newspaper articles that demonised it. Yet there were also plenty of freedom fighters that stood up, said no, and reinforced that our heritage was something to treasure, to be proud of, and to fight for. And thus, so it all began.

As my previous entry showed, however, within a single generation in my family, I have family members whose lives were controlled by the NT wardship acts. Within two, I have stolen generation members. Within three, I have the frontier and the anthropologists. There are Scottish Australians who claimed land, exploited Aboriginal labour, and created descendants, some of whom are still finding their way home. And yes, I also now have a very unexpected Irish heritage - one that connects me to County Cavan, and which saw members of my family as a curiosity, as knowledge people, but also, essentially, as not long for this world.

The "white side" of my family, however, has always been just that - white. We knew some members of it, but given that both my maternal and paternal grandfathers died in 1981, I am the only child in my family who got to meet them. My memory of either man is blurry. I know that I used to call my maternal grandfather "cocky" rather than poppy (my hearing difficulties were dealt with a little later in my life), and I have a vague memory of where they lived. I only have a memory of my paternal grandfather smiling while holding me. That's it.

Perhaps it's because whiteness, after colonisation and then generations of the White Australia Policy, is the default in this country, that it wasn't considered necessary to know very much about where these white people who led to me came from. We knew that they were free settlers who came to Victoria, and that they came roughly five generations ago, in the main. We knew that they were working class, that they were mainly English or Irish, and that if they weren't working at the Carlton United Brewery, they worked in bootmaking factories. We also knew that they lived in areas like Collingwood and Clifton Hill when these places were factory worker slums. More on this later.

My grandmother was born Lorna Waller in 1922. She married my grandfather Ernest Tuttleby (more on that lot later too) when she was 18 years old and had four children, of which my mother Lindal was the third. Her parents were Harold Waller and Avis McVeigh (pronounced McVee). Their marriage was short-lived, and though she was essentially brought up an only child, she had a half-brother, Raymond, from her father's second marriage. 

After digging around in her family tree, I am convinced that nanna knew very little about her background. She knew, via her mother, that she had Irish heritage, and due to both record checking, and guess work, I have traced her McVeigh surname back to Belfast. This was not without problems - though I am convinced I have found the names of Lorna's great-grandparents in NSW records (her grandfather was born in Surry Hills), there are inconsistencies in spelling of the surname. This was allowable though as, via checking the marriage record of those I suspected were her great-grandparents, I found both signed their certificate with a simple 'x', thus highlighting that they were likely illiterate, and I additionally found that her likely great-grandmother (a woman named Mary Murphy - I doubt I will ever be able to trace her!) lived in Surry Hills. Precisely where nanna's grandfather John McVeigh was born. These same people then reappeared in a Victorian death certificate for a William McVeigh - they had moved to Melbourne when John was about one, and his father had died a couple of years later. John married a woman named Eliza Louisa Hibbert who was born in Panton Hill, Vic, and they had four children - Avis was their only daughter. This family lived in Northcote, in Bastings St, and then Raleigh St, the latter of which is where my nanna Lorna was born.

There are some mysteries that remain there - with both the McVeighs and the Hibberts - and these are not made easier by the fact that Eliza had an older sister (18 years older) whose name was Louisa Elizabeth. There is also no birth record for Eliza, but her parents names appear on her marriage and death certificates, along with her age, her mother was giving birth well into her 40s as evidenced by an even younger brother, and Louisa has a marriage certificate of her own to a George Podesta. I was therefore able to correct some erroneous information that other descendants had entered into the system. The Hibberts had married in Australia, having come over from England and met here. For now, this is where I will leave Avis (she is getting her own entry!).

I therefore thought, with the mysteries and twists and turns with Lorna's maternal line, her father Harold Waller may prove an easier line of enquiry. I was right, but for completely wrong reasons. I made the assumption, for example, that Harold's family were likely English, and were stonemasons given the surname. Harold did indeed have some English ancestry, but as I watched his family tree stretch out in front of me, and do so in a remarkably easy way, I knew I was dealing with something much more.

I need now to return to the title of this post. I have named it such because it refers to a slur that my nanna Lorna experienced when she was at school. There was no real reason behind it, kids just noticed that nanna had a bit of an olive tint to her and some darker features. Given she lived in Melbourne, it was just assumed she tanned easier than other kids - not a huge deal in a place with this UV rating. Mum noted that she and her siblings also tanned up quite readily. Her poor father, on the other hand, died in his early 60s from melanoma. 

Nanna knew she had Irish and English heritage. I am convinced, however, that beyond this, she knew nothing. There was talk from nanna of some nebulous "Prussian" heritage - no one had further information about this. And as I watched nanna's paternal Waller line unfold easily in front of me, I knew there utterly no truth to this idea whatsoever. It was actually amazing just how documented this "unknown" bit of history was. I crosschecked everything with the available birth, death and marriage records, and it was all correct as marked.

Nanna's father was, as mentioned, Harold Edmund Waller. Harold was a jeweller and bootmaker, and he was born in East Melbourne to James Emanuel Waller and Amelia Sanders. He was the youngest of four children - of his siblings, one brother died in childhood, his sister Ethel Mina Waller married a man named Joseph Melbourne Ogden, whose father was the president of the Felt Hatters' Union, and they had two children - Edna and Edmund. Edmund died in infancy, while Edna died from reproductive cancer in her mid-40s. She never married, and had no children, but remained close to her cousin Lorna, and was my mother's godmother. Harold's other brother, Arthur, I have found no other records for. I only really know that he also died quite young - about 39 years old. So despite only living until he was hit by a truck on Hoddle St, Harold making his mid-60s was comparatively old-age in his family.

James Emanuel Waller's parents were a man named James George Waller and his wife, Caroline Hodges. Caroline was born in Bristol, and I believe came here as a sponsored domestic servant in the early 1850s, before meeting and marrying James George Waller in 1858. They lived in Prahran and had 9 children together - 6 daughters and 3 sons. James was their third-born child (1863) and their oldest son. Of his sisters, his oldest sister Harriet married a man called Ebenezer Coventry - of the famous AFL family - and their first-born daughter Elsie died in infancy. Both her grandparents were interred with her in a plot in St Kilda Cemetery, but for decades, James George Waller had been incorrectly recorded in the cemetery records as John George, and it wasn't until I started searching that this was corrected and we had a resting spot for my great-great-great-grandparents. Caroline passed away in 1894, predeceasing her husband James who lived until 1909. 

There were a couple of things that struck me about James George Waller. The first was though he occupation was a "clerk" according to marriage records, in his will, he was not only listed as a "gentleman". This suggests he was a man of independent means. In his will, he he divided up his worldly possessions equally regardless of sex, leaving portions to his 8 remaining children, and one portion to the widow of a son who had predeceased him. He was, therefore, a progressively-minded fellow, it seemed. The second thing was though he was listed as a "British subject", he was born in Java, Indonesia. I cannot find a record of him arriving here, but I believe he came from England, which was where his parents had settled after having the majority of their children in Indonesia. 

His father's name was also James George Waller. He was a master shipbuilder who was born in Chatham, Kent and who died in Totnes, Devonshire. A eulogy available of him and visible on findagrave, states he died of "cancer of the cheek", and gives his title as Esquire. Certainly, this perhaps explains why his son had some money behind him. With his wife, he had numerous biological children (half of which survived to adulthood) and one step-child from her prior marriage. These children, rather like James, ended up scattering across the world. One sister emigrated to Canada, another to Jamaica - they were definite seafarers.

Here's where I solve another mystery: the elder James George Waller's wife was a woman named Hermina Wilhelmina Quint Ondaatje. She was honoured in subsequent generations of the family by multiple girls being given the name "Mina" - which she was fondly known as - as either a first or middle name, all the way down to Harold's sister Ethel Mina. "Ondaatje" immediately grabbed my attention - it was a decidedly non-British name, but also, it was a name I recognised. Hermina was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, but had spent vast chunks of her life in the Dutch colonies of Sri Lanka and then Java. She was the youngest daughter of Christina Hoevenaar and her second husband, Pieter Philip Jurriaan Quint Ondaatje - better known as "Quint Ondaatje".

It was with uncovering this line that I found out that not only am I the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of an incredibly famous Dutch revolutionary and forefather of Dutch democracy, but that the "white side of my family" was not actually completely white. Quint Ondaatje was, very famously, a Dutch Burgher man, born in the colony of Colombo in Sri Lanka. Ondaatje itself is a Tamil name, that had been translated into Dutch, and Quint was a descendant of a Tamil physician (in Dutch) who, on being successfully able to heal the Dutch governor's wife of a mystery illness, was engaged as the official governatorial physician. This man adopted the name Michael Jurgen Ondaatje, married firstly a Portuguese colonial woman named Magdelena Croos, and secondly, a Sinhala woman named Eega Juri, and then became the progenitor of the entire Ondaatje family. When Quint stormed the Utrecht town hall and threw out the Orangists, he was already famously a Dutch-Burgher man. Far from nanna being of "Prussian descent" - her real ancestor rather crucially fought the Prussians!

This ancestry therefore means that as well as Dutch-Burgher heritage, I have some distant Tamil and Sinhalese ancestry. My ancestors in this line spoke Dutch, English, Tamil, Malay, and Portuguese. It also means that I am indeed distantly related to writer Michael Ondaatje, his brother Christopher, Sri Lankan-Canadian rhythmic gymnast Anna-Marie Quint Ondaatje, and many others. I am a descendant of a distinct ethnic group in Sri Lanka, and as such, have learnt a lot more about the differences between English and Dutch colonisation. I cannot wait to travel to these areas - Netherlands, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia - and learn more.

So Waller was not a "blackfella", but nor was she white. In my introductory post to all this, I mentioned some hurt over the years, and I have to say that finding out that not only was my "white side" not completely white, but actually, I am the descendant of such an incredible man of colour, has been affirming and wonderful. Due to the prominence of this family, there was no denying this heritage, nor my descent from them, as they were incredibly well-recorded. I have to wonder how, in the intervening generations, this information was so very easily forgotten. I cannot help but think that had the White Australia Policy not been in force for so long, it may not have been.

Photos: Lorna Waller Tuttleby, the grandmother of the writer and the great-granddaughter of James George Waller, firstly in the year before she passed away, and secondly with the writer in the early 1980s

The question at hand: a significant historical shock, with repercussions - Part 2 of a series

 I am an Arrernte woman. My father, Allan, was born in Alice Springs in 1950. His parents were Harold Liddle and Emily Perkins Liddle. Emily was a stolen generations girl, was born at Deep Well Station, and was the daughter of Alice Grant (later, Costello) and Burke Perkins. Her aunty Hetti Perkins worked at the Bungalow and Jay Creek missions, looking after the children who had been taken there, and her mother Alice was known to ride a camel to visit her children at these missions they had been taken to. Nanna's time at the Bungalow and Jay Creek was well-documented - she was a part of the Between Two Worlds exhibition in the 1990s, and a recorded account from her of this time is available on the internet.

Contrary to what I was told to look out for on Nanna's side regarding potential surprises, there were actually none. I have matched up with fellow cousins on that side extensively, and to the correct degrees of separation (for the purposes of ease, I will be documenting these connections how non-Indigenous people would, as most non-Indigenous people would not understand how someone could be my "aunty" when they are my father's second cousin). The family names on that side are as expected: Perkins, Costello, Bray, Lake, Rawson, etc. 

The "historical shock", on the other hand, was on my father's paternal side. His father, Harold Liddle, was the son of William Hurle Liddle - a pastoralist of Scottish descent whose family had emigrated here from the Orkney Islands - and Mary Earwaaker. Mary was a remarkably strong Arrernte woman who, despite leading an incredibly tough life in near poverty, also helped set up a couple of cattle stations and other businesses in Central Australia. My father remembers her as being strong-willed and wickedly funny - she loved teasing her grandkids. She was apparently of a similar height and build to me, which was rather lovely to find out when I was hitting the family with questions as I researched. 

The Liddles have been extensively researched by other members of the family, which is why I did not delve in too much there. William was the son of Thomas Liddle and his second wife Matilda Hurle, from SA. His grandfather, also Thomas, had come over to SA with his young family. The Liddle line are all Scottish, while the Hurles were English and from the Wiltshire area. I have uncles who have made treks to the Orkneys to visit the hometown of Shapinsay, and see the family graves and parish records. A Hurle ancestor - my 4x great-grandfather Thomas Hurle - rather humorously has, as his death cause, listed as "visitation from God". He actually died in a public house out-house from a stroke whilst intoxicated. But yes, while the Hurles were working class folks, mainly from urban areas, the Liddles were mainly sheep farmers from some of the most rural areas of Scotland possible. One day, I myself hope to trace the steps of both lines.

Mary Earwaaker, on the other hand, was the daughter of an Arrernte woman named Alethe Angale, alternately anglicised as Alice and Angelina. Her father, and her mother's acknowledged husband, was the Alice Springs Telegraph Station blacksmith - a man named Harry Earwaaker who was of English dissent. Mary had a younger sister named Rosie and it is notable that both the girls appear to have been named after women in Harry's family - his mother and his sister, respectively. In the Alice Springs General Cemetery, Mary is buried under both the Earwaaker and Liddle surnames, whereas her sister married and was known as Spencer.

Prior to meeting William Liddle, Mary had a daughter - Linda Kunoth to Sonny Kunoth. Mary and William had four children - Milton, Hilda, Harold and Arthur. William also had other children,mainly when he was later out at Angas Downs station. 

The thing is though, while Harry Earwaaker appears to have been a father to Mary, and a husband to her mother, the DNA testing has shown we have no genetic connection to other members of the Earwaaker family and their descendants. We are not related to them at all.

Instead, all descendants of Mary thus far have shown up as genetically related to the Gillen family, and therefore Mary's father was a man named Frank Gillen. Her year of birth, due to this connection, would have been around 1893. 

This is significant for so many reasons. For those who are unaware, Frank Gillen was an anthropologist, and was the research partner of Walter Baldwin Spencer. Gillen was also the sub-protector of the Aborigines in Central Australia at the time, and therefore had a number of powers and responsibilities. He was a man of Irish descent, who had worked on the overland telegraph line for a number of years, and prior to being stationed in Alice with his wife Amelia Besley, and their children, had been out at Charlotte Waters. 

The research of Spencer and Gillen became famous worldwide, and is one of the reasons why the Arrernte became one of the most documented Aboriginal peoples in this country. For better or worse, it inspired others to document tribes across the country. Yet, while I can say that there was a fascination and respect that was a part of why they did this work, there was also the unescapeable fact that Aboriginal people were being studied because we were seen as a dying race. What's more, Spencer was a noted eugenicist, and both him and Gillen believed that children of part-white descent should be removed and assimilated for their own good. 

In the book, "My Dear Spencer" which features a foreward that was written in the late-1990s, it was noted that there was no evidence that Gillen, like so many other white men who headed up to the interior, "fraternised" with the Aboriginal women up there. What a difference a couple of decades worth of technology can make, hey? At this stage, the descendants of Mary Earwaaker number in their hundreds, and like it is a shock to me confirming this bit of information, so it must be a shock to his legitimate descendants, and those of his siblings, to suddenly have hundreds of Arrernte cousins. To their credit, on engaging with a couple of them, I have found them to be sensitive, welcoming, and keen to share information. Perhaps one day, we may even meet and try and piece the story together that links our families.

But yes, as I mentioned, proving or disproving this link was an aim of me taking this test in the first place. I was driven to do so because I saw an older relation claiming it as fact in the public sphere, and doing so in a proud, and a non-critical way. And I had a massive problem with this.

For starters, we do not know how Mary came to be in the world. Was it a loving secret relationship leading to a secret child? Was it a power play by a man in authority in a frontier town? Or was Mary a cruel experiment of men trying to prove theories of part-descent children? I cannot find any proof that Gillen was a father to Mary, but I can find proof that Earwaaker was. And until we are able to definitively state how Mary came to be, I am not willing to erase the stories of her, her mother, and the man who claimed and named them. It feels wrong to do so. We can only theorise, and continue to gather the evidence where it exists. 

But we also cannot ignore reality now that it is known. Particularly since this reality means that my direct ancestors were the very same people who were being documented in the works of Gillen and Spencer. It was their knowledges, their histories and their families. It was also their experiences at the frontiers that led to the Spencer and Gillen conclusions, and fed into policies such as those that created the stolen generations. That is pretty significant. As a researcher myself, the ethical considerations of all of this are extraordinary. 

People might ask why I am choosing to write this. I guess because while I do acknowledge the many people impacted by this historical secret, I have decided after conducting so much research on my own family tree that this is all part of my story. That I do have a right to claim the stories that led to me being here. And that, in an environment where we are talking a lot about "truth telling", it is important to acknowledge this massive truth in my family. I am the direct descendant of the frontier activities. And that, in itself, is a truth Australia must examine.

A year of discovery - part 1 of a series

 Hello, gentle readers!

This series of blogposts are taking a different tack. Earlier this year, I made the decision to undertake a commercial DNA test, and therefore, the posts I am about to embark upon are going to be about what I have found out, how this knowledge has impacted me, and the loose ends I still need to tie up. This series will not be for everyone - like all of my posts, they will be political, and they will give food for thought, but they will be so because the personal is political. I am a colonised Arrernte woman, living on stolen lands, and certainly, what I have found out gives some angles into this process of colonisation.

For any racists or haters coming on here, with preconceived ideas about why an Aboriginal person would take a test like this, I say this straight up: I did not do this test to "discover" my mysterious Aboriginal relative. My Aboriginality is a fact. I am a member of two well-known Aboriginal families from Central Australia - the Liddles and the Perkinses. Indeed, the DNA test merely confirmed this was the case as I matched with my Liddle and Perkins relatives who had already tested. I am the great-niece of Stolen Generations activist Bob Randall, first cousin - twice removed of Charles Perkins (and second cousin - once removed to his children), and the granddaughter of the first Aboriginal pastoralist in Central Australia, Harold Liddle. I have a first cousin currently sitting as a Liberal senator in federal parliament. You can google my grandparents' names, and they appear both on Strehlow's genealogies, and government records of the time (because not only was my grandmother Emily stolen, but all Aboriginal people were "wards of the state" for decades in the NT, which dictated their movements and living arrangements). In short, my Aboriginal status is known, has always been known, and didn't need to be proven. 

There are two reasons why I undertook the test:

1. Many years ago, on my paternal (Aboriginal) side, I had been informed by an elder relative that the biological father of my great-grandmother Mary Earwaaker was not the man who acted as father to her (and husband to her mother). At the time, not knowing how this relative could possibly know this, and the fact that it's 120 years down the track, I wrote this information off. However, when I saw this same relative claiming this as fact in the public sphere as part of the "conservative no" campaign, and doing so proudly, I became disturbed, and decided that perhaps I could, myself, try a test and see if I could prove or disprove this information. I ended up proving it by a second Liddle line (more on this later);

2. There has been pain, and estrangement related to my maternal "white" side, and at one point, I was even accused of not celebrating this heritage. The trouble was, despite these hurtful accusations, that seemed to not take into account that regardless of any other heritage, I had grown up Aboriginal in the middle of white suburbian, and had been "othered" my entire life, not a single person actually seemed to know a thing about this "white" side that they thought I should be celebrating. How can you celebrate something you don't know, particularly when your life has been shaped by a society that wants to take away the parts of your heritage you do know?

What I have found out has been extraordinary. As someone whose family tree was already quite incredible (in my view), I have found, and learnt so much. There are some hard truths, some good surprises, some funny and painful stories, and therefore a bunch of lives and experiences that have led to me, sitting here, in 2024. 

Finally, before I launch into any of this, I want to highlight some things: 

Firstly, I do not recommend people do commercial DNA tests. There are risks with putting your genetic information on these systems, particularly as an Aboriginal person, and people should consider this thoroughly, especially considering 23 & Me looks like it is going to be selling to big pharma. I went ahead only because, as I was aware multiple people on both sides of my family had undertaken tests, I reasoned that my DNA was actually already on the system, whether I wanted it to be or not.

Secondly, nobody can use these tests to determine Aboriginality, no matter what the racists in One Nation Party claim. I did two tests. On one of them, my estimated percentage of Aboriginality has already gone up and down twice as they have adjusted my results due to more data coming in (it also adjusted all my other percentages, and redistributed the "heritage" percentages my parents had given me. On the other test, it could not even measure Aboriginality - instead, it gave a vague Melanesian and Papuan reading for me, while also turning up heritage I absolutely do not have - Finnish, Greek and Italian. I elected to destroy the data of that test immediately due to its inaccuracy, even though I had mainly done it to connect with Dutch relatives.

Anyway, I am unsure how long these reflections will take me, or how many entries there will be. I also do not know how long they will live on this site, even if I do write them up here - this may, very well, end up being a part of a much bigger project. Such was the nature of what I found. For those that read, kick back, relax, and here goes nothing.

-

PS To anyone who reads these, please consider them "ongoing edits". I will be adding photos, and certificates, and will probably be correcting facts and typos non-stop. The reality is, these are draft documents, while I work out where their final destination will be. I just needed to write them now as, for months, I have wanted a home for both my findings, and my responses to those findings.

Speech at the Palestine rally - 3/3/24

                             Pic credit: https://www.instagram.com/kedzhifotowala/ 

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet today – the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation – and pay my respects to their Elders, past and present. As a visitor on these lands, I introduce myself as an Arrernte woman and Mparntwenye, whose traditional lands include Alice Springs, and east and south east of there, and who has familial ties to other parts of the greater Arrernte nation in Central Australia. Finally, as an Arrernte woman, I wish to acknowledge that we are on stolen lands, that the Wurundjeri people have never ceded their sovereignty, and that a treaty or agreement is yet to be negotiated for use of these lands, and therefore, as a traditional owner of elsewhere who has made her home here, I pledge to walking in solidarity with the Wurundjeri people in their ongoing struggle for justice. Always was, always will be.

I am not going to speak for long today. There are far more important people to listen to than me, and therefore I am choosing to use the time the organising team have generously given me to speak to you today as smartly and pointedly as possible. As an ally to Palestinian people - thirty thousand of whom have now been brutally murdered by this genocidal, and disgraceful Israeli regime. I also stand in solidarity with the many conscientious objectors and long-term peace protesters, such as the Women in Black, and those currently being thrown into prisons for refusing to answer their call-up from the IDF. When first we began gathering to call for a ceasefire, and for the liberation of Palestinian people living under what can only be described as a murderous apartheid regime, I think I speak for all of us when I say that nobody here hoped that five months later there would still be a need to gather on a weekly basis and call for justice.

Yet here we are. Still gathering. Still mourning. Still calling on our political leaders to take action. And still building solidarity between the movements. As an Indigenous activist, and a union organiser and member, the notion of solidarity is one close to my heart, for it is in the connecting of the minorities that we become a majority they can no longer afford to ignore. And they can no longer afford to ignore us, because not only are their jobs at stake, but their humanity is at stake. The longer they fuel this, the longer they remain complicit and irredeemable. Do they truly wish for their legacies to be the rivers of blood they currently have on their hands?

We know this genocide, this apartheid, this deprivation of human rights did not begin on the 7^th of October last year. It also did not being in 1967, with the breaching of UN resolution 242, nor did it begin in 1948 with the Nakbar, though the oppression has obviously been going on for this long. No, it began well before this, with colonising powers such as Great Britain, France and the US dividing up lands which never belonged to them, in order to maintain power in a resource-rich region. It began with centuries of pogroms on Jewish people in Europe where, following World War 2, the allied powers whilst patting themselves on the back for a job well done, also treated the Jewish people they had just liberated from the genocidal Nazis like hot potatoes. Australia has been there every step of the way, through its undying loyalty this colonial forebears, to the institution of the White Australia Policy, to Australia – via its own anti-semitism, disregard of Indigenous rights, and xenophobia – twice refused to establish a Jewish homeland in Western Australia. When there are global allies to maintain, and resources to exploit, Arab lives have long meant nothing to the west, and this country has been a constant offender.

I look out here, and I see thousands of incredible people, gathered to say “no more”. So many different people, so many different colours, creeds, genders, sexualities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and so forth. With this, I would like to address various groups of people, one-by-one.

As an ally, I wish to say to all my Palestinian sisters and brothers, and, by extension, to other Arabs here: I am so sorry. I am sorry that thanks to resource snatching and colonial ambition, so few of your families have had the privilege of knowing peace for countless generations. I stand with you in your time of pain, and torment. I mourn your families and your communities back in Palestine, and I join you in your call for a ceasefire, for the end of forced settlements and land grabs, the freedom of all those incarcerated in Israeli prisons, and for a free Palestine. I call for the preservation of your lives and your liberty, and for true self-determination as the strong, proud people that you are. In his will, Aaron Bushnell expressed a wish, if a free Palestine was achieved and if it were amenable to the people, that his ashes be scattered there. I hope his wishes are able to be carried out, but even more than that, I wish that Palestinian people are able to bury their own people on the lands they have never given up, with honour and dignity, and then rebuild a society where they are safe and happy. I hope there are many more alive who have the ability to enjoy it, or the right to return and see it.

To my Jewish sisters and brothers, I wish to say that I see you. I acknowledge you. I know that as long as there has been a recognised “Israel” there has been opposition to any Israeli regime that seeks to displace, imprison, incarcerate and murder Palestinian people. I see you come out every Invasion Day, every anti-fascist rally, and now every week for Palestine. To you I say, I am proud to know you, I am sorry that through your commitment to life and justice, you end up ostracised in your communities and in an Australia which, via its own commitment to its allies, consistently fails to confront its own legacy of anti-semitism. I am in awe of your strength and will always walk beside you.

To my Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters, I say this: right now, we have the media and members of our own community distorting our history, and twisting our activism in a bid to discredit Indigenous solidarity with Palestine. This is a true shame job. As far as I am concerned, if those people who the media is so keen to exploit as spokespeople who claim we are threatening longstanding solidarity from Jewish community members by standing with Palestinians are not showing their funding interests right now, they are certainly baring their arses for all to see. Stand strong, stand proud. As fellow victims of genocide and colonisation, walk tall in the fact that we have survived and we know our Palestinian brothers and sisters will too. Know that they can twist the legacy of people such as William Cooper in order to try and unsettle us, but we know, REALLY KNOW, that Cooper, if he were alive today, would be out here with us, taking a stand against persecution against a people like he did back in 1938.

To my fellow Arrernte people and to Mparntwe for Falastin, I say this: I am so proud of you. Keep going. The fact that the Pine Gap facility sits there still on Arrernte lands is a disgrace and as an Arrernte person, I say SHUT IT DOWN. No more genocide being fed remotely by the US on Arrernte country.

As a trade unionist, I say this: workers, we need to shut down the war machine. Join your unions, speak to your fellow members, organise hard, work out how your industry contributes to the war machine and collectively SHUT IT DOWN. We have all been inspired by the Webb Dock actions, but there needs to be so much more. As a media practitioner, for example, I believe that the biggest war machine this country has is the media, as it’s through our reporting that propaganda is forged and ignorance flourishes. As such, we need to collectively push back on the media companies and refuse to write or report any untruths designed to promote this propaganda. As the union movement says – “touch one, touch all”. Every single worker has a role to play in shutting down the war machine and ensuring a peaceful future for Palestine, so let’s do this.

Finally, as a past political candidate, I say this to individual Labor MPs: GROW A SPINE. I know there are many of you there who don’t support this war, and I know that you keep your mouths shut and don’t cross the floor for fear of party expulsion. I have also done the maths and know that all it takes is 20 of you to band together, speak up in opposition to your party stance, and put the fear into them that they will lose their right to govern. So do it. How many more deaths do you need on your hands before human rights wins out? How many more?

From the river, to the sea. Always was, and always will be.

Thank you.