Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

Into The Deep End – A Family History

The last time I visited my mother’s place in 2018, my True Love, who is a nosy bugger, picked up what appeared to be a small family history journal. He was only a few pages in when he exclaimed that I had to read this. So I read a few pages. It dissolved me. I put the journal aside to digest the information, hopefully to return to it another day.

I’ve heard often the advice not to dwell in the past but instead to look forward. I wonder if that advice is given by those who have trouble leaving it behind. I wish I could take that advice. But I seem to be stuck there, in that moment of betrayal and tragedy when a family’s life was torn apart by colonial invaders. Surely anyone who knows this history would take it upon themselves to reached out to descendants of the other family to apologise?

The journal was a biography of the Little family. The Littles left Ireland in 1839 to build a new life in Australia. The family journal is lost now. Borrowed by another and not returned. So I only learnt recently that I’m a descendant of the 1839 Littles. So now I know. I must say sorry. I do not expect absolution for the sins of the past. There’s no absolution for lives taken, land stolen and freedom denied. There is only truth. The alternative to apologising is to live without compassion, without humanity, live the lie. Still, I appreciate how difficult it is to make the first move. I have been reflecting longer than I should. My time has come.

The family patriarch, John Little, settled on Baffle Creek, near Bundaberg. His wife, Catherine, suggested the property be named “Rosedale”.

Source: Fox’s History of Queensland – Its People and Industries, p. 291

It is not difficult to imagine the importance of this lagoon to the evicted owners, the Gooreng Gooreng people.

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In the absence of the journal, I dived into Ancestry. What a shock it was to see the family trees and photos of people who have committed atrocities and yet there is no acknowledgement of that. Maybe a better term for Ancestry would be Pandora’s box.

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In November 2024, the newly elected Queensland Government led by David Crisafulli, abolished the state’s Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry and repealed the Path to Treaty Act.

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Thanks for reading. Take care, everyone, and don’t let your ancestry shame you into avoiding the truth or hamper your compassion.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

Landing It

Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.

To travel to my home town, the place of my birth, would take a number of days by car. For a family with small children that journey would likely stretch to over a week. When I was a child, the cost of plane fares was also exorbitant, hence our family rarely visited our relatives in Far North Queensland. I remember a special occasion when our family did make the trip by plane. Perhaps it was my first plane trip. It was very exciting.

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Posted on by Reflections of an Untidy Mind

A Time For Everything

Welcome to my regular (and early) Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you. Today, I am going to get nostalgic.

I can’t remember a time when the house wasn’t dilapidated. The house sat upon tall timber pylons three storeys high, but there was nothing underneath it. The story goes that there were plans for a shop below the house but those plans never came to fruition. To the passerby, it might have looked like a giant birdhouse. This was fitting because two older ladies lived in that house. The younger was my grandmother, the elder was her mother, my great grandmother. My grandfather lived up the road. That was odd, but odd is normal for us.

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