Moving on...

Spent a few days with my sister Kay recently. She's downsizing - selling her 4-bedroom house and moving into this wonderful retirement village in Canberra.

Apart from that little interlude, I've been spending hours and hours every day on ancestors. Am making the most exciting discoveries. I got my DNA results back and now I want the man I think is descended from my father's father (well, his sister, as the man himself had no children other than my father, so far as I can work out) to have the test, too. That way my 99% suspicion will be proved either right or wrong.

No surprises with the DNA: 35% Great Britain, 27% Ireland, Europe West 26%, European Jewish 4% (my father's father), Iberian Peninsula 3%, Italy/Greece 2%, the rest not worth a mention.

I've got back as far as 1400 on the Mounsey line, the wealthy family from Patterdale Hall. Winifred, it's on the shores of Ullswater.

It seems another line of the family, the Dodds, were wealthy landowners, too, here in NSW. One of them married a Mounsey daugher. There were several properties established by them which nowadays have become the names of suburbs or country areas.

I plan to take a little trip soon to take photos of headstones and track down the original properties.

Ancestors' former home in the Lake District

I'm just about dropping on my feet, after spending hours and hours every day researching ancestors. Compare this to the houses I put a few blogs back! I couldn't have been more wrong!

Ralph Dodds, the great grandfather I mentioned then is descended from the Mounsey family, who owned this estate, Patterdale Hall. It doesn't look as though they were too poor, does it!

Some of the original occupiers immigrated to NSW and took up land grants here, establishing farming properties, with convicts for servants. Some of them are buried in towns - Singleton and Murrurundi - where I haved lived, totally unaware of my ancestral ghosts wafting about there! My next project is a trip to the cemeteries to take some photos.

Some illustrious in-laws found on Ancestry.com...

(Albert Cherbury) David Rivett was the brother-in-law 
of my father's first cousin, Lorna.

He married Stella, daughter of Alfred Deakin, 

Australia's second Prime Minister (above). 

This portrait of the PM is in our National Gallery.

Dr Christina was one of his sisters.

Rohan Rivett was a son of David 
and a playmate of THE Rupert Murdoch.

In Melbourne, the city where Gaelic football was turned into a religion, Rohan Deakin Rivett was the bluest of the blue bloods. Born in 1917, the grandson of Australia's second prime minister, the son of of the founder of the CSIRO and the builder of Australia’s first atomic bomb was given the middle name Deakin at his christening.

His father was Sir Albert Cherbury David Rivett and his mother Stella Deakin, daughter of Alfred Deakin, who followed Edmund Barton. It was inevitable that the Rivetts and Murdochs would socialise.

Rohan was 14 when Rupert was born. His three sisters played with him and coddled him and dressed him when he was little. Rohan Rivett introduced Rupert to more boyish games and tennis and swimming. Elisabeth Murdoch described Rohan as "the brother that Rupert never had."

This reminds me that when we used to visit Auntie Lorna, she would pretend to want to adopt me, as she had only two sons. Because they were wealthy and lived in a huge mansion, I wanted her to!!!!
I googled the house at 148 Edinburgh Road, Castlecrag and it is still there! I remember a huge fishpond surrounded by colannades. The architect mentioned in this article (below) was the very famous Walter Burley Griffin.

Rivett House: 148 Edinburgh Road 1928
Built for Dr E.W. Rivett on the opposite corner to his hospital, the house was the subject of a court case between Griffin’s development company and Rivett (Rivett won) over the building’s design which was completed contrary to the covenant and the original plans submitted to and approved by Griffin. Its interior walls were rendered brick instead of stone and the flat roof of the original design was scrapped for a pitched roof with Marseilles tiles. The rest of the house including its original layout which had been created by Griffin remained unchanged.

Picking mandarins

Well, she won't get run over by a bus in that outfit, I hear you say! Last Monday, Queen's Birthday holiday for us, we went to a local orchard we had seen advertised, to pick mandarins. So did at least 236,421 other carloads of people, which meant the first few hours were spent in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam. We eventually managed to get into an orchard and it was fun picking bucketsful of fruit. One week on, we are all a slight mandarin colour.

Have been very busy practising the piano and tracking down ancestors these past weeks, and am very pleased with success in the latter department. I am concentrating on my paternal grandmother's siblings, and have found a great uncle - son of her youngest sister - his daughter, granddaughter and grandchildren. They are spread from Hawaii to NZ, and used to live in Alaska. I have also come across relatives from further back, one in Scotland and the other in an as yet unnamed foreign place but with a daughter living in Sydney.

I need to work out a way of organising all the papers I've printed from Ancestry.com, and get the hundreds of ancestors into some form I can handle.

I sent off a sample to have my DNA tested. So far, almost all ancestors are from England. What I'm hoping is that there will be some evidence of my Jewish grandfather, whose ancestors came from Poland (that's if I've got the right bloke).

I am not exaggerating when I say I find playing the piano EXTREMELY difficult, so am doing an online uni course on improving my ability to learn. Hope it works!

Interesting what you say about British and American Englishes, Winifred. I'm not surprised they are difficult to understand. When I went to Scotland I could barely understand a word, and had to keep on asking the locals to repeat what they'd just said. One thing I notice about listening to the BBC every night is that almost all the announcers speak very, very fast and I have great difficulty understanding them.

Sunset

Just glanced up and saw this wonderful sunset, so dashed outside and took some pics. The tall flower is on one of our

xanthorrheas. It came out white because I used the flash.

It's been cloudy all day, so this evening effect is completely unexpected. Winter tomorrow. I think in the northern hemisphere you wait till the solstice, but here we start winter on the first day of June.

My problem with music is that I can't sing a note, have no sense of rhythm, and can barely tell one tune from another!
Playing the piano is like climbing Mt Everest - extremely difficult.

It's so hard it makes me want to cry

I find understanding different keys in music almost impossible.  I've tried and tried to read about it, but nobody seems to get down to my low level of understanding - not understanding.

When I listen to a piece of music I can't tell what key it's in.
All pieces sound the same to me.

And when I'm told that A minor is relative to C major, I don't have a clue what that means. To make it worse, there are two minor keys to each major. With the harmonic A minor scale, for instance, there are two sharps on the way up but none on the way down. How, I ask myself, can you compose a piece of music in this key with sometimes sharps and sometimes not??? 

Not only do I not understand the theory, my fingers get all muddled up when I try to play the scales. It certainly doesn't come naturally to me.

Oh, I just found a whole book online and free that might help: http://www.monarchknights.com/teacherwebpages/halladay/documents/BasicMusicTheory1ed_000.pdf

Yes, Winifred, I'm with you on 'the good old days'. My heading on that blog was highly ironic.

My first convict

1832.  23-yr-old Robert Brown stole some tobacco in Colchester and was transported to Australia for 14 years! He was my great-great-great grandfather (by marriage) on my mother's side.  Once he was freed he stayed on.

I was really interested to read about toilet and washing facilities on board ship. Apparently some people wore the same clothes the whole voyage. Toilet paper hadn't been invented, so a piece of rag was hung on the lavatory door for everybody to use. It was washed now and then in vinegar. A shower was having a bucket of cold water thrown over you. People seldom, if ever, cleaned their teeth.

Olga, your comments about me playing the piano at the concert made me smile. I'm absolutely hopeless and will be VERY nervous. I hope I don't go blank!

The good old days...

Have been on my feet all day (since I stand at my computer), deeply into Ancestry.com. Winifred, you say your ancestors were all poor - well, you ain't seen nothin' yet!!! I couldn't find any actual photos of where my maternal grandmother, Florence May Allen, lived in Scone, but the above pics are typical of her time. She was the first of 14 children, born in 1885. Her mother, Kate Sweeney, was pregnant over 22 years!!!!!! What do you suppose they used as nappies in those days?

Her father, Ralph Dodds, was one of 12 children. He worked as a Bailiff for the Small Debts Court and a Lamplighter, among other things (like making babies).

Nanny got a job as a live-in housekeeper for an unmarried father in Muswellbrook, about 20 miles away. Can you believe, the parents of the pregnant woman would not let her marry the father, so he took the baby home from the hospital and cared for her himself. That was in 1905! Not too many men would do that today.

In 1916 Nanny married this man, Joseph William George Allen, and they had one child, my mother, Ida Rose, the following year.

Concert coming up!

Oh dear, what have I got myself into? My piano teacher is having a concert in August and she wants Emma to play, which is fine, but also me!!!!!! Emma will play Arabesque and a duet with me, then I'll play Amazing Grace and Chopin's Etude, Optus 10, #3.

Between now and then I'll have to practise for hours every single day. Hope my paternal grandmother, the piano teacher, doesn't turn over in her grave! I have not inherited a single drop of talent.

Wetlands walk

I parked the car a few streets away before lunch today and wandered off, admiring the beautiful homes and gardens. A man walking his grandchild told me about a wetlands walk at the bottom of the hill, so I meandered along this most delightful path. (I admit I didn't take this pic as I had forgotten to take my camera with me, so borrowed this one from the web.) All this in Sydney's biggest city, and just a stone's throw from home. Wonderful.

Now I need to get on with Ancestry.com. It's absolutely mind-boggling finding I have relatives all over the world, with their email addresses right there! Last night I emailed a previously unknown family member in Israel and am waiting for her reply. No convicts apparently. My ancestors on both sides all seem to have come from England in the late 1800s. Children out of wedlock very common.