Beginnings...

It was my maternal grandmother, Anis Howarth Battersby Poussard who first gave me the genealogy bug. She was by nature someone who loved to find connections between all sorts of people, and spent years documenting the names in her family tree (and skipping over those less savoury ones!) Family reunion picnics with her extended family, and visits as a child to her elderly aunts, Queenie and Beatie, instilled in me a strong sense of belonging to a much bigger family picture. I still have her almost indecipherable handwritten notes and charts alongside my own early research attempts, typed up on the manual Olivetti.  It wasn't the coolest pastime when I was 16, 18, 25...-I was always slightly embarrassed to own up to this fascination with the dead and buried. My love of cemeteries, and dusty old archive repositories was at odds with the youthful exploits of the 80's.  The State Library of Victoria was my idea of heaven, trawling through microfilm for hours, often to no avail. My heart would race (still does) as I turned flakey, delicate pages of 19th century books and papers, trying to reconstruct the lives and understand hardships faced by my favourite characters in the family story.

I began a teaching degree, but left to follow my passion and complete a BA(Hons)History. This study, and backpacking through parts of Europe gave me richer perspective on my emigrating ancestors, and I spent a couple of years living in the UK, where I was able to indulge my love for archival research, and visit some sites of my own family's origins.

Queenie and Beatrice Kempson

Of course, modern family life eventually took hold of my time and resources, and genealogical pursuits were put aside for several years while our children were small. Then, rather suddenly, the availability of records and indexes on the web exploded, and allowed me to delve in again from home.  I have since completed  the Certificate of Genealogical Studies (SAGS), undertaken archival research and record retrieval for many overseas researchers, tutored groups of keen family historians, indexed records, studied convict records, and learned so, so much more about the history of my own family.

I wonder what my grandmother would have made of on-line research? It's a world away from her collection of notes, lists  and letters, but she was a modern woman and I know that she would have embraced it wholeheartedly.

My children are older now, and so once again I'm able to lose myself in the Archive Centre or the State Library- between school bells anyway. It still feels like heaven, too.