Birds and books ...

Not only did Noddy the budgie love sugar, he wasn’t averse tasting other things too. Like a ane dollar note of our much played monopoly game. Granddad caught wild birds too. His trap was an oblong cage that was divided into three. Each third had its own lid that. The lids were attached to a small platform that hung underneath.  The way the trap worked, was an already trapped bird would be in the centre cage to lure other birds down, tempting bird treats would attract birds to land on the platform. The weight of the bird on the platform would make it fall and close the lid thus trapping the bird. The hardest part was trapping the first bird. The trap really did work.

Talking of birds, I remember Mum trying to rescue a bird that had something tangled around its legs. The bird had got itself caught up in one of the tall poplar trees in our backyard. Did she reuse it, I wish I knew.

I’d read about magpies being attracted to bright sparking objects. Not that I had ever seen one, I am sure there were none around when I was a kid. By the time my children were the age I had been thee were relatively common place.

I was very fond of a series of books by Enid Blyton. The famous five books. The adventuring children had a parrot that accompanies them on their exploits. The parrot was white,  sulphur crested cockatoo called Kiki. The kids got up to all sorts of adventures, but always manage to get home safely.

Who'se a pretty boy then....

My grandfather was seventy when I was born. He died when I was nine.  

He had a tattoo on one forearm, like two hands clasped as though shaking hand. They represented hands across the sea, I think it as him that told me that. There were also the words I Love GP. My grandmother’s initials.  After spending years in the noisy environments as a stoker on board ships he was very deaf, but would always respond to my childish command of ‘read to me’ when I climbed on his lap when I was a pre-schooler. I didn’t matter what he read, just that he did. I like to think it is from him that I get my love of books and reading.

He would tease us on weekends and school holidays saying ‘school te-rmorra’ and I can still hear the ‘London’ of his voice.

He was a smoker, though I don’t remember him actually smoking. He would though collect the buts and soak them to make type if insect spray for the vegies.  Did he garden in an allotment back in England? I will never know, but he did tend the garden in NZ. On almost a quarter acre section there was a lot of room for a garden. He would spend hours sieving out the oxalis bulbs. The little plants grew rampant in the warm NZ soil, her n the UK it is a small decorative garden plant.

At the very end of the garden near the boundary fence was a large lemon tree. I always remember it loaded with the fat juicy fruit that gave up its tart juice to be poured over Mum’s wafer thin pancakes. Sprinkled with sugar,  they were delicious. Mmmmm my mount is watering at the very thought. I have never been able to make my pancakes taste the same. Anyway, back tot eh lemon tree. There was a great commotion one morning when he discovered that every single lemon had been stolen from the tree. We never did find out who took them. 

Granddad kept his birds in a shed halfway down the backyard. Screeching budgies. Blue and green. He bred the noisy birds, I don’t know what he did with most of their offspring. One though, a chubby green and yellow bird with a blue cere was our family pet. A cere is the fleshy bit across the top of the beak and it is blue for boys.

The birds name was Noddy.  He was finger tame and would be let out to fly around the room. If he landed on your shoulder he would nuzzle up to your neck. Noddy loved sugar, and if the sugar bowl was on the table when he landed he would hop up onto the rim and help himself. Proffer him a sugar coated finger and he would nibble away at it tickling the skin where his sharp beak touched. He could give you a nasty nip though if a finger was poked into his cage too often.

Granddad, with the patience of a saint had taught Noddy to wolf whistle and say ‘pretty boy’

A bit of family hstory...

 Part of the family story

My maternal Grandfather was a merchant seaman.

He was at sea with the merchant navy during the First World War, and family history has it that he was sunk at least twice.

This quote from my aunt (his daughter)

‘One time the boat sank and they were adrift for about eight days. The minute the captain was pulled into one of the lifeboats he said “Now men your pay stops”.

It does sound like he was a hardhearted man, but it was only company policy he was stating

He was a stoker in the engine room of the steam ship Port Kembla when it sailed from England on April 29 1917 bound for the Pacific via Suez.

The Port Kembla called into Wellington NZ at least twice, it’s last visit was in July 1917. It next appears in my record in Brisbane, then on to Williamstown Victoria where it spent at least ten days loading frozen meat jams and wool. When the Port Kembla left there on September 12 1917 the 59-member crew thought they were headed home probably via Durban. The Captain knew otherwise though as he had orders to sail to Wellington and then head back to England.

It was as well that they did for just 5 days later in the last minutes of September 17^th and only 11 miles from Farewell spit there was an explosion and the Port Kembla sank in just under half an hour. The radio mast was carried away and the compass was smashed. The night was still and the fumes from the explosion were carried into parts of the ship. Some of the crew described the smell as sulphurous and others were ill for days afterwards.  All hands were ordered to the lifeboats and when all the crew were safely away and the captain was sure that The Port Kembla was really going down he and the last two officers with him jumped from the ship and swam to the waiting lifeboats.

There was great excitement in Nelson the next morning when the steamer Reglus bound for Westport returned unexpectedly with two boats in tow and sixty shipwrecked seamen. The Shipwreck Relief Society sent 4 pounds per man to the crew, and later in Wellington The Sailors Friendly Society  arranged entertainment for the crew in the form of a concert followed by supper, and intended to provide for the men’s minor wants.

If she had gone directly back to England they would have been in the open ocean when it happened, and with the radio mast gone and no way to summons help the outcome might have been decidedly different.

Well that is what I have believed until a few years ago.

What actually happened was that the Kembla hit a mine laid by the German mine layer The Wolfe. A few years ago I just happened to walk in the door and heard the words Port Kembla. It was an item about a group of divers who had actually dived on the Kembla. She was located by a chap who was researching the German ship and had a set of German admiralty charts. And there directly under the charted positions of one  the mines positions was the ship. I got to meet one of the organisers, and eventually held the ships bell and one of the plates that they had brought up from the dive 

http://www.petemesley.com/local%20trips%20port%20kembla.htm

Assorted pictures

Old fogies and fungi...

I spent bit of time today rechecking some of the info in my family tree. In a couple of weeks I’m meeting up with a cousin who is interested in the ‘tree’, and I want to make sure that all the details I have collected so far are correct. Oops, there on one of my online trees is a mistake. By clicking on confirm I had inadvertently doubled up on the information, giving my paternal Great grandfather a second wife, name unknown, and a duplicate family. Hmm, took a bit of finding out, but once I had figured out how to remove them I did, one child at a time and then the unknown wife. Ah that’s better.  Now then on my father’s maternal side there is a distinct lack of information. His maternal grandfather’s line goes back to the three times grt grandparents. But I only get as far as his maternal grandmother. Well not any more, fingers crossed. I sent off for their marriage certificate today. That will give me the names of the parents so should help me to take the next step back. 

The Man has not been at all happy with the mushies we have been buying lately, somehow the taste is not quite right. I bought a pack of 4 big brown ones today, they look very fresh. So cooked them with a bit of that kiwi butter ,and some garlic, and a squeeze of lemon. Yumo.

Bank Holiday Monday...

What a nice lazy day The Man and I have had. It’s pretty unusual for us not to even go out for a stroll around the shops here at crystal palace. Oh all right, The Man did go for a quick walk to the supermarket earlier to buy butter to cook the mushies in. And it was NZ butter too. Yummy he is such a great breakfast chef.

I spent a bit of time of Face Book chatting to family and then when they had all signed off and gone to bed I got out the family history stuff and spent much of the rest of the day ‘pruning’ the tree.

Well when I say pruning, what I really mean is going through the information I have, yet again, and trying to get it into some sort of order. But I’m easily side tracked by interesting, if not very helpful tangents. I’m kicking myself to for not putting the date on print outs of census records. Not a clever move that. You’d think though that on the actual page itself thee would be a date, well I would think that would be a logical thing to do. Never mind. 

I have been looking for details about the birth of my paternal three times great grandfather, and I  . feel like I am going around and around in circles with him. I thought at one stage Aha there you are. I thought I had found him in a census entry for a hospital in 1841, but said hospital was more than 30 miles away. Hmm probably not him then. Oh well keep on looking.  

Now here’s one for the interesting snippet file.  Do you know how the Arctic Circle is defined? Well I do now, courtesy of The Man’s afternoon reading. It is the line of latitude marking the southern limit of here the sun does not set in June or rise at the December solstices.