Saturday, April 29, 2006

Family History




Today John went to Adelaide to make a speech and help unveil a plaque to his family's original home, Stonyfell in the Adelaide foot hills. John is the youngest of his generation left, His father was the youngest of 12 and didnt marry and have John until he was 54 so there is a huge generation gap. He also spent a lot of his weekends there when he was at Boarding school and wrote a rather wonderful poem about it. His maiden aunts and one uncle lived there, with a wonderful garden, had jersey cows, chooks a terrific vegetable garden etc. I went there in fear and trembling when I first met John aged about 16 or 17 and had "afternoon tea" in the drawing room on Sundays, they were a fromidable lot but I grew to be very fond of them, the house and the garden. I think if you click on the plaque it will enlarge and you should be able to read the history. The other photo is of John and the present Mayor of Burnside Wendy Greiner unveiling the plaque.
I have just loaded another image of the house itself probably taken around 1940 and this is as I remember it around the late 1950's. Now very heavily built over and the house itself "restored" in a way that the aunts would have had a fit about. I could go on but this is a small taste of it all.

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