My Dad and his siblings have written two family histories – one about their father, and one about their mother. I read the former last year after it had been sitting on my bookshelf for years, and now I'm finally reading the latter. I always had a dim view of people who write family histories. Young people tend not to be interested, but I also had to spend countless tedious hours politely pretending to be interested in the "fascinating stories" unearthed by retirees in the public libraries I've worked in. It all seemed so colonial, and bound up with imperialism and militaristic nationalism (check out a random Ancestry.com advertisement if you're not sure what I mean). But in the last couple of years I've read, and attended workshops by, and listened to a bunch of Aboriginal people talking about their culture, and they all say the same thing to their exotic Australian audience: knowing your roots is crucial; find out about your family; understand the country you're from.
So I'm taking that on, to some extent. Turns out my ancestry is a little more complex than I had thought. Just on my maternal grandmother's side there's Irish (free settler), Welsh (transported after being framed for murder according to local i.e. Welsh legend), and English (free settlers from Portishead). Also pretty in-bred: two separate lines of ancestors can be traced to exactly the same ship that docked in Hobart Town in March 1853, and there are a few "double weddings" and pairs of brothers marrying sisters (No – not their own sisters – this is Tasmania but it's not that bad!). But what sticks out for me is how tough the life was for these people, and how in other ways it sounds delightful. Three-mile walks to school after milking the cows every day, but also no cars on any of the roads. Certainly none of the modern conveniences, but also ...eating your own butter you churned yourself sounds pretty nice. I'm romanticising it to probably a large extent, but it does sound like there was a strong community and a heap of mutual aid and barter economics.
This was all accompanied by a great deal of gross imperial and national militarism (my Gran lost 4 uncles in the Great War and had to chant her allegience to the country and "cheerfully following its laws" every morning at school). Also, presumably, a pretty terrible time for anyone who wasn't white, straight, and Protestant. The women all gave birth to an alarmingly large number of babies, several of which didn't make it past infancy. Diptheria was a thing you might be unlucky enough to get and die from, rather than something you got childhood vaccinations for. And of course, the ancestors of some of those generous Aboriginal people encouraging me to get in touch with this story were marginalised, massacred, or exiled so my ancestors could "clear the virgin forest" for dairy farms while their children trudged to school for 8 years or died of measles or went to France to be sacrificed for the Empire in the mud.
When I take off the rosy glasses it sounds a bit grim, and pretty spartan. And yet the prospects for most of the people who took a 75 day sail in a ship to Van Diemen's Land were significantly better than anything they could expect back home. No wonder they jumped at the chance to own 30 acres of their own land, and didn't bother asking too much about who it belonged to before them. No wonder they found joy and satisfaction in their simple lives and frugal comforts. No wonder Tasmania is a land of such great silences about the past.
And yet. The district dances. The pitching in to feed the travelling teams at harvest time. The joy in sharing food. The fresh air and sunshine and fruit and veg varieties grown to lengthen the season rather than maximise a price. There's some magic there we can recapture without allowing it to be turned into sour nostalgia. Everything keeps coming back to food systems, shared work and communal care. It's everywhere once you start looking for it.
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