I went to visit my aunt today. She’s 96 years old and has been living in a nursing home for a few years. I hadn’t seen her since before the big 2022 flood in Lismore. She’s doing about as well as can be expected for someone her age with dementia.
Her daughter, my cousin, has been sorting through her incredible collection of papers and photographs. She’s been finding all sorts of fascinating bits and pieces, which she’s been sharing with me when items of interest have turned up. Today she gave me another stack of pictures, and she thinks this might be the last of it.
Some of these photographs offer a lovely glimpse into 1950s and 1960s life in country Australia. The images are quite stark, capturing a time when my family wouldn’t have considered their significance. They certainly wouldn’t have imagined that someone in 2024-2025 would be so interested – and that person is me!
For many people, I’m the keeper of our family history (as you can see from my website!). There are a few relatives who are particularly interested, and I always share any new discoveries with them.
It’s remarkable that my aunt has so much stuff. Lismore has experienced numerous floods, and we lost a lot of memorabilia in the 2022 flood. However, my aunt has lived on higher ground for much of her adult life, so her house has been spared. She’s lucky to have so many of these photographs. They’ve truly survived the test of time.
We swapped stories and looked through the photographs together. She remembered bits and pieces. She couldn’t quite recall my name, but she knew who I was, which was wonderful. I think her memory even started to improve as we looked at the photos. It was a lovely experience.
And here’s the most exciting part: she still had my ABBA posters! I remember my mum buying me four large ABBA posters in the 1970s. I had them on my wall, and they were special – not just photos from a magazine, but proper posters. They survived the flood!! I’ll take some pictures of me with them and share them in the next few days.
I’ll also share some great postcards sent to my grandmother during World War I.
Fabulous collection – im currently starting the process of digitising a large number of photos from my parents and an aunt
It’s great fun to do, especially doing the slight bit of correction such as straightening up some of the angles, and doing a little bit of careful cropping, as we couldn’t really do back then.
fantastic photographs James, mum (Edna) always said Joannie had all the photo’s etc even though she always insisted she didn’t and they both always applied the family mantra, don’t tell the left hand what the right hand is doing haha
Yes indeed. Lots of things lost in the various floods, but I’ve been scanning as much as I can over the last few years. I’ve actually found some original negatives too, so will see if I can get them developed.