shut out

https://youtu.be/xoWMHK4aBzA
I don't know how this happened. I've become locked out of my blog. I changed the title a bit and now I cannot find how to open the blog again to make some changes. this tools part is the only entrance and I am trying to widen it. Ric.



Sunday 21 October 2012



Redback spiders

Human Rights Commission, concerning the Stolen Generation.



Opening the Cupboard and Letting the Skeletons Tumble out.

Watch out for the Red-back Spiders under the Stairs.

By ’Ric Williams.
What’s in a Name?
Known as “Siddie” as a boy. What a bloody awful name. I can think of only one worse similar name “Cecil”…both sissy names. I fought a lot at school because of that name. The name both nicknames come from is “Cedric” which makes me shiver in disgust. How could parents load their kid with such a moniker? Well, it was because of an uncle, a younger brother of mum, who died straining fencing wire when he was 18 and the windlass snapped back and crushed his temple. Agnes Witcher his girl friend never married because of his memory. She used to make wreaths of wild flowers and place it on his grave every year on his birthday. There’s devotion for you.
These days a girl would be in the back seat of a car groaning with another guy before the worms had started their business underground.
*******
Williams may be Welsh now but it came from the Norman lords who stole estates in Wales and made the people into serfs.
Williams meant those serfs belonging to Williams or Guillaume (Norman French).
So David Williams could have started out as Dwyffid Gwillms or a number of variations.
It was later complicated by another custom of David Williams meaning David son of William, but the father’s name could be William George (William, son of George.)
So the whole issue is muddy and we cannot say there is one great Williams Family all related. We might be or we might not be related.
That is the price you have to pay being a defeated people enslaved by Saxon and then Norman overlords
.The Welsh do not even have a famous battle where they were defeated like Colloden or the Boyne . No, the invaders came in gradually and squeezed the Welsh into the valleys and down into the pits to dig in the dark all their lives with the blind pit ponies.
WARNING This writing is a bit unconventional, rambles on, breaks off, repeats itself sometimes and then continues on . In fact it is just how an unconventional old character, certainly not a hero, would talk.
In the flesh though, I talk too loudly, as I want to hear myself since I am half deaf. Too vain to wear a hearing aid, I guess a lot of content of conversations directed at me and sometimes get it wrong, because there are many blank stares in my direction.
Yes, it is the way I am and I am too old to change. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, especially if I (the dog metaphorically) was hard-headed when young and thought it knew just about everything already, and just had to fill in a few spaces. I did not realize that my head was the biggest blank space and there was a lot of filling to do.
My dad said once that youth is wasted on the young. He must have gotten that out of a book, though I hardly ever saw him read, except the paper and then usually the racing form.
My nana wrote in my autograph book when I was about ten: “Life is full of froth and bubbles. Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another’s troubles. Steadfast in your own.”
My other grandparent Lucy wrote “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone.”
Aussies don’t like whingers and complainers. Well I am whinging a bit in these pages. Last chance to do it.
The only other bit of advice I can remember was our minister telling us: “What is the definition of a cigarette? (answer) A fire on one end and a fool on the other.” I followed that one and have never smoked, or wanted to.
The man of God also said “Sexual intercourse when unmarried is a sin.”
“He meant” said my classmate afterwards, “only do it with married women.”
The idea of putting your wee-wee in a girl’s thing was highly disgusting for me thinking about it as a twelve year old. The whole idea was dirty, yukky.
Fancy asking a girl to do that! She would never talk to me again. Except Moira Carrington, maybe, who lived next door. I saw her do a funny thing with her cousin, which was something like that but she was doing something with her mouth and that was even more disgusting.
They didn’t see me watching through the palings. A few weeks later Moira, who was playing on her own called over the fence to come and play with her, but I remembered the things she liked to do and said “No thanks.”
She kept on and had a strange eager look on her face and told me “You won’t be sorry, Siddie.”
I got angry and said “I’m not like you. I saw what you done with Georgie under the verandah.”
“Oh!” Alarm shot over her and she started crying “Are you going to tell?”
“Yes,” I replied cruelly “I’m going to tell everyone at school what you done and the police will take you to Parramatta Girl’s home and lock you up.”
Poor Moira gave out a little scream and ran inside. I was only joking. I never told anyone until this day. Now I suppose Moira is an old grandmother getting the pension like me and doesn’t even remember what happened then.
But I still do. I recall a couple of years later when I had started to appreciate the possibilities of being alone with Moira, I asked her to go to the pictures (movies) on Saturday night.
She glared at me and said “ My boyfriend is bigger and stronger than you and he can knock you down. He is sixteen and I think I will ask him to make mincemeat out of you.”
Now it was me who was afraid and I kept away from Moira ever afterwards.
********************************************
Not having smoked saved my life after I had hit a car with my motorcycle. After partial recovery a doctor said “When you lost a lung you would be dead now if you had been a smoker.”(The lung finally got better).
In these pages of anecdotes, I might swear occasionally in writing and hit on some taboo subjects. It will not endear me to my numerous relatives, many of whom probably wish they didn’t have me as one. Too bad.
There may be some pages that are repeated. I cannot unravel it and have given up trying.
*****************************************
BETTOWYND (was it a corruption of “Better Wind”?) Curiously some children’s names of Harry Williams were Olwyn (Ollie). Alwyn (Alley changed to alligator then Gator) The dictionary meaning of Wynd is an “alley.” Lynn (or Lyn) another son has a Welsh meaning.
Bettowynd backwards is DNYW OTTEB which looks Welsh. Colwyn spelled backwards is NYW LOC(could that be Welsh for New Lake? These things may have no relevance, but I remember Grandfather Harry spending a long time Sunday morning doing the Sunday Sun cryptic crossword. He had a mind for hidden meanings.
I do too. I look for hidden meanings.
I spent weeks spelling names backwards and found out most common names are also names reversed. Our ancestors did this on purpose way back in pre-Christian times and the names survived, though the spelling is a bit off over time. They believed there was magic in names and the life of a child was determined in part by its name.
For example RUTH reversed is THUR (Thor, a Norse God). KENNETH rev. is close to Hank ( Htennek) ROSE is Esau (Esor). Often the reversed is feminine from a male name. Very curious.
Try your own name and see. Some more: James rev. Semaj (Shamus), Gregory rev Roger (yRoger g) Karl rev Lark, Elizabeth rev Elisha, or Theba, ROLF rev FLOR (a flower in Latin) and so on.
THE START
The illustration shows Bettowynd, with Grandma Lucy sitting, taking a rest, Grandfather Harry sawing a log, ( though the illustration seems to suggest he is sawing his own leg off,) a muscovy duck, a chook (chicken ), a cat, a couple of dogs, but they were really Alsatians and a blue cattle dog and of course, a crow, (of “stone the crows” renown).
This Aussie expression, I have never come across in America or Canada, not even in Newfoundland, which has preserved a lot of the old English turns
The illustration of Bettowynd and does not show the millions of flies or the myriad ants, both black and red bull-joes, which we kids would make them fight each other( the reds always won) and meat ants ever searching the ground for scraps.
There were snakes, goannas and blue-tongued lizards and the occasional wallaby over the fence in the bush.
“Bettowynd” as a structure, was better than a humpy, but not up to specifications as a house. That is why the Williams family could never get electricity connected. They used oil lamps and kerosene pressure lamps and went to bed early.
A water tap was installed at the front gate after years of persuasion to the water board. Even then they had to pay for the water line to extend down to the bottom of First Ave from the Funda’s place.
The Funda girl (the family had come from either Switzerland or maybe Czecho-Slovakia) was in my class in primary school and had a crush on me, but I “hated” her and pined for the disdainful looks of another, Dianne Hornby, whom I “loved” passionately at thirteen, though I had never even touched her hand. I can still see her tucking her hankie up her lace-trimmed white panties after she wiped her cute little nose.
She saw me peeking across at her desk ( I was strategically seated) and tossed her proud little head. Alas, cruel destiny. She was never for me. In vain my obvious pulsating member sent her E.S.P messages of urgency.
There was frantic need for it to subside before Latin period ended, when we had to walk to another classroom. Then everyone would notice the bulge pushing my trousers out in front and I would have to run away from school in shame and live down the bush in a cave my uncle Ralph had found. I would never be able to come back to civilization, because everyone would know I had a hard–on in class for Dianne Hornby.
I would loiter, electrified in anticipation in front of her mother’s flower shop, near the cemetery gate, hoping for just one glimpse of my princess.
These trysts were noted, as her cousin, the freckled, redhead Joan, told me at recess one day, near the boys bubblers and the rose garden where I had planted a rose and labelled it “To my secret love,”
“ Dianne thinks you are dopey and wants you to know it.”
How cruel these words to a smitten fourteen year old, already demoralized by several pustules on his chin and worried about nocturnal emissions staining the sheets and getting belted for it by my father. I was unwise in the world of life and love.
**************************************************************** Back to Bettowynd:
Before this, they depended on rain into their corrugated iron tank, and long hauls of water from the cemetery tap, five hundred yards the boys carrying cut-down kerosene cans.
The place was constructed by grandfather Harry (Henry Inglis Williams) with the help of Gator ( Alwyn= Alligator= Gator) Williams, Colin Williams, Ralph Williams, some of his sons about 1933 on 5 acres of leased, sandstone rocky, fairly barren, scrubby land that was in my father’s name, (Hector Griscom Williams).
Dad let his mum and dad and siblings (the ones who had not yet left home,) which included one girl, Aunty Ollie, build there because they were being evicted from Gray St, Sutherland for non-payment of rent, during the Great Depression when no-one could get a job, or it seemed so.
Grandfather Harry was a carpenter and if he had been able to afford the building materials, he could have made a more substantial house, as he had before, working around the district on various building projects. This fact was pointed out to me by Ruth Ross, his granddaughter, since she thought I was not respectful writing of my grandfather
I circulated some unfinished drafts of the family stories via e-mail several years ago and they created alarm. It appears that only the good things of a family member must be brought to public attention.
As an adult revisiting Sutherland I met an old man in a park and got to talking. He had known my gr. Harry. He said he and Harry were walking through the cemetery one day and they came across a bottle on a grave that had been left by chance. Harry recognized it as a full whisky bottle and the two of them sat on the grave and “polished off the bottle.”
My grandfather said “If they left the bottle for the corpse, he don’t need it no more, and we are doing him a favour.”
If someone is brutal, drinks too much on occasion, beats up his children and wife, then should this be kept hidden and unsaid for the sake of a family’s good name?
Starting with William Nash, our ancestor on the First Fleet to Australia and continuing to the latest generations, there have been some real bastards among us, in both senses, ( I am not excluding myself,) yet most of them have worked hard and brought up families and the tribe goes on ever-expanding.
I am respectful of Harry, but he had his faults.
A skilled carpenter and sometime cabinetmaker, he had worked on large construction sites previously, notably the Hume Reservoir, and the Woronora Dam, not far south from Sydney..
The Hume reservoir was being built not so far from Nimmitabel and the Williams’ family runs, across the Snowy Mountains to the Victorian border with N.S.W. where the Murray River flows.
Banjo Patterson’s poem “The Man from Snowy River” could have alluded to our family, because a great, great grandfather was herding in the snow country at Jyndabyne, caught pneumonia and died from overwork and exposure. It was a hard life.
There were also bushrangers around. Ned Kelly was born and ranged quite a few miles away in Northern Victoria and the Southern Highlands. There was cattle duffing going on closer to the Williams’ homesteads. mostly unbranded calves.
Either my family was lucky or honest. Though hanging was not probable as it had been in England if you were caught stealing cattle, the best hope if convicted was a few years in the Braidwood Gaol.
Checking the records online of the old Braidwood Gaol, I see there were some Williams’s incarcerated, but any connection with our family has not been established. They were probably other Williams’s, right? Or maybe they were in the excommunicated family section, my predecessors.
Gr. Harry was a cattle drover in early life and worked on the family farm with his widowed mother and six brothers, the eldest being George and his sisters. He drove mobs of cattle from southern New South Wales up to Queensland on the Darling Downs. Some stories say he was an independent contractor but more likely he was just an Australian-style cowhand, though I doubt he carried a six-shooter like in the movies. We know he had one in later life. A Lee Enfield .303 rifle was more likely.
His own father, John Williams (II) had died in an accident with a dray and runaway horses. There had been talk that this ancestor was liquored up at the time, but I think that was unlikely. Anyway he was crushed by a wheel and died later.
Poor bugger. He wasn’t very old to die. His widow was left with little money ands a number of children to provide for. My grandfather was the youngest son. There was no government welfare in those grim, sink or swim times. I cannot imagine how they could have survived, though they had a small selection and a few head of cattle.
Great uncle George, the eldest boy acted as a provider for the family and was particularly fond of the youngest boy, my grandfather.
When my Great Uncle George came with his wife to visit at the old home in Gray St years later and grandfather had a growing family, on greeting Harry, Great Uncle George gave him a kiss. Harry was still his littlest brother in George’s mind.
I think George went away to the South African war for several years, but I am not sure about that. There was a Boer War helmet, hanging on the hook of the hat stand generations later. I think I heard it was Great Uncle George’s and it was left there for when George came back. But Great Uncle George had already died, though no one threw the hat out. That would have been disrespectful.
******************************************************
My other grandfather, Dick O’Keefe brought up his family from Tasmania, when he got a job on the Hume, also. He had worked in the Beaconsfield gold mine, but because it was being mined too deep and water was hard to pump out and the high incidence of silicosis, the mine was closed down.
It was said that Dick O’Keefe was one of the agitators to have the mine closed, but I don’t see him doing that because it left him without a job. He had to move to the mainland looking for work.
There may have been other reasons such as a gold shipment being stolen. (Some O’Keefe brothers were arrested but discharged from lack of evidence, as the jury had a lot of Irish descent among them.) Some of the family, my gr. O’Keefe’s cousins and his brother moved to Western Australia and miraculously became rich buying mines and hotels in Kalgoolie. (where did they get their stake?) His brother George O’Keefe had gone first a few years before, leaving his betrothed Ida Woot(t)on behind. She married the younger brother Dick and became my grandmother. She enraged Dick often and maybe that is why he chased her with the axe, with bursts like “I should have married your brother George. He is twice the man you are!” The truth was she was jilted by George who may have left partly to get away from Ida. He did not wait too long to marry in W.A. One of his daughters got the O.B.E during the Second World War from King George VI for her nursing services on the front line.
Nana O’Keefe had an old style Tassie accent, closer to the original first settler-convict jargon. For example she would say “chimbly” for chimney, and we kids used to laugh at some of her expressions. I suppose today down at Exeter and Beaconsfield some people still say “chimbly”. Maybe it was early cockney. Anyway her speech was very descriptive and I would really like to hear the dialect again.
I’ve talked to a number of Australians who deny there are regional accents in the Oz. However a South Australian speaks more like a Kiwi from the South Island and sounds a bit lah de dah to a Redfernite (before Redfern became migrant territory and I’m told is now a site for urban aboriginals.)
I won’t mention North Queensland dialect, “well.” Canadians often end a sentence with “eh?” in the same way “well” is used in Queensland. I hope regional dialects never go away. I love to hear them.
When the work cut out on the Hume, both families and many others migrated to the outskirts of Sydney, where Woronora dam was being built. They both settled at Sutherland which was on the Illawarra railway line to the south coast and forty minutes or 17 miles from the centre of Sydney by steam train.
Harry made grandma’s chest of drawers and he could dovetail so perfectly by hand that the joints fitted with no gaps. My father related that when times were good Harry would take an example of his work to a prospective employer, and it was usually the dove-tailed joint that got him the job.
I have done a fair bit of woodworking myself, but I would never attempt the dove-tailed joint by hand, after my first disastrous tries. In fact even with modern machinery and a dovetailing jig, I could not match my grandfather handwork.
My mother’s father, Dick O’Keefe had also worked on these same dam projects as a carpenter and they knew each other. That is not to say they were friends. I have never seen them talking together, though Sutherland at that time was not a large town.
Harry was a bit hard to get along with though. He was taciturn and rather tough- looking. In fact he seemed a dangerous kind of man. That is nor to say he was. No-one would say that to his face.
It was related that Harry could jump the front fence of the house in Gray St with his tool bag and his work boots on.
Another family fact comes to mind. Grandma Lucy could touch the tip of her nose with her tongue. Actually I can do that also, but only if my uppers are unattached.
There is the story that there was in a domestic dispute and someone called the police. When the policeman came along to Gray Street on horseback, Harry was down in the long grass, his Boer War revolver at the ready and shot a crow from a branch above the constable’s head. There is more to the story, but Harry was not arrested. Police did not interfere as much in those days.
Harry was a strong man but only about five feet nine tall. He had light brown hair with a reddish tinge and when I knew him was going bald. I think his eyes were blue and sometimes he grew a gingery beard streaked with grey.
He had been involved in a fall at work and became incapacitated enough to get a small pension in his fifties and then got the old age pension, until his death in his eighties.
He is supposed to have been brutal to my grandmother on occasions and used a razor-strap on the kids occasionally. This was the norm in those rougher days.
However, it was said he came home drunk one evening and swung his daughter around his head and, on purpose or by accident, let go, and she fell, and suffered injuries that caused her to walk unevenly the rest of her life.
Her daughter, Ruth Ross has another explanation, of course and I don’t now what is true. I am just relating family stories.
Harry, bitten by a red-back spider, was a week in bed but recovered. Another time, not wanting to go to the dentist he extracted one of his teeth with his pocket knife and a pair of pliers, ( possibly with some whiskey to kill the pain, though my dad said Grandpa didn’t feel pain much..) He smoked a pipe and drank, yet lived into his eighties.
I must say in all the years I visited the old house as a little child, he was gruff but kindly to me and I never saw him do injury to anything.
In fact I recall myself and my older uncle Ralph were shooting birds over in the cemetery and brought three or four back. Ralph was scolded by grandfather, who told him they were Bell-birds and should have been left alone. Ralph skinned the birds and gave them to the dogs. I was sad about that.
Another time Gator had waded into Brown’s creek and speared a big stingray, then cut off the flaps and I helped him carry them up the hill. There was a lot of meat on the flaps, but grandfather scolded him and said he should have left it alone.
I took a few pounds home to mum, the dogs got some too, and Gator gave me the bony barb which I kept for a number of years.
There was an incident when I was about two or three when Grandfather Harry unstrapped my braces, because I remember they had been twisted after I used the notorious toilet to do wee wee and I ran home crying.
My father must have thought grandfather hit me or was interfering with me in some way because he came and confronted Harry, who told him to get the hell out of the house and raised his walking-stick to dad.
Dad took the stick, broke it and knocked his own father down. I know what it feels like because recently one of my sons, aged seventeen took a crack at me and knocked me backwards. Admittedly I had slapped his face for bad manners after several warnings, but it makes you feel sad your own son hits you.
I have always felt gr. Harry was unfairly treated because he was only helping me straighten my braces.
He liked me though, and when I was little, would give me a large piece of marbled cake and a glass of lemonade that was mixed from syrup from a green bottle and water added and stirred.
One time visitors came, some family members, who were a little higher up the social scale. One of the boys was serving them tea in a dainty cup from the special set in grandma’s china cabinet. He was being on his best behaviour and even elected to put in sugar. How many spoonfuls do you want Aunty Edith?”
“Two, thank you, Alwyn”.
Whereupon Alwyn (Gator) put in two tablespoons of sugar. (They put in a lot of sugar at Bettowynd.) Not teaspoons as the lady had expected.
“There you are, Aunt Edith. It’s already sugared and blowed.” That was referring to the practice of blowing into the tea to make it cooler.
I would return to the house after chasing wallabies down Brown’s Creek and other important things a seven-year-old would do alone, unsupervised in the thousands of acres surrounding Bettowynd.
Nowadays in Canada children are supervised and never let run free. In all the years running around on my own I never had any frightening experience or was in danger from people.
Admittedly I kept away from any stranger, but the only perilous incidents were nearly slipping down cliffs, falling off trees, being stung by bull-ants or wasps and bitten by snakes.
I remember you got fresh bracken root, pulverized it with a rock and rubbed it on a sting and it soon felt better. Where did I learn that from?
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Back to the building. There was no money for materials for a house and the family had to have shelter.
Unlike my dad, or in later years myself, Grandfather would not take something that did not belong to him. He had gotten a gold medal for bravery years before, diving into the water from a gold dredge at Araluen and saving a workmate from drowning and so grandpa had a certain blind integrity, such as not wanting to apply for the dole, even when his kids were hungry.
Grandma put up with this attitude until the family was down to eating porridge with no milk or fried bread and dripping and then she said “Harry, if you can’t find work in the next couple of days, I am going up to the council committee and applying for the dole. We have to eat.”
Harry gave in and shamefacedly lead the family up to the School of Arts Hall (where my uncle Gator many years later used to borrow his six cowboy books a week (all with the same plot) and applied for the dole.
The O’Keefe family and the Williams’ later got connected through the marriage of my mum and dad.
In later years at school when we were taught the poem “Bellbirds”…Down the dim gorges the bell-birds are ringing….” I would choke up in class, when I remembered Ralph and me shooting them.
“You are not crying, are you Williams? Look, Siddie Williams is crying, everyone.”
“Shut up, Reilly. I’ll get you in the break.” I warned him.
Reilly did shut up because even if I was crying ( there was a piece of sand in my eye) I was the best fighter in the school.
My mum and grandma Lucy became friends and Colin fairly friendly coming down to visit as a teenager on his fixed-wheel bike.
Ralph had a freewheeler. He used to hang around my mother, who said he looked like a “Greek God”. Maybe I got the wrong idea about his visits. In looks, my son Brian reminds me of Ralph a lot. Sorry Coral (Ralph’s daughter) I could be wrong about what I said.
Gator was liked by everyone. He was always shy though. When there were visitors he usually made for the back door and ran down into the bush when he was young.
He started to carry heavy logs of wood for the fire uphill when he grew older , but though he appeared very strong, he had a congenital bad heart and it eventually killed him in his forties. He was however my favourite uncle.
Jackie, my cousin and four years older, who was abandoned by his mother Dorrie and put with grandma to grow up by Happy (Lau (w)rence) his father, was my companion around the bush for a few years. I liked him a lot, but not everything about him.
Even in pre-puberty he was pre-occupied with sex and he tried to interest me in various sexual acts, but I would have none of it. “That’s dirty. I’ll tell my mummy..” but I said nothing because mum might not let me go out into the bush and play.
Happy, whose name I think was Lawrence married again eventually a woman from south Africa of mixed blood. She was fairly overweight. In fact she was a kind of charicature of Grandma Lucy. They say some men yearn to marry women like their mothers.
The Williams men of that generation had some strange marriages.
Harrie ( I will tell you why his name is spelled like that later on) married Floss, and it has been said she was not well healthwise when she married.(I don’t suppose I can mention what it was she had, because my cousins Arthur and Bryce might still be alive and might come over to Canada to clobber me one.) Several children came from that union, but one day she left the family and the boys lived with their dad, in their rented house in Caringbah, ( which later became a post office.)
Lin (Lincoln?) married Aunt Dulsie, whom I did not know very well, but I think she looked down on her husband’s family. There were some children. I can’t remember their names. During the depression Lin kept his job as electrician but accepted a cut in pay but signed for the original amount. To my union-oriented leftwing mum and dad, this was cowardly.
When the depression was ending and the other brothers got jobs ( they were mostly all electricians,) and had correct rate of pay, Grandma took up a collection for “poor Lin’s family. He is not getting his full wage, you know.”
“Too bloody bad” said dad “He was working for a scab’s wage when I was out of work and on the dole. He didn’t help me…and anyway, I would not have taken any of his scab money.” Dad had two fingers missing from his right hand, a reminder of Lin’s bad aim with an axe, when they were chopping sticks for the fire. Dad, Hector, was eight years old when it happened.
He worked all his life missing two fingers. They were phantom ones, too because he said they itched and he could not scratch them.
My dad had originally applied for the land from the N.S.W. Lands Department on a 14 year lease with option to buy at the end of the lease.
He had taken his eighteen-years-old year old wife Marjorie (nee) O’Keefe and myself, then a squawking baby, to live in a humpy made of corrugated iron and bush timber. The iron was stolen at night from the old steam-tram shed of the discontinued line to Cronulla from Sutherland station.
Dad trudged back and forth carrying three sheets at a time all night until dawn across the railway bridge and over through the cemetery, to evade the town policeman, who checked the local shops on his horse at night..
The land was situated where 1st Ave Loftus is now, at the south-western corner of Woronora cemetery.
It was fortunate that there was a cemetery tap near that corner, so dad used to have to carry two kerosene tins a day down to the camp so mum could wash my napkins (diapers.) though she did the messiest part in a little soak which was not deep enough to be a well and when it had rained enough. The ground was made up of sandstone broken down into sandy soil and any water from when it had rained recently and had not drained away, was thick with mosquito wrigglers. That meant also that there were many mozzies (mosquitoes) especially at dusk, and you were swatting them constantly.
Mum made up a mosquito net out of old bits of netting sewn together for me but my parents just had mosquito coils burning in saucers on the floor. When there were no mosquitos coils, which cost money, then dried cow-dung smouldering in the open grate served the purpose, if you could put up with the smell and smoke..
The water was also for the billy of tea they drank with every meager meal. There was no money for soft drinks and frozen orange juice was unheard of those days. Sometime mum would ask Louie the fruiterer for some overripe lemons (free) and she made lemonade, mixing it with golden syrup.
There was no ice-box , but dad contrived to make a cooler out of discarded pieces of softwood and he covered it with dripping Hessian made from a chaff bag that drew up moisture from a battered tray beneath. This kept the butter from melting away in the summer heat, and cooled the water down past lukewarm..
My parents used to buy minced meat (the cheapest kind) from Stapleton’s the butchers which was six pence a pound and made from the offal of animals and was half fat. In later years with dad working, we bought minced steak and chuck and blade-bone steak, but not then.
Sometimes they would buy sixpence worth of meaty bones (for the dog we did not have). Mum boiled them for hours to make soup, smashing them first with an axe on a block of wood so the marrow would dissolve out easily.
There were hundreds of rabbits around but we did not like the taste much. Sometimes dad would catch one and keep it in a little cage until nightfall when he would kill it, chopping off its head, when I was asleep. Mum and dad told me I used to look in the cage the next morning and though I could not talk, I seemed to wonder where the bunny rabbit had gone.
“Run away.” Said Mumma “He has run away back to his rabbit mummy” What lies children are told. We would have breakfast of rabbit stew with onions and mashed potatoes, a little bit for me too, because mum’s milk was running out and I had to be weaned early.
Mum tried to grow some tomatoes near the soak, but when the tomatoes were still green the bush animals, bandicoots and rabbits, ate them and the work was all for nothing.
Dad made a nocturnal foray occasionally to Gilmore’s orchard and got over the high strands of barbed-wire fence. Old Gilmore had a long wire running along the inside of the fence on each corner of the property and a savage dog was chained to the wire so it could run right along if it heard anyone coming over.
Dad borrowed a bitch in heat and put it over the fence, ( I heard this later from a cousin, but Dad denied it) then when the dogs were busy he climbed over with a sack and filled it with luscious yellow clingstone peaches.
Back home they would gorge themselves and mum would boil up the rest with sugar and preserve them in assorted jars, covering the tops with greased paper.
I remember once she had used Eta peanut butter jars and there was still a smell of rancid peanut butter when we ate the stewed peaches months later, not the best combination.
Blackberry season came around and there were plenty of berries, ripe and luscious, but there were green bugs on some of them that tasted awful, if you ate them by mistake.
The bushes, thick with prickly thorns grew as a weed all over the place and it was easy to pick them (if you were careful not to get caught up in the grasping runners.
When I was older I would go with my brother Pat and pick a lot and try to sell them for sixpence a billycan. We sometimes managed to get picture show money for the Saturday afternoon matinee with Speed Gordon serial episodes and often Laurel and Hardy, my favorites.
The government allowed me, as a baby, one pint of milk a week, but I got my milk more directly. An old photo of mum from that time showed me fat and my mum “skinny as a rake.”
In ‘32 and ‘33 and part of ’34 Mum, dad and me and Bobbie coming were on the dole, which meant 13 shillings and 4 pence a week in food with not allowance for tobacco or liquor.
A labourer working 44 hours a week (lucky to have a job) got about five pounds a week, which is a hundred shillings.
Dad smoked but not too heavily. I remember the brand “Full Strength Capstan Cigarettes.”
There was no money for cigarettes during the depression times. Not even for a packet of tobacco for roll-yer-owns. There was no money for luxuries.
Mum did not powder her face and discarded lipstick. I do not think Dad would ever pick up butts, though. Since that time I’ve seen people picking up butts in every city of the world I have visited.
I remember a(n) urinal on Bondi Beach which had a sign: “Please do not throw your butts in the urinal, as they get soggy and are hard to light.”
At our humpy mum had two dresses. One was faded blue, that she had got married in (no white bridal regalia for her) and another knockabout dress she wore sweeping the bare floors of the humpy which was infested with fleas.
They put the legs of their bedstead in tin cans and filled them with water with a bit of kerosene and the fleas mostly kept off the beds, though some could hop over the cans.
We all had flea-bites somehow, because during the day I would crawl around the big slabs of sandstone which covered most of the land around with ti-tree bushes springing up out of every crack, and acacia and scrubby gums
Dad got a ferret from somewhere. You took it to a rabbit hole and it went down chasing a rabbit along the tunnel until it emerged at another entrance. Here the rabbit was caught in a net over the hole and the ferret after it.
Well when I was a baby, this ferret got out during the night and jumped up onto my cot and started to bite my neck. Luckily I screamed holy hell and was saved but dad had to sell the ferret. I remember ferrets smelled like ferrets and nothing else. A sort of strong musky stink.
When mum was expecting me she had a drawing book and some colors. She painted some very well drawn watercolors of flowers. I saw them in later years and I remember blue bells with long thin green stalks.
She had heard that the baby inside was influenced by activities during pregnancy. I don’t know about that but though I paint other stuff, I have never been interested in painting flowers. She should have sung more and then I might have a better voice, which is kind of flat when I try to sing.
My sister Sue has a reasonable singing voice and was in a choir or two.
Brown from the sun, I used to catch ants even as a baby, because I had found out they are “bitey”. I would squeeze the life out of them, and my little hands would smell of formic acid, which mum would wash off every so often with our little store of water. Once I found an earthworm near the soak and as babies do, I ate it before mum could get it away from me. She said I then went crawling around looking for another. I must have liked it.
Most of the time mum and dad did not wear shoes, nor me either. Dad usually only had on some tattered khaki shorts.
On a particularly hot day Dad and mum took some sandwiches and the billy to make tea and I was put on dad’s shoulders and we made our way down the bush track into the big gulley with the Woronora river at the bottom. We usually went as far as the bridge at Prince Edward Park and all of us got in the river and splashed around to cool ourselves.
Although stingrays came up the river sometimes, sharks were supposed to be blocked by sand bars where the Georges River met the Woronora.
In later years I was not convinced of this, but anyway it seemed safe. The nearest fatality was a little girl who got taken by a shark at Oatley Bay in two foot of water. Up the river there were not many jellyfish, some of which sting you, but down in Georges River there were millions pulsating away. They are supposed to be like primitive brains how they are formed.
The dole gave us hardly enough to eat really and dad had to scrounge sometimes at night, going a mile or two down to a poultry farm, evading the watch-dogs and returning with a couple of chooks (hens) with their necks wrung. Trouble is chooks have lice, but they are not human lice and don’t usually stick around when they have tasted human blood. They don’t seem to like it. The other kind of lice we never saw. Mum made soap like grandma Lucy used to make it with the white ashes from burned gum-tree branches , which is a kind of lye and then boil it up with dripping from the mince meat, in a double boiler.
It was a fairly good soap but a bit rough on the skin as it had little pieces of unburned charcoal in it, because mum forgot to strain the ashes.
If dad had been caught or shot by a poultry farmer, on his excursions, then who would look after mum and me? I guess it was a risk out of desperation.
The dole was never given in money but in script, that is you presented it to the store, Derrins usually, and the amounts of food were weighed out carefully.
Usually the storekeeper added a couple of pence worth of broken biscuits for the children.
Sometimes they would be Arnott’s which had a parrot illustration on the tin, but we just got them in rolled up newspaper pages, that dad and mum would read at night by the light of the stove and the candle, later an oil-lamp dad found at the town tip (dump.)
Scotty Taylor with his big dray pulled by cart-horse, huge in size, distant descendant of the chargers of knights of old, added to the heaps of garbage twice a day.
The dole provided flour, salt, sugar, golden syrup or treacle and broken biscuits. And maybe some Fountain Brand tomato sauce, dried peas etc…just staples. I think my mum would have got a penny chocolate frog for me.
************************************************************
Bettowynd was made from saplings cut down and stripped and nailed together as the house frame which was place on a foundation of split sandstone slabs and topped with yellow loam and fine pebbles found on the top of meat-ant nests.
The roof was of corrugated iron (some from the dismantled humpy that dad had made since we had moved over to a rented house on the other side of the cemetery, when dad got a job as an electrician. There we had electricity and running water. No indoor toilet though. That came twenty years later. It was still the outhouse and the dunny-pan and being picked up once a week by the council authorities.)
Mum wouldn’t live in the humpy any more as she was expecting again.
***************************************************
The Bettowynd house had an ingeniously contrived walls, outer lining only.
My grandfather dipped chaff or corn bags in wet pure cement and while wet, nailed them with clouts onto the frame. When they set in a couple of days the bags were hard as rock and lasted many years.
The outhouse was similarly made, though the door was just a hanging piece of hessian from chaff-bags. The pan was a foot down from the seat and soon filled up with a brown stink, which was a mass of maggots. Grandfather had to empty this periodically which he did by throwing it down a small crevasse a few yards away and spreading earth on it (if there was any at hand.)
Inside the dunny were cut up squares of old telephone books and catalogues, which afforded reading material, while pondering life’s mysteries. The idea though, for me, was to get out of there as soon as possible and breathe again in the open air.
I rarely used these facilities, as the hundreds of acres of wild bush were just over the back fence and as a young boy, when nature called, any clear patch of earth was my target, bush grass or leaves were my toilet paper and a flat rock thrown on the mess afterwards frustrated the blowflies.
Naturally there were always millions of flies buzzing around, blow flies that is, the millions more bush flies were smaller and silent. The fact that the town tip (dump) was only two blocks away did not help, except that it was a good source of old bread to feed the chooks and gave something for Grandfather Harry to do on his walks in that direction. I can see him now, turning over a pot or tin can with his stick and estimating its worth.
The tip had many rats and currawongs. It was an exciting place for me to go with my catapult (slingshot) or in my teens, a .22 rifle. You got sixpence a rat’s tail from the council, but I never touched them after I shot them. Their fellows would eat them up during the night. Next day white bones were the only thing visible. Or maybe it was the bush cats that ate them which were twice the size of tabbies and completely wild. They would claw you if you treed them.
I never shot them though, but I should have, because they are the main killers of native birds, and small marsupials. I did not know that then.
Most people there carried a switch of twigs to shoo flies away from the face and eyes.
I have heard the theory that Aussies are such good tennis players because they exercise their arms so much, swishing away flies constantly.
In later years, when Grandma Lucy died and the children had grown and moved away and finally Gator died from a bad heart and then grandfather Harry died in his eighties, the land was allotted to various family members, through the instigation of the oldest brother Harrie (yes, that is the spelling) at a family conference to which my dad was not invited.
It had become a valuable property by then and was subdivided.
The sale of some of these lots afforded a better standard of life for the struggling Williams’ and Edwards’.
It even helped gain a university education for some younger members, who thought they were Lord or Lady Muck afterwards, as they rose in positions of power and responsibility and tried to join the middle classes, often camouflaging their humble past.
Well they can thank my dad for the five acre property.
By the way, what was his share?
Well at Grandma Lucy’s death the other family members sent him several pounds which was a sixth share of the cost of the original lease many years before. How they computed or justified this measly sum is a puzzle motivated by greed..
Dad sent it back and told them where to put it.
The land is now worth millions.
Recently I went by Google Earth and hovered several hundred feet above.
My son remarked that there were rich homes on it with swimming pools. Far cry from the days when the Williams’ built their shack.
All because of you Hector, carrying that stolen corrugated iron back to the camp.
Aboriginal families in Australia have been made to live in dry river-beds near town dumps and in the bush near cemeteries for generations.
Some families have bred whiter and denied their aboriginal heritage and extreme poverty. Many families have denied convict ancestors. That is not to say our family was part-aboriginal. That is a matter of contention
Don’t turn on me, cousins; don’t kill the messenger. My message is whatever we came from, we still succeed in the long run. Fair is fair, cobber.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
A Red Gum.
A red-gum grows on Streaky-Rock Hill,
Where kookaburras cackle and cockatoos shrill,
Currawongs yodell and tomtits twitter,
While lizards laze and butterflies flutter.
Dreamtime Koorie once wandered this land,
From far blue mountains, to rocky sea strand.
***************
Now gritty, city buildings crowd out the view,
Where wallabies thumped with the wallaroo...
Suburbs sprawl, spewing foul smog,
Where the bush was haven for boy and his dog.
********************************
We roamed around high sandstone reaches,
And surfed wild Wattamolla’s beaches,
Digging for pippies with our feet,
And running naked in the heat,
Plunging headlong in the spray,
Just enjoying every day.
Catching whiting on the tide, and blackfish from the sheer cliff-side…..
At night with campfire coals aglow,
We slept with surf’s surging flow.
Where are you now, freckled beach-girl ?
Remember our promise, so sure yet soon forgot?
I heard you married a lawyer. You said you wanted money. Did you get a lot?
************************************************
Since then the years sped past, afloat with useless ballast, my die was cast.
Now memories search not sensual pleasure.
(of which I’ve had considerable measure)
But focus on that early time,
When the world was new
And mine.
*******************************
I’ll rest by a hollow of this old gum-tree,
Visions fading gradually,
Projecting to eternity,
While the world whirls by so frantically.
***********************************
A life misspent? Yes, I’m to blame.
Thanks mum, for an interesting game.
Perhaps we are just puppets on a string,
With no free choice in anything,
Our master just Genetic Code,
Ending when we’re out of road.
***********************************
Some believe in perpetual bliss,
Ready at God’s right hand,
Supplicating to His command
A fate, I pray to miss.
I crave no contemplation
Of eventual damnation.
I had my paradise alive,
And hell as well.
Let those behind survive.
…… ‘Ric Williams
I
One of my favourite poems includes the line “and the pig got up and slowly walked away.” What was that from, someone?

No comments:

Daisy Bates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bates_(Australia)
Daisy bates and a group of women circa 1911.
File:Daisy may bates.jpg

free university lectures online

http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/lectures.html(copy and paste on Google search)



Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)


braz

جوس اند عربس ار بيج ذي برفت وص above:Shearing of the Rams by Tom Roberts.
The Bushwackers Band - Shores Of Botany Bay3:18
1940 Australian Troops in the Desert 3 min - 2 Jul 2008 Uploaded by skoblinI youtube.com
The Desert Rats Theatrical Trailer Video!! 3 min - 28 Jul 2009 Uploaded by libyathebest
Shores of Botany Bay.
click photo.

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Boer war (Sth African) War Memorial
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Please note: Some internet providers including Internet Explorer and even Firefox seem to delete aspects of my blogs. I have found only one, CHROME to be satisfactory.Please down load CHROME in a couple of minutes (free). thank you (Ric)

10176 Hula dancers.Station Logo
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Australian Outback magazine.

Blog Archive

see this acrobat girl video. she is the best!

scroll down the page to see the video.
also these cute hula dancers


illust: Marion Westmacott ©ANBG
.
driving sydney roads, you tube time-lapse.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Co7qQSkrhM
Australia's Red Centre, time-lapse.
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Tokyo rush hour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0A9-oUoMug&feature=related
kangaroo versus dingo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdT5vRMvEig&feature=channel
Cooke, Edward William, 1811-1880. Prison-ship in Portsmouth Harbour, convicts going aboard [picture]
Home
Prison Hulk holding prisoners to be sent to Sydney Cove.
First Fleet Marine's, Ship's crews and officials in one spot
Settlement (European) began 26th January 1788 here in a place described as
" The closest thing to hell with out being There"
Home




http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t9Czg2O8Ybg/TZa7990_cfI/AAAAAAAAFYI/Uoxu-q4nPbQ/s1600/botany+bay.jpg

Tie me kangaroo down on the barbie.When he stops jumping, the steaks's ready.

Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport - Sang by Rolf Harris 02:59

free alien animationFree Animationsanimatehttp://www.creativemeat.com/tag/free-music-synthesizer/




australian drinking beer fosters animated gif
Have a beer, mate! We got barbecued crocodile on the menu tomorrow and gutted galah on Wednesday. All kinds of tucker for the sophisticated bushie. DEAD SNAKE SNACK BAR, King's Bloody Cross.
Dedicated to William Nash and Maria Haynes, First Fleet arrivals to Sydney Cove, 1788.

( You did a good job, gr gr gr gr grandma, and grandpa)


above: Braidwood, N.S.W. where my father Hector Williams was born

in Feb, 1909.

.
Sarah Williams (nee Nash) first generation daughter of William Nash and Maria Haynes.
Prince of Wales, the ship of the fleet William and Maria came on.
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http://firstfleet.uow.edu.au/stories.htmlThe Scream
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australian flag picture
Call me (Canada) 1* 604 800 5017
Or email me c.wok66@Hotmail.com



'Ric W

illiams, blog editor.

Welcome. Give your considered opinion, ideas , stories, photos etc about early pioneer Australia.. 'Ric Williams

Do you know?

Weird Australia.
Crimes punishable by transportation included recommending that politicians get paid, starting a union, stealing fish from a river or pond, embezzlement, receiving or buying stolen goods, setting fire to underwood, petty theft, or being suspected of supporting Irish terrorism.

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IRIS Seismic monitor:
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This website is edited from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Fishing Boats Steveston, B.C.
Click to enlarge.

Use Google CHROME for best results.
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Call me (Canada) 1* 604 800 5017
Or email me c.wok66@Hotmail.com
Ric Williams.
please feel free to browse my web pages
ORIGINAL SITE OF WILLIAMS FAMILY STORIES:
Backwater, Murray River.
.........................................................................................
http://www.fellowshipfirstfleeters.org.au/ship_princewales.htm

The Sirius - the Sailing Ship Captain Arthur Phillip Travelled in to Australia.



australian flag picture
Please contribute old photos, stories etc.....cwok.williams6@gmail.com

illust: Marion Westmacott ©ANBG
Sydney-Harbour Time Lapse
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Dear Sir or Madam,
We would greatly appreciate if you can add our website link to your highly ranked website -

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Discover Channel Science:

http://www.discoverychannel.ca/Showpage.aspx?sid=13287


Dutch, Allard map 1690.

The Outback


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Australian Outback .


"Long before it's in the papers"
June 04, 2013

RETURN TO THE WORLD SCIENCE HOME PAGE


Move elephants into Australia, scientist proposes

Feb. 1, 2012
Courtesy of Nature
and World Science staff

Aus­tral­ia may need an in­fu­sion of ele­phants and oth­er large mam­mals to solve its per­sist­ent ec­o­log­i­cal and wild­fire prob­lems, a sci­ent­ist pro­poses.

Ecol­o­gist Da­vid Bow­man of the Uni­vers­ity of Tas­ma­nia in Aus­tral­ia cites out-of-con­trol fires and bur­geon­ing fe­ral-animal popula­t­ions as quan­daries af­flict­ing the Land Down Un­der. Both could be solved by in­tro­duc­ing large mam­mals, as well as pay­ing ab­o­rig­i­nal hunters to con­trol the fe­ral an­i­mals and re­store the old prac­tice of patch burn­ing, he ar­gues. Patch burn­ing is a form of con­trolled burn­ing in­tend­ed to clean out and re­new bio­lo­gical re­sources.

“I real­ize that there are ma­jor risks as­so­ci­at­ed with what I am propos­ing,” as any tin­ker­ing with the en­vi­ron­ment can lead to un­planned con­se­quenc­es, said Bow­ma­n. “But the usu­al ap­proaches to ma­n­ag­ing these is­sues aren’t work­ing.”

Bow­man de­scribes his idea in this week’s is­sue of the re­search jour­nalNa­ture.

Feb. 7 will mark the three-year an­ni­ver­sa­ry of “Black Sat­ur­day,” when nearly 200 peo­ple died in a mas­sive fire­storm in south­ern Aus­tral­ia. Fires are a con­stant con­cern in the con­ti­nent, said Bow­ma­n, but so are its thriv­ing popula­t­ions of fe­ral pigs, camels, hors­es and cat­tle, among oth­ers.

Bow­man pro­poses to ma­n­age Aus­tral­ia’s trou­bled ec­o­sys­tem by in­tro­duc­ing beasts such as ele­phants, rhi­noc­er­os and even Ko­modo drag­ons. These would help con­sume flam­ma­ble grasses and con­trol fe­ral-animal popula­t­ions, he ar­gues.

The larg­est liv­ing land mam­mal na­tive to Aus­tral­ia is the red kan­ga­roo, which as an adult weighs about as much as an av­er­age ma­n. Larg­er mam­mals used to roam the con­ti­nent—such as a hippo-sized mar­su­pi­al re­lat­ed to the wom­bat and called di­pro­to­don, from the Great Ice Age—but they are no more.

The de­lib­er­ate in­tro­duc­tion by hu­ma­ns of po­pu­lations of over­sized, non-na­tive mam­mals to a new conti­nent would be un­prec­e­dent­ed in modern times. One group, though, has pro­posed in­tro­duc­ing large Af­ri­can mam­mals in­to the Great Plains of the Un­ited States, for some­what diff­erent rea­sons than those moti­vating Bow­man.

Australian Outback Photo Gallery







Australian National Ballet

Queensland: Birdsville
4 min - 19 Aug 2009
vimeo.com

BIRDSVILLE OUTBACK HORSERACING


..........................................
Carol Baxter is my distant cousin. She has not directly contributed to this weblog, and has not ever in fact acknowledged its existence, but because of the valuable information I received from reading her website about our family, I am very indebted to her.
Another family website helped me considerably. This was "Our Williams Story" by another distant cousin, Kieran Williams
Our Williams Story
I am heartened by the many emerging websites about the descendants of William Nash and Maria Haynes.
Then there are the many threads from Monaro Pioneers.
Thank you for all the sources.
I am hoping that when I am no longer able to continue (being nearly 79) that someone else wll pick up the ball and continue my blog.Of course I have included my political views and my non-religious attitudes because they are part of me and readers do not have to accept them, but may actually learn a little from them.


Cedric
H.Williams.(Ric)




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Monaro Pioneers newsletter



illust: Marion Westmacott ©ANBG
SHIPS TO AUSTRALIA


http://www.coraweb.com.au/shipcrew.htm.

The view west from Geilston Bay.Tas.July, 2010..click to enlarge.


new look at aussie historyYoda looks tough over the orchestra. StarWarsinconcert.com
Cobb and co. coach out of Ballarat.

very top...Painting of original first fleet leaving England in 1787 (Jonathan King)

http://radiotime.com/affiliate/a_33300/station/NPR_Radio_Stations.aspxnational public radio stations

This site works best with Chrome or Firefox.

descendants of John Williams sen.

The Bushwackers Band - Shores Of Botany Bay
3:18
4,032 views

put in any address and this map will find it.
..............................................................................................................
early pioneer photos

http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/~aashmore ,
http://www.freewebs.com/daone89/index.htm



William Nash came to Australia as a Marine with the First Fleet 1788
William and Mariah's first child, William, was baptised on Sunday 25th May 1788
A wedding was celebrated at St Phillip's, Sydney, on 13 February 1789, between William Nash, a marine, and Maria Haynes, a convict, in the presence of Elizabeth Gratten and Samuel Barnes (Chaplain's clerk)
Mariah Haynes is not listed in John Cobley's 'Crimes of the First Fleet Convicts'
By 1803 William & Maria had separated, and she took the children with her. Maria later became associated with two other men, Robert Guy and in 1816, with William Neale.

6 Children1. William Nash born on 25 May 1788, buried on Friday 19th June 1789, a marine's child.
2. John Nash baptised 15 Jan 1792 (a family source names him William)
3. Mary Nash born 2 March 1793 and baptised 2 April
4. William Nash born 27 March 1795 and baptised 4 May
5. George Nash born 26 July 1797
6. Sarah Nash was born 16 Nov 1798
6. Sarah Nash 16 Nov 1798 wed on the 15th January 1814 at St John's, Parramatta, to John Williams (a convict), 13 children

On 25th April 2010 Stephen Hawking, leading academic and cosmologist, told the Sunday Times: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.” He also points out that making contact with aliens could be very risky, stating: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

http://www.timeanddate Home

Date and time.


EMAIL: cwok.williams6@gmail.com

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(below:) Convicts on way to 14 years penal servitude in Botany Bay. England's loss was Australia's gain. Most had committed crimes that would get them now only a fine.

Crimes of the Old Bailey.
Wallace Street and Corner Store, Braidwood
late 19th century. My father Hector Griscom Williams was born in nearby Araluen in 1909.
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Saltwater crocodiles
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2:03Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace.

scroll down for regional newspapers.

Date and time Vancouver B.C.
Disrupt - Religion is a Fraud
3 min - 12 Sep 2008
Uploaded by mrnetosanchez666

youtube.com
Church of Scientology -Fraud and Religion
4 min - 27 Dec 2009
Uploaded by reflect7

youtube.com


ww.youtube.com/watch?v=UJgciC1j-r0

John Kerswell: A Welsh plasterer transported in 1828 at the age of 20 years to 15 years for stealing. Absconding four times and charged with being drunk three times, granted ToL in 1856 and Conditional Pardon in 1857. However, he received 20 years imprisonment for attempting to stab a policeman. He was released from Port Arthur in 1875.

William Forster: At age 17 years was transported for ten years for stealing a box writing desk. Misdemeanour followed misdemeanour and sentence added to sentence until in 1864 he was sentnenced to life for robbery under arms. The last mention of him is in 1872 when he was sent to the Separate Prison for misconduct.

Alexander Woods: A soldier with the 17th Regiment, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Woods (aged 30) was transported from Canada to Port Arthur for 14 years for desertion.
Returned to Hobart with a ToL in 1853 but returned to PA again in 1865 for 15 years for burglary. He was a church attendant in 1869 and was discharged in 1875.


ow ya goin' mate? Orright, eh?

Ric Williams, blog editor Home

Welcome. If you disagree, tell me. Then I'll tell you why you're wrong.

Eureka Stockade Animated flag (Australia)australian flag pictureAboriginal Animated flag (Australia)


u tube Australia.

On a Sydney train
u tube Australia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g7zsfesQWI&NR=1
kite surfing Australia
Kings cross Sydney
Sydney
Steve Irwin crocodile clips
komodo dragon
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curious street title

Gropecunt Lane

Gropecunt Lane was a name used in Oxford, London and other Englishtowns and cities in the Middle Ages for streets where prostitutes conducted their business. The name derives from cunt, the Middle English term forfemale genitalia, and the act of groping. There was also a Gropecunt Lane inDublin, Ireland near where the Savoy Cinema is now. Later sensibilities changed many names of streets bearing this name to more polite variations.

In London, the street that was Gropecunt Lane was near the present-day site of the Barbican Centre in the City of London. The street was called Grub Street in the 18th century, but renamed Milton Street in 1830 . Another street with a similar history in Southwark is Horselydown Lane ("whores lie down"), which is just to the south of Tower Bridge, and was also the site of the famousAnchor Brewhouse.

Discovery Channel science:





first Australians



First
Australians

Video

http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/

First Australians Watch Online Now!

A new
documentary
on the history of Australia
First Australians



Sydney slums of the 40's.

Sydney Downtown You Tube.

Short history of Australia

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200471h.html#maps
Butcher's shop Ballarat circa 1890.

ow ya goin' mate? Orright, eh?

Ric Williams, blog editor.

Welcome. Give your considered opinion , ideas , stories, photos etc about early pioneer Australia.. Ric Williams


cwok.williams6@gmail.com




http://translate.google.com/#gle.com

medical advice

http://english.aljazeera.net/

Australian videos online free.





vancouver time-lapse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xMz2SnSWS4
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Hang-gliding at Stanwell Tops, Australia.

Comedian on Religion (F word is used)
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......................Homeless?






Views of Braidwood environs, Eden-Monaro. Here were various pioneer holdings of the Williams Family and relatives.

Overlooking Braidwood from the foothills of Mt Gillamatong
Braidwood Old Style Charm
BIG SURF Bells BeachAustralia (HD)
3 min - 14 Jun 2009
Uploaded by mcm0001

youtube.com

Official: Bondi Beach Gets Flipped! Towel ...
2 min - 3 Nov 2009
Uploaded by theflip

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Snow Gums, Southern Alps.

Old houses West End Vancouver B.C.

Read Dallas Darling and other prominent thinkers.

(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.)
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Congressman Paul Ryan
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Professor Niall Ferguson of Harvard (video)

The Aussie Attitude to religion.

Female Convicts Rebelling, Mooning - bushrangers photo
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Call me (Canada) 1* 604 800 5017
Or email me c.wok66@Hotmail.com

ic W

illiams, blog editor.

Welcome. Give your considered opinion, ideas , stories, photos etc about early pioneer Australia.. Ric Williams


Mongolia's wild horses.



hillbilly dances a jig with jug of beer animated gif

A press for fruit and grapes is useful for those making alcohol from a fruit ... Then I bring them to a boil and mash them with a potato masher untill ALL ...
homedistiller.org/wash-fruit.htm
May 29, 2009 ... Vodka is made from potatoes in the process of enzymatic conversion when the yeast ferments the sugars into ethanol.
www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DjkUbaFPCjFw
Feb 21, 2010 ... http://adf.ly/1AlWP Making alcohol is so easy just follow ...
www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DpUBoZns-j_s

(above) Sydney Harbour today.
(below)Sydney Cove 1788. Older Posts
visual history of the world

Go away, whitefella! This bin blackfella country.
G

Labels


View of Harbour...Cassis France.

Lolita, my heartthrob of the 60's.


http://freecellsearch.com/

Below: Light of my life, fire of my loins... The image that will never age: "Lolita"

(Stanley Kubrick, 1962).

lolita.gif

We come in Third with Williams.

Williams

is a patronymic form of the name William that originated in medieval England[2] and later came to be extremely popular in Wales. The meaning is derived from son or descendant of Guillemin, the French form of William. Derived from an Old French given name with Germanicelements; will = desire, will; and helm = helmet, protection.[3] It is the second most common surname in Wales and the third most common surname in the whole of the United Kingdom, the third most common in the United States of America and Australia and the fifth most common inNew Zealand.[4]

Old Harry Williams was asked how was it that the long list of Williams lead by far those of Nash over the last couple of hundred years.

"Well, let's see.Them Nashes they was more posh and they kept the family bible, so we lot had nothing to read at night.There was no T.V. in them days, and we didn't want to waste candles, so we used to all jump in bed together and make more Williams's."

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Statistics are drawn from Australian government records of 2007.[1]

NASH 4487persons

have name Nash in Australia
#NameNumber of people
1Smith114,997
2Jones56,698
3Williams55,555

Australia. The first fleet sailed from England in 1787 carrying marine William Nash and his common law wife Maria Haynes. They were the progenitors of an extensive Nash family in Australia. Another early settler was Andrew Nash. He had acquired the Woolpack Inn in Parramatta in 1821 and became well-known for the prowess of his racehorses. A later settler from Wiltshire was James Nash. He discovered gold along the Mary river in Queenland and helped precipitate the second Australian gold rush.

There were also Nash convicts in Australia. Some thrived; Robert Nash, transported on the Albemarle in 1791; John Nash on the Eleanor in 1831; and Michael Nash from Limerick, on the Rodney in 1851.
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You are not just you.

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_body_politic/You are not just you. You are a community of trillions of cells and at least 100 trillion microbes acting as a community.
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Physics of the Impossible - by Michio Kaku.PDFPhysics of the Impossible - by Michio Kaku.PDF
2981K View Download

Videos for physics of the impossible...michio kaku

Physics of the Impossible
23 min - 8 Jul 2009
Uploaded by UChannel

youtube.com
Michio Kaku: "Physics of the Impossible" Talk ...
7 min - 4 May 2008
Uploaded by TalkToTara

youtube.com
Michio Kaku - 'Physics Of The Impossible' [1/2]
11 min - 21 Jul 2008
Uploaded by rishwanm

youtube.com


List of Australian Newspapers.


LEARN A LANGUAGE ONLINE

This is my niece in the Philippines who
needs serious attention from some sincere young man.

Neither here nor there.

If a man was on an escalator, but walking back down it and the elevator was located in a revolving restaurant on a large airliner going in a southerly direction and the earth was revolving on its axis and at the same time was travelling in an elliptical path around the sun, which was travelling around the galaxy, which was expanding......how many movements was the man travelling in?

Wild man of North Australia.


I met Michael (Tarzan) Fomenko(shown here at 81 years) son of a Russian Princess when I was 18 and he was twenty. He was a handsome young man. I was in love with his sister Nina Fomenko, who was gracious to me but held my ardour at arms' length. In later years I met her in North Queensland where she and her husband Brian Patrick Donnellan were cutting cane. They had no mattress to sleep on, so I bought them one. Nina was always beautiful. (Ric)
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Toonoom Falls
Situated in the heart of Royal National Park to the south of Sydney, Toonoum Falls is a pretty, 5 metre high waterfall alongside Sir Bertram Steven Drive not far from the Garie turnoff. The photo shows the falls in flood.
Location: Royal National Park.

In the fifties, I lived close to here in a rock shelter once used by Aborigines. I used to swim in this creek a little further down the hill. My family thought I was crazy and I probably was, but life here on the edge of the National Park was idyllic if you could bear the flies, mosquitoes, snakes and centipedes.. (Ric)

Aussie Little Nasties.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNEeq5qGh8I&feature=rec-LGOUT-exp_fresh+div-HM
HMS Sirius, the main Naval ship with the First Fleet, under Captain John Hunter RN. Had been built in 1780 as Berwick for the East Indies run, badly burned in a fire, and rebuilt by Navy, renamed Sirius, finally wrecked off Norfolk Island on the 14th. of April 1790

http://www.coraweb.com.au/local.htm

HMS Sirius, the main Naval ship with the First Fleet, under Captain John Hunter RN.
Had been built in 1780 as Berwick for the East Indies run, badly burned in a fire, and rebuilt by Navy, renamed Sirius, finally wrecked off Norfolk Island on the 14th. of April 1790.


Freethought Radio.
media channel,
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australian flag picture highlight Aboriginal Animated flag (Australia)Eureka Stockade Animated flag (Australia)

*The Australian Lyre Bird is the world's best imitator; able to mimic the calls of 15 different species of birds in their locality and string the calls into a melody. Also been known to mimic the sound mobile phones.

*The echidna is such a unique animal that it is classified in a special class of mammals known asmonotremes, which it shares only with the platypus. The echidna lays eggs like a duck but suckles its young in a pouch like a kangaroo. For no apparent reason, it may decide to conserve energy by dropping its body temperature to 4 degrees and remain at that temperature from 4 to 120 days. Lab experiments have shown that the echidna is more intelligent that a cat and it has been seen using its spikes, feet and beaks to climb up crevices like a mountaineer edging up a rock chimney.

*Purple wallaby - The Purple-neck Rock Wallaby [Petrogale Purpureicollis], inhabits the Mt Isa region in Northwest Queensland. The Wallaby secretes a dye that transforms its face and neck into colours ranging from light pink to bright purple.

*The Fierce Snake or Inland Taipan has the most toxic venom of any snake. Maximum yield recorded (for one bite) is 110mg. That would probably be enough to kill over 100 people or 250,000 mice.

*The Wombat deposits square poos on logs, rocks and even upright sticks that it uses tomark its territory.

*A 10kg Tasmanian Devil is able to exert the same biting pressure as a 40kg dog. It can also eat almost a third of its body weight in a single feeding.

*Australia is the smallest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent in the world. It is the only country which is also a whole continent.

*Over 90% of Australia is dry, flat and arid. Almost three-quarters of the land cannot support agriculture in any form.

*A baby kangaroo at the time of its birth measures 2 centimetres.

birth of joey http://zzz262.multiply.com/video/item/1831

*Kangaroos need very little water to survive and are capable of going for months without drinking at all. When they do need water, they dig 'wells' for themselves; frequently going as deep as three or four feet. These 'kangaroo pits' are a common source of water for other animals living in the kangaroo's environment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1GxAPXrUCQ

Kangaroo attacks dog, man. ^

*A kangaroo being chased by a dog may jump into a dam. If the dog gives chase, the kangaroo may turn towards the dog, then use its paws to push the dogs head underwater in order to drown it.

*Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.

*A monotreme is a animal that lays eggs and suckles its young. The world's only monotremes are the platypus and the echidna.

*The male platypus has a poisonous spine that can kill a dog and inflict immense pain on a human.

*When a specimen of the platypus was first sent to England, it was believed the Australians had played a joke by sewing the bill of a duck onto a rat.

*Box Jelly fish - The box jellyfish is considered the world's most venomous marine creature. The box jellyfish has killed more people in Australia than stonefish, sharks and crocodiles combined.

*The Sydney Funnelweb spider is considered the world's most deadly spider. It is the only spider that has killed people in less than 2 hours. Its fangs are powerful enough to bite through gloves and fingernails. The only animals without immunity to the funnelweb's venom are humans and monkeys.

*Lung fish - Queensland is home to lung fish, a living fossil from the Triassic period 350 million years ago.

Convicts


*It is estimated that by the time transportation ended in 1868, 40 per cent of Australia's English-speaking population were convicts.
*A census taken in 1828 found that half the population of NSW were Convicts, and that former Convicts made up nearly half of the free population.

*In 2007, it was estimated that 22 per cent of living Australians had a convict ancestor.

*Convicts were not sent to Australia for serious crimes. Serious crimes, such as murder, rape, or impersonating an Egyptian were given the death sentence in England.

*Crimes punishable by transportation included recommending that politicians get paid, starting a union, stealing fish from a river or pond, embezzlement, receiving or buying stolen goods, setting fire to underwood, petty theft, or being suspected of supporting Irish terrorism.

* Alcohol- It has been reported that the first European settlers in Australia drank more alcohol per head of population than any other community in the history of mankind.

* Police force - Australia's first police force was a band of 12 of the most well behaved Convicts.

* Mass moonings - In 1832, 300 female Convicts at the Cascade Female Factory mooned the Governor of Tasmania during a chapel service. It was said that in a "rare moment of collusion with the Convict women, the ladies in the Governor's party could not control their laughter.


Photo of the arrival of the Lady Juliana at Sydney Cove.

The arrival of the Lady Juliana at Sydney Cove.

http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~garter1/nash%20william.htm

Photo of Ann Marsh managing her company, the Parramatta River Boat Service.

Ann Marsh managing her company, the Parramatta River Boat Service.

Living in a Quantum World
2 min - 6 days ago
Uploaded by murderd2death

youtube.com
The Weird Quantum World (11 of 15)
3 min - 1 Mar 2008
Uploaded by SciTechUK

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God & the Origin of Life: Myth of the Organic ...
54 min - 3 Jun 2008
Uploaded by OriginofLifeFinal

video.google.com
Origin of Life 1. Life Came From Other Planets ...
23 min - 27 May 2008
Uploaded by Sarastarlight

youtube.com





George Carlin

World conflict map. Atheist Empire.

Atheist Empire
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http://www.globalconflictmap.com/

Street views Australia

Web Link: Google unveils Street View across Australia Link opens in new browser window

aboriginal culture

http://www.electrodynamics-of-special-relativity.com/Aspect-s-Experiment

The Aspect Experiment....it changes man's scientific beliefs to unproven suppositions.

aussie comedy

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Astronomy picture of the day.(press)

In the Shadow of Saturn