Joan Kirner was famous for ‘that polka dot dress’.  Possibly at around the same time, three decades or so ago, I had a favourite pair of black with medium white polka dot pedal pushers.  It was ‘back in the day’ when tariff walls protected the clothing industry, clothes were more expensive and I’d made them myself.  I enjoyed making my own clothes then and particularly loved wearing these comfortable, satin cotton polka dot pedal pushers. 

If a video were made on my life,  these polka dot pedal pushers  would feature in two almost tragic incidents, ‘near misses’, when two of my ‘nine lives’ were possibly accounted for, in the late 1980’s…
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My uncle, who farmed at Tiger Hill in Molyullah for many years, was concerned that the SEC had not restored a fence to its rightful place on his property after the power line finally reached there in the late 1980’s.  On holidays, and wearing my now old favourite black with white polka dot pants, I drove with him around the ‘top’ property as he checked the cattle, helping him to feed out.  He asked me if I’d mind walking up the fairly steep hill following the new power line clearing to check that the fence had been put back.  Happy to do so, and in those days rather a slim young-ish thing, I climbed the hill with relative ease, able to report back later that the  fence was indeed in place.   I happily clambered back down the hill, enjoying the views, dreaming about this and that.   For some reason, something must have made me look down – perhaps some movement had caught my eye.   There, sunning itself in the rocks, a large, shiny, fairly corpulent looking black snake was looking up at me and beginning to uncoil, just as I walked over him.  I’m quite sure I levitated!  I jumped  higher than I ever had.  I remember leaping, landing a few feet away, then negotiating the rocky outcrops on the hill I was descending at great speed, running( I thought), for my life!  What a relief it was to find my uncle!  A ‘freeze frame’ moment of trauma still well remembered and a possible use of one of my nine lives.  

My uncle informed me that I would have been in more trouble had it been a brown snake, but the incident was nevertheless traumatic and is still vividly remembered! 

I was wearing these black polka dot trousers at another, potentially more tragic event, not long after.   Owning a shared house in country Victoria, but working in Melbourne, I’d rented a third floor bed-sitter in a block of bed-sitters in North Fitzroy.  I didn’t see a lot of the other residents, but knew there was a polio disabled older man living in the bed-sitter next to me;  a rather eccentric retired sailor directly below and a bohemian former LSD user with mental health problems who lived next to him.  They were having an affair.  I remember coming home from teaching at Flemington High, having tea, then working on a cross stitch embroidery I was finishing for my mother for her birthday.   For some reason, as I walked to make a cup of coffee I was drawn to look towards the door, perhaps by the subtle wafting of the smell of smoke.  Looking down, I noticed smoke coming, quite distinctly, from under the door.   What to do!   I remember putting towels under the door to stop the draught, then moving to the front window.  Fortunately I had a front room with a window to the street - if help came, I could get out through the window.   When I opened the window, residents now in the street called out– “If you leave now, put a towel around your face, you can get down the stair well still”.   Fearful, powerless to help my neighbour with his built up shoe and difficulty walking, I grabbed my purse. Wrapping a towel around my face I went out into the dark, smoke filled, heat radiating hall way and stair well, feeling my way along the corridor and down the stairs.  What a relief it was to reach the street and stand with other residents!  Apparently the bohemian lover of the eccentric sailor had been drinking and celebrating life generally in his room below me, leaving washing drying on a vinyl lounge suite in front of an old radiator in her room.  You can guess what happened next!  The smoke which covered my face, body and yes, my polka dot pants left a black oily residue, giving me quite a fright when I looked into a mirror at the hospital where I’d been taken, in my black polka dot pants, by ambulance for breathing checks.   I can remember looking at the black polka dots at the time--another ‘freeze frame’ moment of potentially fatal trauma still well remembered and a possible use of a second of my nine lives.  

Whatever happened to my black satin cotton, white polka dotted pedal pushers?   I think perhaps they never recovered from their exposure to the black, oily residue of smoke and burning vinyl that evening and were almost certainly thrown away... 

 
Bev Lee
April 2018

When my sister speaks about researching our maternal grandmother’s 'Hooper' side of our family tree, she often mentions finding that the oral history stories our mother remembered were nearly always right on track. 

This possibility has been put to the test during my search for my paternal 'Lee/McCann' ancestors and the 'Devitt' arm of my maternal 'Devitt Hooper' line.  

You see, I thought I was from English and Scottish origins, with an Irish ancestor or two.  It has turned out, discovering more about my great grandparents and great great grandparents generations, that I am much more Irish than I thought.  My great grandfathers, Anthony Lee and Bernard McCann, John Edward Devitt, were all born in Ireland, as were my McCann (Kelly)  and Devitt (possibly Rourke) great grandmothers; and going back a further generation, ten of my sixteen great great grandparents were born in Ireland, two in Scotland, and only four in England.  

This led me to ponder a little about the depth of the Irish connection, to think about whether it has influenced me, if there has been some evidence of it in my own life.  If my father's grandparents were largely Irish, perhaps there will be some, however small, which might suggest this.

I've come up with one or two  thoughts which might be related - the first is that on the wall above our kitchen table when I was young was a framed illustrated poem which I loved to look at.  The illustration featured a road up to a house on a hill.   It has taken me some time to fully remember, but now I realise, and my brother has thought back to confirm, that it was 'The Irish Blessing'..."May the road rise to meet you, May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, The rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of his hand".   I wonder why it was there, who chose it, and why?  

Then, on St Patrick's Day at the Northo just a few weeks ago, my sister and I were singing along with 'Cockles and Mussels'... you know, 'In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty'... we looked at one another, quietly knowingly, as we recognized simultaneously that when we were little we would sit at the kitchen table after meals, singing this song with our father, who had taught it to us. 

A few days later I was telling this to my father's 90 year old Scottish born cousin Bill, who now lives in a nursing home setting in Vancouver, at which he laughed and said, that is strange, it was the song he had chosen to sing with his carer just that day.   Bill’s grandfather was my great grandfather – Anthony Lee,  born in Ireland, first appearing in the Scottish census in 1871 as a 12 year old soap maker after the family had migrated from County Roscommon in Ireland.  

I can remember that my mother saying that the Devitt's sailed to Liverpool from Dublin before settling in Newcastle on Tyne.  Indeed, it seems that my maternal great great grandparents did migrate to England from Ireland in the late 1840's early 1850's (the Irish famine migrations), that my great grandfather was born in Manchester in 1858 before the family moved to Newcastle on Tyne.  Perhaps that is why I've always loved the song 'The Rocky Road to Dublin' which describes the journey to Dublin and on to Liverpool  

So, sometimes it seems it is the family story, or the rather odd family tradition, the seemingly out of place artefact, which can add value to the search for meaning during a family history journey.

'Alive, alive oh... Alive, alive oh, singing cockels and mussels... '

Bev Lee
​April 9 2018