​This is the first time this year I have been stumped about what I would write about for this month’s memoir.

Early in the year when I read the topics for each month, I was sure I had a story ready and waiting to be written.

Right here, right now, this current life I am living is so full on, so busy.
​
The thing is, I don’t regret a minute of it. In the last 12 months, since hearing about U3A when I attended the Benalla Festival, my life has been nonstop.

My story started with attending the ‘Family Research—Beginners’ class. It was great learning about my ancestry.  I found, and still find, it fascinating,

I came across a newspaper story from March 1928, where a lady had committed suicide by cutting her own throat with a razor blade. The lady was my Great Grandmother.

I also did a DNA test with Ancestry.  Once I got the results back, it was great, they told me where I had come from, parts of the UK, and parts of Europe.

Then I got a list of hundreds of people all around the world that my DNA was matched with by Ancestry. They came from everywhere, especially the UK, around Europe, America, Australia, Canada.  There was only one person I was matched with that I knew, a niece living in Melbourne. There were second and third cousins, through to about eighth cousins.

This is where it starts getting exciting. I received an email one day from a man in Warwickshire, England, which is where I came from.  He claimed he was a second or third cousin and that we had the same Great Grandparents on my mother’s side. He told me he was sorry to see that my mother had passed away recently, and she had. He knew a lot about my mum, her family, her husband and how many kids they had, but not their names.

Over the course of a few emails to each other, he told me about another person who was in his eighties, who he thought might be a distant cousin too. We got in touch through my late cousin’s daughter who knew of him by name, because he visits her grandmother, who is also my Mum’s sister and my Aunt. This man’s son emailed some information from my Mum’s side. It was a 111-page document which he asked his son to send me. Certificates, stories, photos. One particular photo showed my Mum as a two-year-old flower girl at a wedding. Wow!

I also enrolled in another U3A course. “As Time Goes By” Memoir Writing.
Both Family Research and Memoirs are consuming my current life, my past life and to a degree, my future life.

What I have learnt and continue to learn about my predecessors through Family Research and by reflecting on my earlier life through my Memoirs, is certainly keeping me very busy ‘Right Here, Right Now!


Tom Barnaby
October 2023

This is not so much a memoir as a confession. Few days would go past without me reminding myself to be aware of Right here, Right now.

I find it so easy to be planning what I need to do for the rest of the day – or tomorrow. I don’t seem to include what I want to do, just need. It’s very easy when you live by yourself to be eating a meal you’ve just prepared and finding your thoughts wandering off to something that happened today or, more frequently, might be on the agenda for tomorrow, instead of, ‘Wow! This is delicious!’

This sort of attitude immediately leads to the making of lists. Yes, my kitchen bench is never without a list for the day (and often the beginning of tomorrow’s list as well). I keep a small pad and pencil by my bed and occasionally, in exasperation, jot down in the complete dark, some idea I can pursue in the future so I will stop thinking about it.

Our sons frequently used to make CDs, singing songs about the idiosyncrasies of their parents (and sometimes those of the neighbours, in which case we played it very softly). So of course there was a song about Carmyl making lists – there might be an erupting volcano outside the door but Carmyl would still be at the bench making a list.

And I suppose one of the problems of list-making is that if you manage to get seven out of the eight items accomplished for the day, you feel a tinge of failure that number eight is not crossed out and will have to be transferred to tomorrow’s list.

Magda Szubanski headed a National Health Check series on TV last year which included a program running in Mansfield to give people healthier lives. One of the three things they suggested to do each day was to go for a walk around the block and listen. Put away each time you think of something you did yesterday or have to plan for today, and just listen. We think of past and future for 85% of the time and only 15% about what is happening here and now.

Last week I came across a quote from the Dalai Lama on Facebook.

‘There are only two days in the year when nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow, so today is the right time to love, believe and mostly live.’

I’d better put it on the frig!            

Carmyl Winkler
October 2023

Here are the words to 'She'll Make a List'

“She’ll make a list…”
 
When the final trump shall sound, when the judgement’s all around,
When what was written in Revelation is writ large in every nation,
When the world is covered in haze and we’ve reached the end of days,
Carmyl will pause and make a list.

She’ll make a list, she’ll make a list, she’ll grab a scrap of paper get a biro in her fist,
When the final trump shall sound, loud enough to shake the ground,
Carmyl will be there making a list.
 
When the lookout turns volcanic and the town begins to panic,
As the town sinks beneath a pile of lava,
Tallangatta is the new Vesuvius and although I have no proof of this,
I think I know what tactic Mum would rather...

She’ll make a list, she’ll make a list, she’ll grab a scrap of paper get a biro in her fist,
When the final trump shall sound, loud enough to shake the ground,
Carmyl will be there making a list!
 
When a freak Hume weir tsunami wipes out half the Bandiana army,
As the tidal waves come surging from the west,
While the folks will all aspire to find some ground that’s higher,
Carmyl will go to the bench and do what she does best

She’ll make a list, she’ll make a list, she’ll grab a scrap of paper get a biro in her fist,
When the final trump shall sound, loud enough to shake the ground,
Carmyl will be there making a list!

Reprise..  (‘One more time…’)
​
She’ll make a list, she’ll make a list, she’ll grab a scrap of paper get a biro in her fist,
When the final trump shall sound, loud enough to shake the ground,
Carmyl will be there, (…will be there… ) making a list!...
Carmyl will be there … making (… making ..a) …a ….list!

Courtesy of Carmyl and the Winkler Brothers!

Right here, right now, I am reflective.
 
I was returning from my post operative consultation visit to Royal Melbourne Hospital where, a month previously, I had undergone a two hour procedure to untwist my stomach. Through neglect, my stomach had turned beyond 180 degrees, and 80% of my stomach had been pushed by a hernia, above my diaphragm. This was not where it should have been.
 
After post-op consultation with my surgeon, I decided to take better care of myself by taking a taxi home to my son’s place in Greensborough.
 
The driver, a young Pakistani man and I enjoyed our conversation as he shared with me his family, his trip to Australia and his aspirations and hopes. He then asked me what I did.
 
I greatly surprised myself by saying ‘I pray’. My response startled me for its transparency and vulnerability. The conversation though continued comfortably as if I said something more benign such as, “I care for my grandchildren’ or ‘I read’.
 
Perhaps Muslims are more comfortable sharing their religious practice.
 
********
 
I am now reflecting on the last 10 months, which has been a quite fascinating and an unexpected journey for me from a teacher and political activist, to what others may call, a recluse.
 
Carl Jung suggested that the challenge in the second half of life is to develop personality characteristics, the opposite of our natural disposition. Thus for me this journey involves:

• as an extrovert, developing introversion,
• as an intuitive, developing my sensate skills,
• and as a ‘feeling’ type person, developing my ‘thinking’ skills.

 
At the beginning of the year, through ‘Google magic’ of algorithms, I found myself increasingly being offered material linked to writings of who are often characterized, as mystics.
 
Examples of Christian mysticism were recorded as early as 150 AD and by the mid fourth century were recognised partly as a response to and in opposition to the ‘Christianization’ of the Roman Empire. Christian mysticism was most commonly reflected in the practices of the early monasteries and convents.
 
Mysticism, defined by Wikipedia:
 
 ‘becoming one with God or the Absolute’, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning’.
 
As I pursue a journey of contemplative prayer, I discover others on this path.  Muslims, Jews, Sufis, Hindus and Zen Buddhists!  Each offering their unique insights and experiences on this inner journey. 
 
Right here, right now I am remembering an observation that Thomas Merton, a modern day mystic, offered to his novices. Two of the challenges to the contemplative life are cowardliness and laziness. This is unsettling as I uncomfortably acknowledge these characteristics in me.

More recently I read the words of a Muslim mystic who identified two characteristics of the contemplative or spiritual path.

Transparency and vulnerability.

On reflection, perhaps writing our memoirs for ‘As Time Goes By’, invites us along this same path as we explore, with each other, the uniqueness of our individual journeys. 


Graham Jensen
​October 2023​

​September 25, 2023

Would you believe it?  Right here and now we are still living at Clarke Street, Benalla in the house which Bernadette and I had built for us in the year in which we were married some 57 years ago.
 
We had purchased a cheap block of land on the outskirts of Benalla for $750, and with the aid of finance of $8100 from the Benalla Co-operative Society we paid Ken Grant, our builder, the sum of $10,100 for the erection of a 12.2 square brick veneer home.  A garage cost us an extra $250, and we moved in on 31st December 1967.
 
This was the one and only childhood “home” of our four children.
 
In the mid to late 1970’s we added a new family room and also purchased the block of land directly behind us.  We later added a swimming pool.
 
In 1985 we had considered building a new home, but that idea had been scuttled by the actions of a fraudulent office manager.  We settled for a refurbished kitchen.
 
RIGHT NOW, we are both fortunate to be healthy retirees.  We have satisfied our travel appetites and COVID has put a halt to any further ideas.
 
Bernadette is still a playing member of the Benalla Golf Club and loves gardening and mowing the lawn.  After a stint of 51 years, she has retired from delivering Meals on Wheels, and also her ‘Vinnie’s’ counselling.  Being now in my nineties I am not so active.  I ceased playing lawn bowls after fracturing my pelvis in 2014, after 60 odd years of competition and more than 700 games of pennant bowls.  I am a ‘life member’ of the Bowling Club.  My main activities are now Probus and U3A membership, where I am a regular in the ‘Singing for Fun’ group and the ‘As Time Goes By’ memoir writing group.
 
Also, being in my nineties, I am taking the time for reflection on the following:
 
I have regrets that I lost my mother to cancer when I was 4 years old, and so, have no knowledge of the love of my mother.  At the same time, I generally lost contact with my five siblings and so did not grow up in a family environment …
 
In early 1940 my brother Pat enlisted in the army for World War 2 and went overseas to the battleground in the Middle East.  He returned to Australia in 1943 and was discharged, medically unfit, in September 1944.  He had visited me after his discharge, and to my everlasting regret, I did not know him and treated him as one would a stranger …
 
I also have regrets that, in my twenties, I boarded in country hotels and, to my detriment, succumbed to the ready availability of alcohol …
 
On the brighter side I recall that, through my hotel connections, I commenced playing lawn bowls at a young age, and have spent a very rewarding 60 years in that field …
 
From my early working life, my lot has been made brighter through meeting with the Hernan and Elliott families who both gave me the family life of which I had no prior experience …
 
In my late twenties, I became re-aquainted with my second brother John and his family and lived two of my happiest years with them …
 
1967 saw me marrying the love of my life, Bernadette, and commencing our own family of four children (of whom we are immensely proud) and our eleven adorable grandchildren …
 
In the late 1960’s, while working in Wodonga, I had occasion to visit a specialist who counselled me to “…study accountancy and work for yourself’.  I am forever grateful to him, and, although some ten to twelve years later, I graduated, firstly with the Australian Society of Accountants, and secondly as a Chartered Accountant where I also obtained a ‘fellowship’...
 
I am also proud to say that these qualifications led to my business partnership as a Chartered Accountant …
 
Further to these two qualifications I have been awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for ‘Service to the Community of Benalla’ ...
 
And so, RIGHT HERE and RIGHT NOW, I feel contented and satisfied with my life.  As I face the ultimate demise I do so at peace with the world and within myself.
 
 
Ray O’Shannessy
October 2023