Cousins

There are some great places to meet your cousins. Weddings, family reunions, birthday parties and picnics at the beach.

The first photo today of cousins are some male members of the Davey, England, Boxhall and Stirling families. The Stirlings are actually double cousins to me as they are related through both England and Davey surnames. They are being serious in this photo but I also have one with them making faces and mucking around with the photographer at my aunty Margaret’s wedding in 1949.

Davey Stirling and Boxhall cousins
  • Back row: Len Davey, Ted Stirling, George Boxhall, Jack and Bill Stirling (twins) and Trevor Davey
  • Front row: Frederick Davey, Henry Lewis England (my grandfather) and Les Moore (husband of a Boxhall)

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, I helped organize family reunions with my cousin Hilary Birchall nee Davey. I would organize the family tree to be displayed, while Hilary would book the venue and invite the relatives she knew. We would also put an advertisement in the local papers in Tasmania for people to ring us to find out more about the reunion.

Many of the cousins from the south of the state would come up to Evandale where the reunion was always held. They would make a day of it, with the kids and grandparents, bringing a picnic lunch to share. These reunions also involved visiting the local church where many of the Davey and Colgrave ancestors were baptised and buried.

Whenever cousins from interstate arrived in Hobart we would have a get together. This particular one celebrated birthdays of the cousins from Western Australia.

Four young cousins from the Ryan family who are now adults

Dad has one favourite cousin from the Smith side of the tree, Ruby Blyth. He is pictured here with Ruby at her 21st birthday according to the information on the picture. I recently met Ruby again when I visited Flinders Island on a trip. This is where many members of the Blyth family live and where Ruby worked at the local hospital.

Finally, get togethers with visiting cousins could also be held on the beach especially if in summer. Our favourite beaches were Long Beach at Sandy Bay or we would drive down to Snug area and the beach near Coningham Nature Reserve.

In the first picture Raelene is our cousin as her grandmother (Aunty Glad) was the sister of my grandfather Henry Lewis England. In the second picture Michael is the grandson of Frederick Davey (also seen in the background) who was my grandmother Hannah Davey’s brother.

According to my DNA test, I have thousands of cousins but the main ones I know live in Tasmania.

Readers: Do you often get together with cousins?

Siblings in colour

I decided to divide my photos into colour and black and white for these couple of posts about siblings.

My dad is an only child so I have no coloured photos from his side of the family.

This first photo shows three sets of siblings:

  • Myself and my brother on the left
  • My mother Phyllis and her sister Margaret in the middle
  • Margaret’s children Bronwyn and Leigh on the right
3 sets of siblings

I have no children but my brother is married with two children named Georgia and Alexander. Georgia is now married with a child of her own so this photo is when my niece and nephew were a bit younger. Alexander lives in Melbourne and works for the Australian Ballet Company.

In 2011, I took my brother and the two children to America for a holiday visiting Grand Canyon, Disneyland, Legoland and other places around California. Unfortunately we were in San Diego getting ready to visit Sea World when we found out about the twin towers being hit by planes.

Georgia and Alexander

Both of my first cousins Bronwyn and Leigh also married.

Bronwyn and her husband Allan Ryan had three children. Unfortunately Bronwyn passed away at the young age of 62 in 2013. The photo below is of her three children: Kelli who has three franchises with the food company LivEat in Tasmania, Shannon who worked in Western Australia but moved to Queensland and Kaide who owns a tool company in Hobart. All three of these have married and have their own children who will appear in the cousins post later in the month.

Kelli Kaide Shannon

Leigh and his wife Susan Lacey have two children: Chantel, who is married with three children, lives in Melbourne and works for Spotlight Retail Group as Head of Design and Innovation and Shaun, born with cerebral palsy but is now living in a community home where he enjoys drama and photography.

 

Chantel Shaun

Readers: What is the largest number of siblings you have in your immediate family?

In mine it is the Ryan children with 3 but I could include the England family as my mother and her sister actually had another sister who died when she was 10 years old, only a month after my mother was born.

Square dancing

When my brother and I were young children, we were often bundled up and taken to a hall in Lindisfarne where my parents would be square dancing with their friends. They had been square dancing for many years. In fact, that is where they met in 1952. I have written a post about their square dancing time.

Somehow square dancing rubbed off on me. I joined the Southern Eights Club in Hobart with Barry Chandler as the caller. I found the moves easy to remember but I also enjoyed round dancing, which happened between the brackets of square dancing.

Round dancing is like ballroom dancing but instead of learning the whole dance, you have a caller on stage calling out the moves. So the dance might be a two step but the dancers wont know in which order the moves will be called. This makes it more interesting and the dancers have to listen carefully when the cues are called out.

There were enough people from square dance clubs around Hobart interested in round dancing that we opened a club specifically for round dancing called Roulette Rounds. I was one of two dancers cueing, and eventually I was the only cuer of the club.

I loved calling round dancing and even took part in some Australian Square Dancing Conventions representing Tasmania as a round dance cuer. Whenever I travelled around Tasmania I would take some round dance records with me, in case I was asked to call a few dances at the square dance clubs I visited.

Whenever there was an Australian Convention held here in Hobart, I would be on the committee whilst I was an active dancer.

Sue cueing a round dance

Readers: Do you enjoy dancing? What type of dancing in particular?

UPDATE from dad:

I just read your square dancing record, did you know that the Bar 8 square dancers danced in Fitzgeralds main window in Collins St, Peter Smith was the caller. Phyl and I ran dances with the Hobart Walking Club  for some years, old time, square, modern, Greek.