Here I am doing another post about the history of Aboriginals,like many cultures the Aboriginal people would pass down stories, myths, legends and dances from one generation to the next, they are not alone many other cultures have done the same.

The Aboriginal people have what is called The Dreaming, The Dreaming is history, it tells of how the world was formed, how the world which was featureless was transformed into mountains, hill, valleys and waterways, it tells how the stars were formed and how the sun came to be.

In the Sydney metropolitan area there are close to 5,000 Aboriginal sites, yes 5,000 that is a bloody lot. These sites are under threat every day from development, vandalism and natural erosion, these sites naturally cannot be replaced so once destroyed they are gone forever. Some sites are still in reasonable condition such as the sites located in Land Cove, North Sydney, Willoughby and Ku-ring-gai areas, these sites hold an important part of our history.

Naturally the Aboriginal people, who once occupied these areas, left important evidence of their past and way of life before colonisation. All Aboriginal sites are significant to Aboriginal people because they are evidence of the past Aboriginal occupation of Australia and are valued as a link with their traditional culture. Clues to what these sites were used for can also be surmised by talking with Elders from other parts of Australia where traditional knowledge has not been lost to the same degree.

The Sydney Basin is one of the richest provinces in Australia in terms of Aboriginal archaeological sites. There are thousands of Aboriginal sites, more than half of which contain rock art, and in Sydney’s sandstone belt at least 1500 rock shelters have been discovered to contain cultural deposit.

All Aboriginal sites have legal protection under both state and federal law and it is an offence to damage or destroy them without agreement from the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC).

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Happy Birthday Mum

On this day 77 years ago in the town of Parkes in the state of New South Wales, a wonderful woman was born, my mother Mavis Jean. She is the eldest of four children but now only herself and her baby brother Francis are left.

When she was about 4 years old her mother and father separated and later divorced, mum, her brother Ronald and sister Dianne went with there mother and lived in the Wauchope New South Wales district. In fact mum lived with her grandmother till she was 14 and her grandmother died, it was traumatic for mum losing her nan as they were very close.

Her father stayed in the Parkes district and later remarried. She had not seen him since she was aged 7 and lost all contact with her father from about age 14. On Saturday 24^th May 1997 mum met her father again after 50 years. She found him living in Blayney NSW, also at this reunion she met, for the first time, her cousin Patricia Ann Crane. Mervyn died 5 months later on the 24^th October 1997.

When mum was 10 years old her mother married Ronald James and pretty much from that time on he was in mums eyes her dad, this is one of the reasons she had no desire to find and met her natural father. She is glad she tracked Mervyn down but he wasn’t her dad. Her dad died on the 4^th November 2010.

Sometime in the late 1950’s she met Denis and they married on the 19^th November 1960 and had 5 children together of which I am the eldest, she now has 18 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, with two more great-grandchildren due this year.

As many know on the 19^th November 2016 her mother passed away aged 95, this affected her a lot and since her mother’s passing she has had many health issuers, she is in pain 24/7 and has been for many years and also has had a couple of incidents of delirium and being off with the pixies but things are improving and she takes life one day at a time.

Family is very important to mum and she loves having her family around her, her children are blessed to have such a wonderful, loving and caring mother who we all know is there for us whenever we need her.

In 1978 she suffered a stroke when her youngest child was only 6 weeks old, she was told at the time she may not walk again or have much use of her arm but she made a complete recover from her stroke because she had a new born baby and a toddler and not recovering wasn’t an option in her eyes.

Mum has been known as Mae for most of her life, and the name Mae is common in our family now, my sister is Sandra Mae, her daughter is Temika Mae, my daughter is Jessica Mae, and my granddaughter is Sydney-May.

Ok have wanted to write a post since Friday and here it is Sunday morning and I am at last doing one this is because Friday afternoon I felt drained of energy and pretty much the same feeling yesterday afternoon. This morning when my alarm went off I couldn’t wake up I was that tired that I didn’t get up till 7.30am, two hours after the alarm went off but it is Sunday so that is ok.

Yesterday Jessica, Kelli and myself took the boys Blain, Leo & Daemon to what is called a pop up water park which they loved, I saw the tickets on Groupon and bought them but the girls paid for them they were $12.50 a saving of $7.50 we bought 4 tickets on each for the boys and one for Kelli Jessica and I didn’t go on the rides or slides or get in the pool so we didn’t need tickets. For those who don’t know a pop up park is a temporary amusement park set up in vacant lots for usually only a month or so often during school holidays, the aim is to get children out of the house and away form electronics and doing stuff. The park we took the boys to was about a 45 minute drive from us in Salt Ash.

Friday saw Tim having the day off he had an appointment to have an ultrasound done of his stomach because his last blood test showed a problem with his liver, I have a problem with my liver it is a fatty liver and I expect that is what the ultrasound will show is the problem with Tim’s liver.

Jessica was telling me that she also has a fatty liver and she has small kidneys for a woman her age but at this stage they are functioning ok so not a problem.

Now that reminds me of mum, when she saw the specialist last Wednesday she was told that since she didn’t have an type of stroke the specialist didn’t know why she was referred to him, he did, however, tell her that he believes one of the reasons for her delirium was the fact that her kidney function was done the lever should be around 60, when she went to the hospital suffering from delirium it was 20 and her last blood test had it at 40. He told her that with the level being so low it meant that her body wasn’t flushing the medication out of her body completely thus meant she was getting a build up and that was causing an overdose affect. So he said that her GP needs to investigate that and try and discover the reason for it and do something to fix it or counter it or whatever they do. I reminded mum that she has those tumors on her adrenal gland and she should check that, that isn’t causing her problems now what she has is a benign tumour.

Tim wants to go over to my parents place and I asked him if he needed me to go with him or not as I want to vacuum out and wash the kitchen floor and I have laundry to do and well as over stuff, he said no he doesn’t need me but what about Jessica’s car. We have to take her car back to her, I said I don’t think she is doing anything today so we should be ale to take it back to her after lunch and if she wants it she will ring me and I will take it over earlier.

We have her car as yesterday we took my car to the pop up park as I have more fuel and when we were going home after we dropped Blain off at his mums, Leo was unwell we had to pull over so he could throw up and she felt like she just wanted to go home so that is what she did so we will return her car to her today.

Happy Birthday Tim and Australia

Hello everyone today is Australia Day it was a bloody long time ago when the first Europeans arrived to take possession of the country by a bloody long time I mean 228 years.

It is a pleasant day here not hot nor cold, not wet but have had some drizzle. I for some reason wasn’t feeling the best this morning and ended up going back to bed for an hour before doing lunch.

Mostly for us it is the birthday of the love of my life, Tim, he is 56 today we are having lunch here but Natasha says I didn’t tell her but I thought I did send a group message to all the girls via Facebook but she didn’t see it so she isn’t coming and it is my fault.

Also today was my brother in-laws birthday so today his family are scattering his ashes at his favourite fishing spot, he passed away last February. So yesterday my sister was telling her daughter that they were going to scatter his ashes she wanted to know what his ashes are so she explained how some people are buried when they died and some people are burnt up. So today they are going to scatter his ashes at his favourite fishing spot. My niece said you burnt Uncle Mick now you want to feed him to the fishes, she then outright refused to go to scatter the ashes. I will find out tonight if she went or not.

So I will end this with a dozen facts about Australia because it is Australia Day.

1. Australia is as wide as the distance between London to Moscow.
2. The biggest property in Australia is bigger than Belgium.
3. More than 85% of Australians live within 50km of the coast.
4. In 1880, Melbourne was the richest city in the world.
5. Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest woman, earns $1 million every half hour, or $598 every second.
6. In 1892, a group of 200 Australians unhappy with the government tried to start an offshoot colony in Paraguay to be called ‘New Australia’.
7. The first photos from the 1969 moon landing were beamed to the rest of the world from Honeysuckle Tracking Station, near Canberra.
8. Australia was the second country in the world to allow women to vote (New Zealand was first).
9. Each week, 70 tourists overstay their visas.
10. In 1856, stonemasons took action to ensure a standard of 8-hour working days, which then became recognised worldwide.
11. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke set a world record for sculling 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds. Hawke later suggested that this was the reason for his great political success.
12. The world’s oldest fossil, which is about 3.4 billion years old, was found in Australia.

Photo Wednesday

As some of you may have noticed I wasn’t around much yesterday I was feeling pretty sick and spent most of the day in bed, also had Leo for most of the day and he was here last night as well, because his mum said the night before he cried and had a tantrum because he wasn’t able to stay at nanna’s house that night.

Anyway this week I am sharing a collage of Sue’s family.

 

Monday’s News

Good morning world, it is Monday here and suppose to be another pretty hot day but as I start this it is only around 20°c anyway I am going to share some of the things I heard while I am watching Sunrise (morning news show)

First up they were talking about how young children in kindergarten are being given medication for ADHD, well as the grandmother of a child with ADHD I can tell you that it wasn’t that easy to get Leo medicated. He went through a lot of being observed by professionals and talking to specialists and we tried a number of things to alter his behaviour before he was prescribed medication. Leo off medication is a little boy who is bouncing off the walls and can’t control his temper and our bursts at all.

Also on Sunrise was a lot of talk about people chucking a sickie on Friday so they can have a long weekend, Thursday is Australia Day so a public holiday and they reckon people will be calling in sick on Friday. Now Tim isn’t working Friday but he has put in for either a RDO or an annual day off so not chucking a sickie at all.

Also saw that some people want to change from calling people overweight to overfat, what the hell No that is just wrong, as my grandsons would tell you fat isn’t a nice word to call people. Yes I often call myself a short fat middle aged woman and that is fine I am the one saying it.

Yet again in the news there was a story about someone crashing a car into a house, this seems to be happening at least once a month and it is amazing that not more people are hurt when this happens, how fast must people be going to end up in a house.

Of course Trump is in the news again, because he tweets without thinking and then had to re-tweet to clarify his first tweet, now the second tweet was only done in my opinion because one of his advisers told him to do so, although strangely enough I agree with the first tweet, if all these people now protesting had in fact voted maybe he wouldn’t have been elected.

However, how on earth he could thing there was a record breaking turn out for his inauguration, maybe he had a moment when he confused the protesters with the inauguration turn out, or he is just living in a fantasy land of denial.

Madonna really should think before she speaks also, saying you have thought about blowing up the White House is just stupid and there are disturbed people out there who could think hey Madonna wants to blow up the White House so I will do it for her.

Just heard that there is going to be some changers to the bail hearings in Victoria after that guy who went berserk and ran people down the other day because he was out on bail and his bail hearing wasn’t heard by a magistrate but by someone who wasn’t a magistrate, but a bail justice, these people have no formal training so why on earth they would be able to hear a bail hearing and decided if the person could be released on bail. I don’t know much but I know that, that doesn’t sound right. Seems if a person was arrested on a weekend or at night their hearing would be heard by a bail justice as the magistrates wouldn’t be working now that is going to change.

Yesterday I did go to Speers Point Park for Sydney-May’s birthday party it was a nice afternoon Leo had a good time and I think Sydney-May liked her presents not only was her mum’s family there also her dad and his mum came and Michael’s parents and sister in-law and her children came as well as a friend of Sydney-May’s and the girls mum so a good turn out.

Sunday Stuff

Good morning everyone, just looked at the clock and it is still morning, in fact it is only just after 10am but feels later, I had a sleep in this morning didn’t get up till 6.30am although I was awake mostly from 5.30am when the alarm went off.

Tim is at work and I am home alone, just had Natasha and Steve call in to borrow money and pick up her coffee table and she took my vacuum to do her house with. She used to use her work vacuum but has lost her job, her boss was going off his brain at her about something and she decided she didn’t need that stress and to be spoken to in such a manner so she quit, she will find another job but is under such stress with things at the moment and being under paid and treated like shit is something she can do without at this stage.

It is starting to get hot here again today it is around 28°c at the moment and I have the front and back sliding doors open and the ceiling fan going as well so at the moment don’t need the air con on.

Mum is doing much better, and even went to Charlestown Square on Friday for breakfast, although that pissed my sister off and she was so mad with me she was hitting me because she felt it was my fault that mum went out. She felt I was encouraging mum to go shopping, I wasn’t but I understand that mum feels like she is losing her independence and is always stuck at home, I told mum when I spoke to her on Thursday night if she went to Charlie she should use a motorised scooter which can be hired free of charged from the customer service desk in the square and I wanted dad to get it and take it to mum at the car and have her only move from the car to the scooter so she wasn’t trying to walk. Of course mum did walk from the car to Donut King were we have breakfast, which I wasn’t happy about.

Sandra was so mad at me she said I didn’t understand how hard it is and all the physically and emotional stress she is under looking after mum and dad, she is right I don’t understand it as I am not the one dealing with them day in and day out. However, because she is young and able she (Sandra) doesn’t understand what it feels like to feel you are losing your independence.

Today is my granddaughter Sydney-May’s 7^th birthday, her mum is having a small party for her this afternoon at Speers Point Park, which is a large park about 10 minutes from me, Tim has taken the car to work so I have asked Jessica if she would pick me up and drive me out there, she said she would.

A Little More About The History Of Australia

Hello everyone here I am doing another post about the history of my country and the Aboriginal people.

After the arrival of the white people the Aboriginal people were struck with new and unknown diseases these diseases were often fatal and struck and extensive blow to the Aboriginal people. This is because up until then they had been isolated from the diseases that had raged throughout Europe and Asia, so they had no resistance to these new deadly viruses carried here by the sailors and convicts, diseases like smallpox, syphilis and influenza. So in less that a year over half the Aboriginal population living in the Sydney area had died from smallpox and the region that once was alive with a vibrant mix of Aboriginal clans was now silent.

Every boat that went down the harbour found them lying dead on the beaches and in the caverns of the rocks… They were generally found with the remains of a small fire on each side of them and some water left within their reach.
Lieutenant Fowell, 1789

In a space of only six months the new arrivals had destroyed a way of life that had existed for thousands of years, the Aboriginals soon realised that these invaders were committed to nothing less than total occupation of the land.

To most of the settlers the Aboriginal people were considered akin to kangaroos, dingoes and emus, to be eradicated to make way for the development of farming and grazing, this I find disgusting and I am ashamed of this part of our history as I am other parts of our history.

I have myself heard a man, educated, and a large proprietor of sheep and cattle, maintain that there was no more harm in shooting a native, than in shooting a wild dog. I have heard it maintained by others that it is the course of Providence, that blacks should disappear before the white, and the sooner the process was carried out the better, for all parties. I fear such opinions prevail to a great extent. Very recently in the presence of two clergymen, a man of education narrated, as a good thing, that he had been one of a party who had pursued the blacks, in consequence of cattle being rushed by them, and that he was sure that they shot upwards of a hundred. When expostulated with, he maintained that there was nothing wrong in it, that it was preposterous to suppose they had souls. In this opinion he was joined by another educated person present.
Bishop Polding, 1845

Now a guerrilla war had been mounted against the British during the early years of the colony, this is to be expected the natives were fighting to save their way of life and protect their own, however, for the most part the eradication of the Aboriginal people had been easy. Those who had not been killed off by disease were displaced when land was cleared for settlements and farms, this caused the Aboriginal people to become dependent on white food and clothing.

Then there is the problems that came with alcohol, since alcohol was used as a means of trade by the British and the Aboriginal people were not used to alcohol and what it does to the human body it served to further shatter traditional social and family structures.

So in the blink of an eye European civilisation had devastated and destroyed and incomparable and ancient people, this is terrible. Because the vast majority of the clans living in the Sydney area had been killed off the stories of the land have been lost forever, so much of what we know about those clans have been learnt from their archaeological remains. Thankfully shelters, engravings and art remnants of the indigenous life are prolific throughout the area but no one remains to reveal their particular meanings or significance so much is guess work.

Photo Wednesday

Hi all over the next few Wednesdays I am going to be sharing collages of my extended family starting with my sister Jeannie’s family.

Jeannie is my oldest younger sister, she has four children, Samantha, Tina, Tyler and Tom and at this stage one grandchild Hayley.

She has been in an relationship with a man named Peter for decades and considers his children and grandchildren as her own, he has three children and I think three or four grandchildren as well, they are not included in the collage though as I don’t have photos of them.

 

It’s Tuesday & I Went Shopping For School Clothes For Leo and Other Dribble

Hello everyone, another stinking hot day here, but thankfully it has gotten too hot too early as I start this at 7.45am it is nice, I have the front and back doors open again and soon I will be going in to change my clothes so I can go shopping. It is time to go shopping for school pants for Leo and school shoes, yes we have a couple of pairs of school shoes but he goes though 4 or 5 pairs of shoes a year. Now I know many of you are wondering why his mother isn’t going shopping for his school stuff, well she would if I told her to do so but I am going to Kmart today anyway and don’t mind doing it for her and she will be the one paying for the stuff.

Ok here I am again it is now 10.15am, I am home and the air conditioners are going so the house should soon cool down. I have gone and done my shopping that I wanted to do, I bought Leo 2 new pairs of long school pants and another pair of school shoes so he now has 3 pairs of school shoes, hopefully they will see us through the first half of the year.

Now as you all know it gets stinking bloody hot here, today is going to be around 41°c at the moment in is about 30°c anyway not the point. As hot as it gets Leo has decided that he will not wear shorts, a number of times last month I would tell him to change into school shorts and he would sometimes change but when it came time to leave I would tell him to get in the car while I went to the toilet and when he was getting out of the car at the school I noticed he had changed back into long pants…………….grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

So I have told Jessica if he will not wear shorts what am I to do other then make sure he has long school pants to wear that will not make him over heat too much. She said make him wear the shorts easy for her to say she isn’t the one dealing with him and let’s be honest here I cannot be bothered having that fight with him before school. I do not like him to go to school in a bad mood.

Back to me I like it when I can get out do some shopping and be home again all by 10 or 11am, I am not one to be doing stuff all day, many times in the past people have said what’s your rush you have all day, yeah but I don’t want to be all day doing stuff.

Last Friday when I was shopping I bought a bottle of Port and mentioned to Tim if he wanted to have some he could, he says I don’t like Port much, since when Tim, since when, many times you have drunk my Port but if you don’t like it all the more for me. That said you all know I am not a big drinker yes I drink and yes from time to time I may even get drunk but getting drunk isn’t the norm for me two, three or four drinks are usually enough for me and I don’t have strong drinks, I drown the Port or whatever liqueur I am drinking in Coke so four drinks for me may be equal to two drinks for someone else and I never drink anything neat.

Tim just walked in he is on split shifts all week well I think he said he is on them all week I could ask him but he gets annoyed when I ask at times so not doing that, he is home for about 3 hours before he goes back to work for another 3 hours.

Some of you may wonder if I buy stuff for my other grandchildren, well not really did buy Blain a new school hat on Friday but his parents usually buy his school stuff and of course Kathy buys for Sydney-May so no I don’t need to, Jessica can do these things she just often doesn’t want to.

How often do you think as you are putting on an item of clothing or taking it off that you really should bin the item, you think that but you still put it on or toss it in the wash, I am sure I am not the only person who does that. I have been meaning to toss this bra I am wearing for the last month or two and still I am wearing it. I can be just as bad with knickers and other bloody clothes or to be honest if the clothes were in fact bloody I might indeed toss them in the bin, just saying.

I just found and put in my bag Leo’s stationary list for the stuff he will need this year at school, I meant to shove it in my bag before I went out but didn’t oh well it is in my bag now and I will have a look for the stuff on Friday.

At the moment Tim is watching the Benny Hill show, I could never stand Benny Hill he got on my nerves but since I wasn’t watching anything I have said nothing.