If you’re looking for a City that buzzes, then Melbourne is for you. A population of 4.5 million, construction cranes and boring drills reflects a city that has no intention of staying static. We stayed on William Street at the Carlton Suites Gateway just on the banks of the Yarra River. The thing that many of us were anticipating most about this city visit, wasn’t the historic sites, the museums, the sporting arenas. No this visit promised us the sheer unadulterated pleasure that only the presence of washing machines in our rooms can bring to errant and sweaty travellers. Although only 10 days into our 4 week trip this was a critical requirement.
For me Melbourne was all about people; meeting up with family whom we hadn’t seen for over 50 years. Two members of my fathers family emigrated to Australia in the 1960’s; the Hastie’s and the Cruickshanks relocated to the suburbs of Victoria but close enough to retain contact with each other. Our visit to the area reflected a lot of Scottish heritage in the Victoria address book but there were also elements of Irish, Dutch and Aboriginal names on the roads and highways we travelled. Melbourne was a penal colony built by convicts, unlike the free settlers of Adelaide and Perth. The £10 fares encouraged many hard working honest people to relocate to the area. This included my family.
I was excited to be able to catch up with the Hastie’s on our first night in Melbourne. Only 3 of the original 4 who arrived in 1964 remained, but they had added 6 children and 3 grandchildren to the brood in the interim years. My Aunt, now in her 86th year had not lost one ounce of her West Lothian accent, other than her grey hair she had the same smile and was instantly recognisable when I emerged from the elevator. Both of her children, my cousins, had Australian accents but proudly claimed they still had British Passports. My eldest cousin, a tall, beautiful woman with golden brown hair and instantly recognisable eyes, I had not seen for over 56 years. She had never been back home. Married now to an Australian with 3 children and 2 grandchildren. She was a bit of an enigma to me when we were small, I was always looking up to her. My lasting memory of her was playing on the swings the week she was leaving for a better life and how I cried. Behind her beautiful blue eyes, however there dances a dark shadow, a heartbreaking loss so raw and so personal it threatened to destroy her family.
At the age of 19 her daughter Brodie took her own life, subjected to workplace bullying. This tragedy, when it happened was a mystery to us in Scotland since no-one could articulate the story without a guttural pain chocking back the words and us too polite to probe. Since that time my cousin has campaigned for Brodie’s law to make bullying a criminal offence. And she has achieved it, now running the Brodie’s Law foundation she tirelessly works to improve organisations and highlight the impact of workplace bullying. If I looked up to her as a child, I was even more impressed now with the strong, powerful woman before me.
My other cousin, her brother, bore an incredible resemblance to his dad, even as a baby I’m sure he had a moustache, I can hardly recall seeing him without it. He struck me as the one holding the family together, stepping into his father’s shoes. He held family dear in his heart and had organised this reunion, despite being awful at managing messages the importance of maintaining links was not lost on him. He clearly played a role when he lost his niece; the entire family had been impacted. And he was also out to see the newest Hastie currently residing in Brisbane when she arrived to cement the family ties so necessary when you first move here.
The Cruickshanks, dad’s sister and her family moved here from East Lothian in the 1960’s too. My cousin, his wife and their daughter met up with us in the Yarra Valley. My cousin and one of his son’s had visited Scotland recently but it was still great to meet his wife and daughter. Still resident in the same place they arrived to all those years ago they took us out to the Dandenong’s to provide us with an ariel view of Melbourne’s skyline. However the poor weather put paid to that as the mountain was swathed in mist and rain. We needed umbrellas for our visit and for a bit it felt just like being at home. Once the mist cleared however, we had an amazing panorama of the central business district’s high rise blocks in Melbourne.
The Sky Centre also boasts an English garden and play area for kids with a restaurant and banners celebrating the location as a wedding venue. Large totemic sculptures by the famous artist William Ricketts stand proudly around the gardens and are truly stunning examples of what you can do with a chainsaw. On our drive out to the Sky Centre the depth and sheer density of the woodland was a stark reminder about the threat my family live with at the time of fires. My cousin pointed out homes within the forest with debris on the roofs that made them vulnerable to fire. He explained that you need to put a tennis ball in the gutter to block the down pipe and fill the gutter with water to stop fire spreading.
We made up for the delay in commencing our sight seeing caused by the weather by sharing family stories, of our grandparents, aunties and uncles and cousins now living elsewhere in Australia; Newcastle, Airlie beach and Rockhampton. This cousin played Australian rules football and was good at it, we had newspaper cuttings to prove it, sent by a proud mother to my father over 50 years before. I had intended to bring them with me on this visit but forgot them. As his wife and daughter are currently logging the club’s history they were delighted we had kept these and I have promised to send them on. My second cousin I had already met through Facebook so it was wonderful to meet her in the flesh, say what you like about this form of social media but the connectivity to family across the globe is a truly wonderful thing. I knew what her son looked like, how he was doing in school, the family time they spent together. We bonded over a short ride to a local village and she filled me in on the family and how they were all doing. Proud of her roots she had wonderful stories about her grandmother (my aunt) and the close bond they shared, we drove past their old home in Coldstream and I could imagine them living there. We took a stroll to Olinda where the shops and restaurants are individual, quirky but friendly. The Lion, overhearing a Scottish Accent stopped to speak to the gentlemen only to discover that he was from Edinburgh and his brother lived in our town!
Melbourne gave me a great feeling of belonging, not so much with the city. It did however give me family time, so precious on this trip and it’s also the place where I made new friends……………
Life’s little dramas blog 