Indelible Adventures

The Prologue: This week was interesting for a number of reasons!   I got a lot of great feedback, comments and emails on my blog last week “The Amazing Tales of Grandfather Conolly”.  It seems that the blog really hit a cord with a lot of you.   It helped spark new conversations with your parents and grandparents, it helped uncover a bunch of stories long forgotten within families but most of it helped start a family conversation with some stunning and unusual finds.   I had two great personal “finds” coming out of last week as well. The first encouraging sign was when my eldest brother (Gary) emailed me.  He is by definition our family historian and I was pleasantly surprised given that he had over the years compiled a deep and rich history of the Conolly side of the family.  He emailed to say that he had read my blogs and that he really enjoyed the various stories, ending with his love, support and further encouragement for my wri...

I only ever met one of my four grandparents….my grandmother on my mum’s side.   I could never work out why she didn’t like us as kids but as I got older mum shared the stories that aren’t dinner table conversation let’s say, but it all made for some great laughs and interesting insights as to why we weren’t favored. It all started with my Grandfather – Henry Montgomery Foxley-Conolly, yes quite the mouthful really, born and raised in London, England in with his roots squarely set in Ireland (how could it not with a name like Conolly).  He came from wealthy stock and so growing up quite grandly with some prestige and privilege.   University changed all that – rumor has it that it was Cambridge; well what can I say except that he had a deep appreciation for “ wine, women & song ” rather than his studies and so brought a fair amount of disrepute on the family, and so tarnishing their good name! His family apparently tried a number of remedies, but fin...

I often get asked why I blog…the answer is simple!   The answer lies in the meaning of life – too deep?   Well, sort of.   It hit me like a “ ton of bricks ” when my dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and I was sitting beside his hospital bed in rural Australia that early  September day in 2010.    It was the deep and unrelenting sadness that comes with such a finite judgment.   As I sat there I soon realized that I didn’t know much about my dad’s life and I vowed then and there that I was going to find a way to share my life stories with my kids so that they knew exactly who I was and what had shaped my life…well before the final curtain is drawn on me - hence my weekly blog! I learned that my dad was a fascinating person who had led a tough but extremely varied, experientially rich and simple life.  Over the ensuring weeks he told me dozens of stories, sometimes sad, often funny and more often than not the...