[BITList] This and that

[HUGH MCINTYRE]

It's been an odd day, and not only because it's the 23rd.  As has been happening recently, some prat (probably deaf) revved up a car around 3.30 this morning and wakened Mrs Mac who has hearing like whatever has hearing like her. I slept through the revving up, but was wakened by Janet opening the venetian blind and muttering dourly at the driver, etc,  The etc involved a trip downstairs on some errand.  It was after 5 before I got to sleep again. I could hear rain pelting down, but when I got up at 8.00 there had been no rain whatever, and the sky was utterly cloudless.  I have no idea what I heard as rain.  This afternoon there will be a chorus of grass cutting, but not ours - we cut it all yesterday.

So I've been out and got milk and fruit juices various plus bread for toasting. Janet is out with daughter No 1 of 2.  I had a go at reinstating my Xerox printer, having stripped and cleaned it after it behaved erratically and leaked black ink everywhere.  Now the carriage will not centre, so I've unplugged it for further investigation and plugged the Lexmark back in.  Lexmark cartridges are expensive and hardly give any service before defaulting to red then expiring.  Even when a new cartridge is installed, it still claims it's out of ink.

I've followed the Gympie story with interest.  When I was gearing up to join BI in 1956 I had one thought in mind - to get to Australia for the '56 Olympics. I had it all worked out.  But things didn't proceed as quickly as all that, and instead I got to Calcutta on Chakdara somewhat after the Games.  So the closest I ever got to Australia was rounding the Cape on that trip, outward bound -Suez was open on the way back.  The first recorded member of my direct ancestral family to go down under was William Henderson, my great grandfather, in around 1889. He went alone, and I assume he meant to send for the family, but he never did, and the family gravestone in Port Glasgow says he died in Australia in 1891.  That may well be true, but it is nowhere recorded, even in Australia. One of his sons followed in 1911 with his wife.  She died in 1935 and he in 1954, both in Brisbane, and they left no children.  My grandmother stayed at home, hence I wasn't born in Australia.  I have numerous cousins of various degrees in both NZ and Oz, from later and earlier migrations. One branch in NZ got there in the 1850s from Scotland via Canada then Australia.  Another went direct to Oz in 1841.  Actually the latter were early £10 Poms, since they went out under a scheme sponsoring agricultural workers.  Both husband and wife alleged that was what they were (I have a copy of the Entitlement Certificate), but he was a silk handloom weaver in Paisley and she was a housewife. They didn't do all that much agricultural work, and they settled around Murrumbateman.

While on £10 Poms, I saw a TV programme a few months back on that topic.  One chap went out and hated it, but for some reason couldn't come back at that point - he was saving up to return and never quite making it.  He was still there 17 years later, totally Australian, with no thought of ever returning to the UK.  I went to Denmark in July 1965, and within a couple of months there were 13 of us from the Lower Clyde, Tyne Tees and Barrow. Of the 13, one died there, one went to Canada and another to the USA.  By 1967 only 2 of the remaining 10 had settled in Denmark (they are still there) - the rest went home to the UK.  The moral of that tale is, learn to recognise a good thing when you see it.  I knew I had made a mistake before I set foot on the plane at Copehagen.

I'm hungry.

Hugh.
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