Family History Writing Challenge 2018 starts Feb 1

Every February for the last several years Lynn Palermo has run the Family History Writing Challenge.

Lynn Palermo, who is also known as The Armchair Genealogist   sets out some good reasons to join the challenge:

Why Should You Join the Challenge? 
•    Do you have a desire to turn your ancestor’s dry documents into exciting stories? 
•    Have you procrastinated for far too long?
•    Do you want to start but not sure how to begin?
•    Have you been writing sporadically never finishing a story?
•    Do you need to polish those stories making them more interesting, less of a yawn?
•    Do you need that nudge to finish your stories and finally publish?
•    Are you overwhelmed and need some support in getting started?

I'm so glad I stumbled across Lynn's Family History Writing Challenge  several years ago. It has helped me complete two family history books. I keep coming back and have done the Challenge three times now.

This time around I will be writing about my father, Bede Smith and I have several posts about him already on this blog. I've been working on my book about Bede for about 18 months and hope to finish this year.

A stranger in town

Henry Lawson in 1900. Portrait by John Longstaff in the Art Gallery of NSW collection

A stranger in town

In the early days, Leeton was accustomed to welcoming outsiders. But one stranger who arrived in the district in 1916, attracted particular attention.

My father Bede was only seven at the time. He and his mother Alice were on the main street of town, when a curious disheveled man approached from the opposite direction. He was tall, thin and stooped over a cane. His coat hung loosely on his back and a baggy felt hat covered his head. A drooping, handlebar moustache extended out beyond his jaw line.

'Mum,' said Bede. 'Look at that man's huge whiskers!'
'Sssht, Bede. Don't stare.'

Bede's eyes locked onto the stranger's penetrating gaze. A pungent cloud of tobacco smoke enveloped them as he passed. Alice remember the man from her home town of Gulgong, but he didn't recognise Alice.

'Son, that's the famous author, Henry Lawson. He lives in a farmhouse by the river, down on the Daalbata Road.' Bede turned to look back at the faltering figure receding down the dirt road.

Henry Lawson's friends from Sydney had helped him relocate to Leeton, a dry town, where he could get off the grog and pick up the pen again. Henry stayed two years in Leeton from 1916 to 1917. Among the orange groves by the Murrumbidgee River, his writing bore fruit, producing important new works: Leeton Town and A Letter from Leeton.

Family History Writing Challenge

Bede Smith in 1909.. The ancestor I will write about in the Family History Challenge

Every February for the last several years Lynn Palermo has run the Family History Writing Challenge.

I'm so glad I stumbled across Lynn's Family History Writing Challenge several years ago. I keep coming back and have done the Challenge three times now.

It really doesn't matter what stage you are at – whether you are starting out or are more experienced at writing family history, you will benefit. It's all about setting goals, staying focussed and sharing results with a friendly bunch of fellow writers.


This time around I will be writing about my father, Bede Smith. There is a sad story behind the baby photo in that Bede's twin brother died at birth. His mother, Alice Smith was living in rural New South Wales where medical care was not close by. Bede survived and went on to live a fascinating life which I hope to capture in my writing.

Bede in the Canadian Army 1943

Capt Bede Smith, middle row seated on the left. Photo probably taken in the UK in 1943 or 1944

 The piece below is a first draft of a scene from my book about the life of Bede Smith

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Bound for Europe, 1943 

On 5 September 1943, Bede left the army transit camp in Windsor, Ontario and travelled by train to Halifax, where a carrier waited to transport the Canadian Fourth Armoured Division across the Atlantic. The SS Queen Elizabeth, had been stripped of its luxury fittings and converted into a troop ship. Repainted battleship grey, the modern ocean liner ran the Atlantic at high speed, zig-zagging to avoid encounters with enemy warships and U-boats. There were 13,000 personnel on board for the crossing. With so many troops, all needing to be berthed and fed, the operation was handled with military precision. Bede, like all the others, wore a coloured label indicating in which zone he was berthed. The ship's dining room held 2,000 and meals were served around the clock. No sooner had the last breakfast been served, than lunch began. After lunch the queues formed again for the first evening meal.

Six days after leaving Halifax, the ship landed safely in the United Kingdom. The invasion of Europe was imminent, but no one knew exactly when or where it would occur. All military intelligence was shrouded in secrecy. As it turned out, the Fourth Division would remain in the UK for another 10 months, undergoing rigorous training in an atmosphere of mounting tension.

Upon their arrival in Southampton, the Canadians were transported to a busy military camp in the town of Bordon, East Hampshire in the south of England. The once quiet country roads around Bordon growled with the flow of military vehicles coming and going. Situated in a picturesque landscape of rolling hills and lush green pastures, Bordon offered the troops some recreational opportunities off-base. Whenever he had the chance, Bede took a pass which allowed him to walk into the local town.

More than a month after arriving in Bordon, Bede was returning to barracks by foot along a winding country road. It was harvest time and the haystacks, piled high in the stubbled fields, were touched bronze by the setting sun. In the calm of the late afternoon, the only sound was his own footfall and the plaintive bleating of a lamb. Bede stopped along the road to inspect a flock of black-faced sheep curiously eyeing him from behind the hedgerow. Just then, true to form, a soft drizzle began to fall. The road became shiny and slick with oil residue – time to hurry back to barracks. He quickened his pace.

All of a sudden, came a loud rumble from behind. A vehicle bore down on him. There was a screech of brakes. Bede had no time to react before a truck loomed up and flung him side-ways into the ditch. He hit the ground with a thud, doubling over in pain.

A few yards up ahead the Bedford truck pulled over, its engine still running. A cloud of acrid smoke wafted back and Bede felt himself starting to retch. The driver leapt down from the truck cabin and ran back to where Bede sat dazed on the ground.

'Bloody hell. Sorry, mate. I didn't see you. That bend in the road. Are you OK?'
Bede looked down. The wool of his khaki army jacket was torn at the elbow. He tried to move and sit up, but winced in pain.
'Damn. It's my arm,' Bede said, a sharp tone to his voice.
His hand and arm had taken the full brunt of the fall. Blood congealed around a wound on his hand which was dirty with grit and gravel.
Bede tried to flex his hand.
'Ouch! Christ!'

The truck driver moved in closer. He was a pale, freckled young lad, with a cigarette hanging from his lower lip. He stared down at Bede and flicked his cigarette on the ground.
'Blimey. You're as white as a sheet.'
Bede sat up and moved his arm and shoulder again.
'I hope it's not broken,' he said, trying to remain civil.

Bede felt like he'd done ten rounds in the boxing ring and was down for the count. Finally he pulled himself up to his full height, shook himself off and straightened his uniform. The pants were soaked through from the muddy ditch.

At this point the driver, observing his rank, started up again.
'I'm dreadfully sorry, Captain.'
'Look. I'm OK.' This lad was starting to annoy him now.
'I'll take you to Bordon Camp.'
'That would make sense,' Bede said, a slight tone of sarcasm in his voice.

In the dwindling light they drove back to the army base. The driver attempted to make conversation, but Bede was occupied with his own thoughts. The injury weighed heavily on him. Some years previously, he had hurt himself playing cricket. Since then, he'd been plainly aware that his hands were his lifeline. Any accident could derail his future career in dentistry. And he hadn't even seen action in this war. He tried to put such bleak thoughts aside and remain calm.

It was dark by the time they saw the lights of Bordon Camp and drove through the security gates. Bede directed the driver to the front door of the hospital, where he hauled himself down from the truck and went indoors to find the duty doctor.

Harvest Past Tense Group Anthology 2017

Our writing group recently published an anthology of members' writing. The title is Harvest:  Anthology of the Past Tense Writing Group at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre. Below is one of my memoir pieces that appeared in Harvest.

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Visits to Labrador

Our visits to Labrador are always on a Sunday when no one else is around. On these occasions, Dad drives into town and parks opposite in the grounds of the colonial hospital. Labrador – a strange name for a building. Mum says it's also the name of a dog that lives on a rocky island off the coast of Canada. But my Labrador is the four-storey terrace building where Dad has his dental surgery.

Sometimes, we see a scruffy old lady with a pile of canvas bags, camped outside Labrador. Dressed in sand shoes, a full-length dark coat and a green tennis shade, she scares me, especially when she shouts out strange words.

'She's speaking Shakespeare,' Dad says. 'She went to the university and lost her marbles.'

I hold my breath as I run past her, to avoid breathing in her smelly old socks.

The building has an old-fashioned cage lift of ornate iron work. After we press the black metal button, the lift comes clanging down from the top floor and shudders to a stop at the ground floor. You pull down on the iron door handle and step inside an open cage that ascends slowly, past all the other tenants, their doors locked on Sunday.

Once inside the surgery, we always make a circuit around the benches, picking up the tiny brown pottery jars and fingering the neatly laid out rows of spikey instruments. Dad lets us mix the amalgam for the fillings, putting the liquid mercury into a china bowl and crushing it with the pestle. The mercury breaks into tiny little droplets that dance around the bottom of the bowl, until he adds some extra ingredient to form a silvery lump.

I climb into the dentist's chair, like queen of the realm, while my sister pumps the foot pedal to send me upwards. The drill has a shrill, noisy motor and Dad ties a ball of cotton wool onto the rotating wire and tell us to 'watch the rabbit going around'. One Sunday I need a filling and Dad asks me to be the guinea pig to try out his new drill. He has just acquired a thrilling new-fangled model that makes a fast whizzing noise and sprays water at the same time. It's all over so quickly. I am always encouraged to be very brave and to this day my dentist can't believe how calm I am in the chair.

Then, one day Dad breaks the news that Labrador has been bought by the bank and is to be bulldozed. In 1958, the site was subsumed for a massive commercial development in the heart of Sydney. Out of the rubble of old Labrador, rose the headquarters of the Reserve Bank of Australia at the corner of Macquarie Street and Martin Place. The eccentric old lady we used to see outside the building, turned out to be the well-known eccentric, Bea Miles, whose life was depicted by Kate Grenville in her novel, Lilian's Story.