marvellous May book & History festival events

Hi all, here is a reminder of a few upcoming book and other events in May, including some SA History Festival events. These include:

Market

9^th May - Meander Markets – I will be at Meander Markets at North Adelaide with my 4 books (and art postcards!) along with fellow local authors Helmine Kemp and Fay Patterson.

SA History Festival Stuff

13^th May – I will present to the German and Continental Family History Group of Genealogy SA on the ‘German Connection’ in my book ‘Paving the Way.’ More information is here.

15^th May – OFFICIAL launch of ‘Paving the Way: Pioneer Ancestors from England, Ireland, Prussia and Bavaria to South Australia and New Zealand,’ in conversation with Dr Lainie Anderson. I will be discussing pioneering women in the family history. Ngutungka Henley (Henley Beach Library), 378 Seaview Road, Henley Beach. City of Charles Sturt. Only 10 tickets left! Bookings here.

Month of May – Pioneers of Campbelltown library display. I wrote a couple of little stories for posters for the Pioneers Association of South Australia display at the #campbelltowncitycouncil Campbelltown Public Library for the #SouthAustralianHistoryFestival2026, based on Paving the Way. These were on the #Lomman family of #Paradise and #Athelstone and the #Heading family of #campbelltown. There are avenues named after both families in the district (Lomman Ave, Newton and Heading Ave, Campbelltown). The Lomman family poster is on display.

Podcasts and media

I recently spoke to Steve Davis and Keith Conlan about my book for 432nd episode of The Adelaide Show podcast. The duo is also having their own musical / history event during the SA History festival, tickets available here.

I also spoke to CLARE FM (Ireland) about ‘Paving the Way’, particularly the Irish ancestors, and this is now available on YouTube here.

Sisters in Crime SA

28^th May – Sisters in Crime SA chapter event – I will be speaking with Mercedes Mercier and Eve Thomson about their new crime fiction books, ‘The Couples Retreat’ and ‘Smother.’ Bookings available at Humanitix here. All welcome.

National Reconciliation Week

It is also National Reconciliation Week 27 May to 3^rd June. 27^th May was the date of the referendum in 1967 which led to recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Australian Constitution and enabled them to be counted within the census (not the date enabling Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to vote which was 21 May 1961).

Below I have summarised and put into one place below some of my recent FB posts on the ‘Paving the Way’ book (with a bit of added stuff). Apologies for cross-posting.

The Gramp family – Pioneer Winemakers

The family history was written on and off across about 30 years, starting with knowing nothing about my paternal biological grandmother to finding out some very interesting stories about her Prussian/Bavarian and Irish lines, and discovering I'm the great-great-great granddaughter of pioneer Barossa Valley winemaker, Bavarian Johann Gramp (pictured below), who came from Hamburg to Kangaroo Island before working in Port Adelaide surveying with Colonel William Light (image of self-portrait below) and William Jacobs and building the first wharf for the South Australia company, being a baker in Adelaide and then living in Hope Valley and the Barossa Valley.

Kavel's people

My Schulz ancestors were the first boatload of Kavel's people on the 'Prince George', fleeing religious persecution and settling in Klemzig (named after their hometown) before moving to the Barossa Valley. There were two Schulz families that settled there, and it was only through DNA testing that I recently realised that they were related (an older son and his father/mother and siblings). The sites in Klemzig where they both settled are marked in a memorial. Below is an image from a painting of Klemzig, South Australia, by George Fife Angas.

There are also some interesting (and tragic) contemporary stories about interaction with the Ramindjeri (Encounter Bay), Ngadjuri (Barossa Valley) and Kaurna people (around Paradise) the latter of which has been used in contemporary Aboriginal cultural training at City of Campbelltown. This includes with the Rumbelow, Heading/Lomman and Gramp/Schulz families, the latter of which were involved in Lutheran missions in the SA and NT. I have tried to include all such interactions in the family history and as part of acknowledging the past. I had a cultural consultation on the book (with Angie Faye Martin) and also consulted with Dr Skye Krichauff from Adelaide University on this.

The Irish Fahy connection

The Fahy ancestors came from Clare, Ireland to work on the Kapunda mines. My 2xGG Uncle Michael O'Leary was an ostler (horse handler) and died in 1869 at the back of the Sir John Franklin Hotel at Kapunda (where he lived/worked) of apoplexy a few weeks after being kicked by a horse. He is meant to be one of the ghosts at the hotel, and is written about in one of Allen Tiller's books on Kapunda! @sirjohnfranklinhotel Allen Tiller The ghosts at the hotel have been investigated by #AdelaideHauntedHorizonsGhostTours

I researched prominent South Australian Edward Stirling (below), after which Stirling is named, as my Irish great-great grandfather Edmund Fahy was bonded to him at Kapunda...I discovered that Edward Stirling was beneficiary of the slave trade and also the son of a Creole (West African heritage) woman from Jamaica (care of an article written by great-great granddaughter of Stirling, Beth Robertson). I did not know this and was surprised to see a photo of him (below). Just as I only found out that Colonel William Light was half Malaysian via my trip to Malaysia in 2015!

The Lomman and Heading Families of Paradise, Athelstone and Campbelltown

The Lomman family came to South Australia on the ship 'John' in 1840. 3x great grandfather Henry had land at Paradise, Athelstone, Fifth Creek and Black Hill and his daughter remembered seeing large corroborees of 500 #Kaurna people along the Torrens at Paradise Bridge (MacDonnell Bridge). Henry donated land for the #Athelstone Gorge Primitive Methodist Church which had its foundation stone laid in 1861. Whilst his brother John Lomman attended the Pioneers Dinner in 1875, sadly Henry did not because his life unravelled and after being sent to the #oldadelaidegaol (for attempting to shoot his eldest son) he was tried but let off with a 100 pound fine (!), he later went to the Adelaide and then Parkside Asylums (was one of the first inmates there), and his wife Martha nee Strong (!) was left to manage the land/farms with their eldest son, with a Lunacy Petition required to manage the land. Many of their children signed the #southaustralianwomens Suffrage Petition 1894.

One of their children, Martha Ann Lomman married John Heading, who arrived with his parents and siblings on the Joseph Rowan in 1854. Martha and John had 15 children - one of which was my great grandmother Ada (the eldest, pictured here with her daughters). The Heading family were market gardeners around Campbelltown, and devout Methodists. John was the Superintendent of the Campbelltown Methodist Sunday School and a Constable for the Athelstone area. Martha and John celebrated their 50-year wedding anniversary - with one of their sons giving them a bag of gold sovereigns.

One of John and Martha's sons Joseph Henry Heading went to Murtho, outside of Paringa (near Renmark), to farm - Headings Cliffs are named after that branch of the family. One of the notable family members was Sir James Alfred Heading CMG DCM (1884-1969), son of John's brother William, who served in WWI, went to Queensland where he farmed on cattle stations and became a Minister for Public Works, Local Government and Immigration in Sir Francis Nicklin's Queensland government. Information on and a link to the SA Pioneers Association display at the library is here. https://events.humanitix.com/pioneers-of-campbelltown-connections-to-the-past

World War Stuff and ANZAC Day

The Rumbelow brothers

Samuel Godfrey Rumbelow (27 Dec 1893 - 24th April 1920) died in 1920 on the evening before ANZAC Day and the photo of him below is circa 1920. He set up the first tourist business in Victor Harbor and drowned rescuing a tourist. This story was recently on the A Colourful History page, with this photo and Samuel's charabanc in a full colour display.

Sadly, his older brother Frank Rumbelow died 3 years earlier aged 23 in August 1915 in WW1 and is buried in Belgium. No wonder my grandmother (their sister) reportedly hated 'The Last Post.’ Frank and Samuel were the two eldest boys and there were 4 other children. Three daughters (the 4th child my grandmother) and one son survived. As reported earlier, I found Frank’s WW1 postcard photo (below) framed at a Strathalbyn antique shop in 2019…when I opened it up it had Frank’s handwriting on the back! It was addressed to his auntie Hilda, my great grandmother’s sister. 

My great grandmother Ada Heading married Godfrey Rumbelow and her much younger sister Hilda Heading married Herbert Rumbelow, Godfrey's nephew. The photo of Frank came with 3 other photos who are 1) Ada and Hilda's father John Heading (above) 2) Hilda’s husband Herbert Rumbelow (who also went to WWI), and I have just discovered that the 3rd was Lindsay ‘Lin’ Shannon, Herbert’s cousin who served in WWII.

WWI: Whose son are you?

When I was writing 'Paving the Way' I reflected on how (working class) mothers were targeted in war propaganda. A classic is the 'Whose son are you? poster (below). As I write: "Under this slogan, pictured at left, is a man with waistcoat and hat with his fancily dressed mother’s arms wrapped around his neck, declaring ‘I didn’t raise my son to be a soldier’. A second big-bosomed mother on the right, with plainer clothing, is more distantly spaced from her soldier son, shaking his hand whilst patting him on the back and replying to the first mother ‘I did’. Between the divide of these clearly distinguished women are the words ‘Enlist today’."

When I researched the family history, I found 15 people who went to WWI (I have since found more!), with 6 never to return as they lie in France and Belgium. The closest to me was my Grandfather Stephen William White, who adopted my father upon his return (little would he know he would descend from the first Prussians/Bavarian Germans to arrive in SA!). He married Margaret Holman, whose fiancé had died in the war. Two of her brothers (Frederick and Joseph), her uncle and cousin also went to war, with her uncle George John Vierk (age 38) and cousin Harry Frederick Dixon both buried in Villers-Bretonneux, France. That did not stop her brother Frederick Holman from serving in WWII. Frank's cousins on his mum's side (Sir) James Alfred Heading and Alf Heading also went to WWI, with Alf buried in France (age 20). In my stepfather’s family, 7 of the Battams men in his line went to WWI and some went to WWII, and two of them are buried overseas - Joseph Wesley Battams (aged 23) in France and Fredrick Stanley Battams (age 23), in Warneton, France. All that returned from the cousins were, from Joseph, a black cat and kangaroo charm and, from Fredrick, a small German calendar and military rejection certificate, as he had also once been declared unfit for service. Many of the Battams men also served in WWII. Lest we Forget.

Miss Mary Mae Battams

Miss Mary (Mae) Battams (1897-1974) was an amazing woman in my stepfather’s family (his 1C1R). She became completely blind at the age of 9 following a brain operation but did not let her disability get in the way of living a full life. Her many activities included 'weaving, typewriting, sewing, memorising Scripture, hiking, composing poetry, making raffia work, and playing the piano, organ and violin.' (The Mail, 1932). She had memorised 200 chapters of the Bible, 100 hymns, and 60 other pieces of music, and wrote poetry. She could identify a range of birds through their birdsong, as well as plants by their crushed leaves. She sewed and knitted her own clothes. She regularly walked along West Beach on her own, and had a shack at Glenelg North/West Beach, where she would swim with the assistance of a piece of rope tied to a hut. She was reported to be the first blind woman in Australia to learn weaving and learnt chair caning at the Royal Institute for the Blind. She translated hundreds of children's stories, books, and educational resources into Braille. She was also an inventor, and her inventions included 'a wool winder, a board to teach blind children Braille, a money counter, a measure to stop tea overflowing and other gadgets to make life easier' ...Her inventions were used across Australia, England, America, and Egypt (Sydney Morning Herald, 1953). She said that 'the secret to happiness is in being busy in the service of others and in always looking on the bright side of things.' (The News, 1949). As detailed in historian Catherine Bishop's 2021 book on missionary Annie Lock, at age 35 Mary Battams travelled around Australia with Annie Lock, with one six-week journey to Ooldea Soak being over 650 kilometres across the Nullarbor by horse and buggy. She lived at Croydon and left in her will the land that the Church of Nazarene is now on. (picture below courtesy Marilyn Rodda). #disability #disabilityawareness #annielock #marybattams Thanks Catherine Bishop for reintroducing me to her!

Extraordinarily, just after I wrote the above post, I was asked to speak about my books at Townsend Retirement Village, where Miss Mary Mae Battams studied as a young girl. Here is a photo of me there, with Stacey Appleton.

Schools and Class

I have been very privileged to have had a good education in the public school system and gone on to study a degree and PhD at Flinders University (and Honors in Sociology at the University of Tasmania). A long way from the illiterate ancestors! My mother used to say that in her day (when she was growing up in the 1930s and 40s), people who went to university didn’t speak to the likes of her ‘class.’

It wasn’t that long ago that a classroom had 56 children in it! This is my mum's class at #Alberton Primary School, taken circa 1940-42 (WWII years). My mum is second to top row, fourth from the left. She went on to the 'Port Adelaide Girls Technical High School, which was established in 1940. #Alberton #portadelaide #History #southaustralia

My parents and their families settled around the Queenstown/Port Adelaide/Semaphore region, and I have some very old photos of these areas from ‘Old Grandpa White,’ who returned to the area after having soldier settlement land at Minnipa on the Eyre Peninsula (see post on our trip back to Minnipa here). See the Semaphore memorial photo below shortly after its construction - something I walk past about 5 times a week!