Cuppa@Sues

  This is a deep story made on the My Heritage site using a photo of Joyce Ferguson. You choose the voice (although her accent is not Ulster Irish, it is the best they have at the moment). Writing the script and coordinating the other photos is reasonably straightforward.

     This is Smilax Glyciphylla, or Native Sarsaparilla, that grows in my native garden in Jerrabomberra.  As you make your cup of tea and sit down to look at my blog, consider our early settlers and their tea. Although tea was popular among all classes in Britain by the 1780s, including it in the first fleet rations was not considered necessary. In the first months of settlement (by observing Aboriginals), convicts and marines found the native sarsaparilla leaf. Due to its saccharine-like sweetness, it gained the name sweet tea. It was universally enjoyed by convicts, marines and officers, who drank it avidly as a restorative and possibly a health tonic- it was thought to be a cure for scurvy. Indeed  Smilax  leaves and berries were used medicinally by Aboriginal people. Naval Officer William Bradley wrote: We also found a plant that grew about the rocks & amongst the underwood entwined, the leaves, of which boiled, made a pleasant drink & was used...

My great-grandmother, Christina Ferguson, is cutting the cake at the coronation street party in 1953! She was the oldest resident in Park Street Larne at the time. Everyone was enthusiastically celebrating the coronation, at least in Protestant Northern Ireland. They listened to the service on the radio and later watched newsreels at the local picture theatre. I wish my great Aunt Jeanie standing on her left, had taken her pinnie off for the photo. This was a party in the next street; I wonder where all the chairs came from? I do love that children are seated, and the adults are standing.  A bonus ration of sugar and margarine was allowed during the coronation period to allow meat-paste sandwiches, cakes, biscuits, and jellies to be served.

  Born in England and based in New South Wales, Marsden was a Church Missionary Society (CMS) member. His work and that of his missionaries helped build trust with  Māori  chiefs, paving the way for the acceptance of an official Crown presence in New Zealand. Marsden protested to the British authorities about the trade in Māori heads, the involvement of the British in tribal conflicts, and lawlessness in Kororāreka, a mixed-race settlement in the Bay of Islands. (this is where my family story joins with Samuel Marsden) He helped convince the Governor of New South Wales to support the appointment of a British Resident in New Zealand to deal with perceived anarchy in British settlements – a crucial link in the chain of events that ultimately led to Britain deciding to seek sovereignty over New Zealand. This sketch is Samuel Marsden preaching the first sermon to Māori chiefs from the Bay of Islands on Christmas Day, 1814. He visited New Zealand many times, supporting th...

Kia Ora! This means wishing you well from my 3 times great-grandmother Kotiro Hinerangi of Ngati Ruanui iwi from Taranaki. Here I am I standing with Sandy, a local Maori elder outside our Marae near Howera in the North Island. Kotiro had an adventurous life, even by today's standards! Her father was a chief who was beheaded by a raiding party, then she was taken and given to Hone Heke as a Slave.He then gifted her to the first white setler in Kororareka,Alexander Gray,a gunsmith.In 1830 at the Paihai Church they were married by William Williams.They had four children together,and when Alexander Gray died in 1839 she married William Lord,a shopkeeper with whom she had a daughter, Lucy. Kotiro didn't like Hone Heke and contemptuously refered to him as a "upoko poaka"(pigs head).This caused Hone Heke and his Tua Muru of 150 men to break into William Lord's shop, carry her off and then set about ransacking Kororareka then cutting down the flag pole, thus starting ...