This won’t be of any interest to others, but I’m going to blog about it anyway so that I remember this feeling of having my mind just slightly blown.
There are two threads to this story, and I’ll start with the more recent one. The two threads lead to a connection.
In July 2021, while I was working at Deakin University, a new staff member joined our team. I was instantly drawn to her – she was warm and down to earth and just the right person for the role we had.
Airdre, for that is her name, joined our team remotely – we were still in the throes of COVID lockdowns – from Lismore in northern NSW. We finally met in person in Melbourne in December 2021, a month after I’d been made redundant and days after Airdre finished her 6-month contract.
We got on like the proverbial house on fire.
In early January 2023, my mother and I visited Airdre in her beautiful home in Lismore, on our way north to Queensland.
Since then, Airdre has moved to Melbourne and we’ve co-authored a book together, titled Enacting a Pedagogy of Kindness to be published later this year (I thought a little plug wouldn’t go astray).
That was thread one. Thread two is a tiny bit more convoluted. Bear with me.
Some members of the family have been engaged in a photography challenge that’s been going for a few years now. We have a weekly theme, take photos that align (tangentially in some cases) with the theme, post them to our Facebook group and then we catch up over Zoom for a chat each Sunday night. The active members of the group are spread across three states of Australia, with others joining sporadically from other states and the UK.
Our theme last week was ‘flat’. I had taken a photo a few years ago of Pittaway St, in Kangaroo Flat (near Bendigo) and so posted that image. It’s not often I see a street sign with my name on it and I remember being quite chuffed at its existence.
I had done a search some time ago for the Pittaway of Kangaroo Flat the street was named after and had discovered a William Pittaway, convict, sentenced to 14 years in Van Diemen’s Land for sacrilege (he stole some church silverware and was caught pawning it). He obviously moved to Victoria after he’d served his sentence, as many Van Diemonians (as they were called) did, and his wife and children joined him here to live out their lives peacefully.
Turns out he’s not related to us.
Well, not that we know of.
Anyway …
On Sunday night, after our weekly family catch-up, I thought I’d find him again so that I could be sure about the story.
I didn’t find the same information, but went down a rabbit hole and came across cemetery lists of Pittaways around the country. One of them was Alice Pittaway (nee Duroux) who is buried in Lismore. I knew that Alice was my great-grandmother and that she had died aged 47 in 1933. She’d gone out one morning to water the garden, had felt unwell, gone inside and had died before medical attention could be summoned.
I dug out Alice’s obituary and noticed the address of the house she’d lived in. I did a search on Google Maps, but there was no such street in Lismore, so I rang Mum and asked to her confirm the details. Mum is into family history and I knew she’d know.
She did. She also told me that my aunt, Lyn (Dad’s youngest sister) had visited the house in Lismore in 2013. This morning, Mum sent me one of the photos Lyn had sent her.
Standing on the stairs was Colin, Lyn’s husband … and on the verandah … was Airdre!
Airdre, my friend and colleague, the one I’d visited in Lismore, had lived for 20 years in the same house my great-grandmother (and my great-grandfather and my grandfather and his brothers and sisters) had lived in all those years before.
Two different threads … leading to a one slightly mind-blowing connection.
I sent the photo to Airdre this morning, and she was suitably (and appropriately) confused. How did I have a photo of her from 2013 when I only met her in 2021? Who was the man on the stairs? What?
What??
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one whose mind was blown.
Musings from the cold 