My Mum (Dr Marie-Claire) has Alzheimer's, so she has tricky days (she's ok with me posting this). She was a bit upset today, so I caught up with her after lunch to have a laugh. She was ok with me taking a photo, but 'only in B/W'. She's amazing... here's why... 1/

As some of you know my Mum was born in England, her Dad was Irish and her Mum English-ish. She came to Australia when she was 13. Here's a photo of her and her sister (dressed as Pierrot next to her sister in pointy hat) at the street party in Portsmouth at the end of the war. 2/

This is the only photo that she has with her Mum and Dad, brother, sister from childhood. She's the baby (1937). Her Dad became a merchant marine when he went to England from Ireland. Later he joined the navy and later was on the Queen Mary. Her Mum was a pianist in a pub.
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When she came to Australia she only did six months of school and then left (leaving school at 13, same as me).

After working cleaning phones and in a factory, she joined the Australian army in 1955. That was where she met my dad.
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She married Dad in 1956. In 1957 had her 1st baby when she was 20. Then two years later another, then the next year another. By these photos (1961 -age 23) she was boarding a ship to take her 3 kids to live in Malaysia, while Dad was stationed there. She had her 4th baby there.

By 1966, they had the five of us. This is Mum and me in 1969, gone to visit the Pope when he visited, like good Catholics. We were living in Wagga still, and we were near my Gran (Dad's Mum) in Cootamundra, visiting her often.

I'm fast forwarding past us all growing up, Mum going to uni for the first time, and meeting her wonderful second husband, Robert.

This is Mum getting her PhD from UQ in 2008. She was 71 at the time.

Mum's PhD thesis was called: "Losing Hegemony: The English in Australia, a people in transition". She was determined to understand them (her people-ish) and colonisation. She came to Aus, married an Aboriginal man and had her own difficult awakening about racism and exclusion. /8

In Dr Marie-Claire's thesis, she discussed her subject's ' propensity to view Australianness as an inauthentic copy of Englishness, to be criticised and improved upon'. She moved from scorn to pity as she revealed a people who believed they were without culture, yet centred. /9

She was originally urged to conduct an ethnography of Aboriginal people as she would have an insider (outsider) perspective. She resisted, claiming that it was not her place to tell Aboriginal people's story. Her original supervisors were flummoxed (cos they were arseholes). 10/

Her final supervisor (Emeritus Prof David Trigger) supported her in her final year after she had a terrible time with her first two supervisors. At that time (2008) she was beginning to show, what we would later realise were signs of Alzheimer's. But she finished her PhD!

Mum and her husband, Robert would always travel around the world on a shoestring, working as they went. They had a pretty itinerant life (lived in cars in Aus as well). When Robert couldn't travel, David, Gina and I took over supporting Mum to travel internationally.

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Here with my brother David (yes, my brothers are literal giants)in Portsmouth (UK) in 2010. Me in 2013 (just after her diagnosis) in Maine (US). And with my sister Gina, bro David and our friend, Marilyn in 2017 in London (they also went to Ireland and France).

That was 10 int'l trips in 9 years. We had a bit of a rough life as kids for a range of reasons, and so did she and so did Dad. They tried hard to support us. As adults we wanted the best for her, and when we could take her overseas and support her, it was a joy to do it.

This is Mum's Mum and her Auntie Sis in the late 40s. This was the community that her Mum grew up in near Rugby. I want to say the name of that group, but I can't work out if it's racist to say it, so basically people travelling around who centuries before came from Europe.

In 2017, David and Gina took Mum back to Portsmouth for her 80th birthday (I'd just started working at USC).Her much younger sister (born decades after Mum's childhood photo) came over from Ireland, and her cousins were also there (there's Uncle Mike going in for a cuddle).

So Mum grew up near Portsmouth (in Portchester), and so Portchester Castle was the mainstay of her childhood. It was closed during the war of course. She talks about it sometimes in her videos up on YouTube. This was a few months ago.

I mean basically I video her and she ends up talking about food, lol. I blame me! She has to be the only person who talks about the war and mentions the food!

I posted all of this because Mum was diagnosed w/Alzheimer's in 2013; 7 years ago. Since then Mum has done 4 int'l trips, incl. one by herself, we have amazing conversations still. You get told these stories only of loss, but her life didn't end then. She had and has more life.