My cousins over at the Kable Mob have moved their site.
Well, I was determined to learn more about my grandfather’s tomb inscriptions. I headed back to the Yui Ming Temple in Retreat Street, Alexandria. But as the woman there said, there are only old men and women here. The man again said that they do not know. Apparently I should have known that they do not know. But the women were sympathetic to my cause. I suspect given that they said bu dao, that maybe they thought I was hostile to them. I then headed up to the NSW Evergreen Taoist Church on Bourke Street. I had been past so many times as I had lived for 18 months only around the corner. But I was still very surprised at how large and impressive it is. The women there again were the most helpful, thought the men seemed to know the most. I was taken up to the old man in charge at his desk. When I showed the photo of the grave he got out (what I think was a feng shui book) and immediately started looking up things. He was very knowledgeable, but seemed unable to community things to me in English. They suggested that I speak to the Sydney University about this as they would know more of the historical information. But they were very helpful in that they explained that the outer two columns of the tomb were a poem and the first word of each line was bok and loh (Bok Loh was my grandfather’s home town). Also the next two columns in, that had caused me so much trouble, they said, are feng shui compass points. There is much for me to learn in here.

Continue reading Evergreen Taoist Church and Yui Ming Temple
Well this page will be a work in progress. I have been trying to translate the grave stones for my grandfather and great grand father. This page is to assist with that translation and when it is complete I hope to have the full translation. I have uploaded full size images of the graves, temple and signs to Flickr. Click on the image to see the full size image. If you are able to help, please leave a comment in this post or on the flickr page. (I’d prefer the comments here.)
The ? in the Chinese means that this is a character I have been unable t find in the paper dictionary, on my computer, or using the Chinese entry methods on the iPhone.

Top Line: 廣東 義塜
Guangdong ??
Bottom Line: 福德祠
google: Fuk Tak Temple
Continue reading Graves of the grand parents
I was wandering around Georgetown with our little group. We were heading to a temple. While looking for it we came to the Yap family temple. I am suspicious that some of the others knew it was there. But I did not know it existed. So I went inside to have a look. There were people there but no one really spoke English. So I continued on with the others visiting the other more famous family shrines.

Continue reading Yap Temple
Well, I never knew about this in 2004 Grant Olding arranged for a musical about Hannah Stanley and her friend, who were sentenced to death for stealing in London and later transported to NSW. Hannah is my third great grand mother.
Annie Marjoram has been a great mystery in the family. My grandmother did not even know she had been nicked from her real mother until at about aged 60 she went to get her birth certificate. It turned out that she did not exist! After some questions were asked, the lies were revealed and [...]
It was good to catch up with some cousins I have not seen in a long time, some of who had had children. There were no children last time we met and the oldest was 14 years old. The celebration was held in Wodonga. I took the opportunity to travel back along the Murray [...]
IMG_0740, originally uploaded by SPAK1971.
“aus nsw alicia dsc05086″ by yewenyi [?] [...]
AHS Centuar
My third cousin, three times removed, Reginald McGregor Blackman born in 1904 and 39 years of age died in the sinking of the AHS Centaur. He was working in the 2/12th Field Ambulance.
In a strange coincidence, I returned from Singapore to Fremantle on another ship [...]
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