Christine Grayden

What happened to Alice?

13/8/2024

Alice's grave: Christine Grayden sifts myth from fact in a real life mystery.

By Christine Grayden

Recently I had cause to read an article published in the Australian Medical Journal back in 2002, ‘The contagiousness of childbed fever. A short history of puerperal sepsis and its treatment’, by Queensland Professor Caroline de Costa (Obstetrics and Gynaecology).

Why was I even reading Professor de Costa’s article? I’m a writer of community history, not obstetric history.

As I continue to work with my friend John Jansson on several community history books, including one about the local men and women who served during World War One, I’ve persisted with my quest to trace any war nurses who came to Phillip Island.

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Maritime adventures and misadventures

14/7/2024

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John Jansson with a draft copy of A Source Book of
Western Port Maritime History.

By Christine Grayden

JOHN Jansson – from the Phillip Island Millowl seaside town of Rhyll – has quite a bit in common with me – from the seaside town of Ventnor at the opposite end of the island. We are both the fifth generation of our respective families to participate in sea-related activities. John has Nordic and Western Port ferry and trader vessel captains and crew, as well as fishermen in his family. He helped his father on his fishing boat, and John has built and restored craft himself.

In my own ancestors, I have Western Port boatmen and fishermen, and a maritime explorer – a cousin of my Pickersgill forebears, Lt Richard Pickersgill, who was an officer on board Cook’s Endeavour and then Resolution. I actually spent over 20 years working part time as a “deckie” with my uncle on his small fishing boat on Phillip Island’s west coast.

It’s hardly surprising then, that as two local history buffs we would decide to have a go at completing John’s huge amount of local post-contact maritime history research, and compile it all into a few books.

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Post cards from World War One

19/4/2024

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Private Percy Dominick’s war story is recorded in a series of postcards.

By Christine Grayden

LAST month when I wrote about Dr Jan Bassett’s experience of finding a bundle of letters in her grandmother’s chiffonier - letters which turned out to be from a New Zealand soldier during World War One - I certainly didn’t think a similar thing would happen to me. But recently I was sitting with my old mate Laurie Dixon, going through the names of 118 World War One servicemen and one nurse associated with Phillip Island, who John Jansson and I have found in the war records.

I was hopeful Laurie might have at least some family memory stories to add to the information we have on these people. When we got to the Dominick brothers who had worked for Jessie McGregor (Janet, married name Watson), Laurie said: “Christine, I’ve got an album of post cards those boys sent to old Jessie when they were away. I think she was their foster mother or something like that.” It was one of those Bingo! moments all researchers live for.

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Facing Island, Facing Mortality

22/3/2024

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By Christine Grayden

SINCE March is always Women’s History Month, I’m revisiting the life of a remarkable historian I knew personally, and whose family roots grew from deep within Phillip Island’s early settler family trees.

Janice ‘Jan’ Mary Bassett was born the same year as me, in 1953. She crammed much into her 46 years on this planet before passing from breast cancer in 1999. A few months before her death she wrote a personal account of her cancer battle and the highs and lows of life during her cancer journey. The booklet was called Facing Mortality, and featured a beautiful cover photo just as I remember Jan; a few strands of her blond hair are lightly tousled by the wind, as she gazes warmly into the camera through the porthole of the wreck of the Speke, near Kitty Miller Bay. Handed to the many of us attending her funeral, it is a treasured memento.

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The great ships of Phillip Island Millowl

19/1/2024

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1987: The Saltwater Creek Action Group (one of many PICS subcommittee over the years) holds a beach rally to protest against plans to convert the creek into a Paterson Lakes type canal development. Artist Jan Bodaan (in red cape) wrote a song – “Where do you flow to my lovely” – for the occasion. The author, Christine Grayden is to her left, and SWAG secretary Josie Allen Kent to Christine’s left. John Eddy is on guitar.

By Christine Grayden

IN MAY 2023 the Phillip Island Conservation Society turned 55 years old. If you scan briefly over that it sounds like nothing much. For the handful of us left who have lived it, it’s immense.

PICS was formed in 1968 at a meeting convened by the Phillip Island Jaycees. (I joined the year after.) In the “Year of Conservation” they knew nothing much about it, so they agreed to host a meeting to initiate a local conservation group. After formation, PICS quickly evolved into a grassroots activist group fighting against a Phillip Island Shire councillor’s multi-million-dollar proposal to turn the “useless mud” of Rhyll Inlet into a marina development.

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Winging my way on my website

11/12/2023

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John Eddy holds a large copy of The Lost Blanket for Village School students
while Christine and 36-year-old Morris Teddy read to them.

By Christine Grayden

IN MARCH this year, as I approached my May 16 big 70 birthday, I decided to do something useful with that milestone. Maybe raise some money for a worthy cause; a charity that welcomed celebratory donations on behalf of friends and family. But I didn’t want to just ask for money. I wanted to DO something. Finding sponsors and running a marathon being out of the question, I fell back on two of the things I most love to do – write and draw.

I’d just finished a draft of a story about an old, frail retired teacher stuck in a nursing home during the Covid lockdown, unable to see a child for over a year. I realised that character was reflecting how I felt about my own isolating situation. I missed children terribly too.

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We’ve got a long way to go

10/9/2023

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By Christine Grayden

WHY does our society love division so much? Competition? Adversariness? Unhelpful criticism? Intolerance of mistakes?

I ponder these questions often, now that I am not involved directly within these societal norms, and can view our society almost as an outsider, an alien dropped from space into a strange world where rage seems to be an ever-present feature.

From this viewpoint I cast a jaundiced eye over the ‘debate’ around an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. I see the shuffling of allegiances, the so-called commentary and analysis in the ‘white press’, the ingratiating and/or grandstanding of supposedly key figures in Australian politics and economics. And the twisting of arguments, the semantics games.

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The cars that ate Phillip Island

21/7/2023

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For much of the year Cowes is congested, polluted, and the worst place to be a pedestrian. Photo: Marie Aberle

By Christine Grayden

TWENTY years ago when I first suggested that the council develop a ‘Park and Ride’ carpark outside of Cowes, somewhere near Gap Road, my letter to the Advertiser editor on the subject gathered much support.

Boy, so much has changed since then! We Ventnor residents now find ourselves blocked in by a wall of traffic between here and Cowes and here and Newhaven for much of the year. Getting into the Cowes supermarkets and shopping centre is hard enough from any direction now. It will only get worse.

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Adventures with an AI writer

24/6/2023

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Picture of disabled writer Christine Grayden working in bed on her laptop using an AI writing program.

Disabled local writer Christine Grayden working in bed on her laptop, grappling with the demands of her AI writing program.

By Christine Grayden

AI is not on the way. It’s already here. Even in Bass Coast we all apparently interact with AI about 20 times a day; though we are all largely unaware that it’s happening. Now the world is abuzz with the possibilities of AI to remove the drudgery from our lives; increase efficiency in all areas of society; act as indefatigable carers to the growing older demographic and young children whose parents both work; analyze data more accurately to forecast financial movements, climate change effects, even your health issues and longevity.

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The story teller

23/3/2023

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Olive Justice models her home-made bathers. Christine Grayden celebrates her great aunt - and one of Phillip Island’s
great characters - for Women’s History Month.

By Christine Grayden

FOR MY 2022 Women’s History Month essay I compiled a list of online historical resources regarding women in Bass Coast. This year I’d like to share a few stories recorded back in the 1990s by my great aunt Olive Justice (nee Grayden) while she was aged in her 90s and totally blind.

Olive did nothing really spectacular in her life to earn her either fame or notoriety. However, blessed with a positive attitude, an adventurous spirit and an ability to ‘pivot’ long before that word took on its current economic meaning, she withstood more storms than are faced by most people. And, in common with her siblings Marguerite, Doug and Bert, she was a wonderful storyteller.

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