Christine Grayden

A foot soldier for the cause

6/3/2026

Sandy Shively, centre, with her daughter Kate, left, and Rose Thomas at a Red Rocks
Coast Action working bee.

By Tim Patkin

SANDY Shively arrived in Australia in 1972, having been recruited from the United States by our Education Department to fill a shortage of secondary teachers. America’s loss turned out to be very much our gain.

Her first appointment to Echuca High School stirred within her an early affection for our unique Australian environment. Coming from an urban life in San Diego, California, Sandy managed a complete change in direction, and soon embraced a country lifestyle, complete with an adopted pet sheep called Lambie. Renting an old farm house on a grazing property just into NSW on the Murray River surrounded by ancient River Red Gums gave Sandy an early appreciation of the Australian “bush”.

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Happy 200th birthday, Baron von Mueller

10/12/2025

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Baron Ferdinand von Muelleur ... reminders
of the renowned botanist abound on Phillip
and Churchill Islands.

By Christine Grayden.

THERE are several massive biographies about Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, and also about the people who collected specimens for him. He thought nothing of venturing into the roughest terrain in four states, often alone or just with his horse, collecting plants from coast to mountains and plains and forests. It may well be claimed that von Mueller single-handedly lifted the study of botany into the realm of world-class standard in 19th century Australia.

His plant collection was immense, and he gave most of it to the National Herbarium, which he established within the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne where he was the first director and Victorian Government Botanist.

While von Mueller contributed vastly to our knowledge of Australia’s native plants, he also contributed in other ways – some good, some not so good.

Friends of Churchill Island Society president Mike Cleeland, who has spent many years as a Landcarer and hands-on worker in the environment, refers to von Mueller as “Baron von Blackberry”.

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Return to the dark ages

2/3/2025

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By Christine Grayden

OVER the past five years of my tough health journey I have relied in large part on research available freely to me online to get me to my level of function today. I’m not talking “Dr Google”, or an AI throwing up some glib explanation or list of populist websites. I’m referring to solid, peer-reviewed research published on a few fantastic medical research university and department websites. Ominously, most of these digital medical library websites are based in the US, and receive government support of some sort.

You can probably see where this is going.

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Pillage and plunder in Warn Marin Western Port

2/2/2025

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Aboriginal readers are warned that this essay mentions atrocities against Aboriginal people.

Sealers Hut, Western Port: ‘Habitation de Pecheurs de Phoques au port Western (Nouvelle Hollande)’ Langlume, circa 1833. Print: lithograph with later hand colouring. State Library of Victoria. The sealers arrived very quickly, and stole Aboriginal women from Lutruwita Tasmania, Bass Strait islands,
Western Port and Port Phillp Bays.

By Christine Grayden

BEING charged with turning a manuscript into a book for a friend is always an enormous honour and an exciting opportunity to learn. For the past year I have been editing and doing the layout of my friend John Jansson’s book A Source Book of Western Port Maritime History. Certainly I learnt many aspects of Word that I had not used before and, because John is a local and maritime historian, I also learnt an enormous amount about the prolific maritime trade and the land-based industries that trade has supported in Warn Marin Western Port.

In his extensive research for this source book, John discovered many references to the early colonial industries carried on in and around Warn Marin Western Port. Here are the main ones: Sealing, swanning, mangrove burning for barilla ash, wattle bark (mimosa) harvesting, a massive timber industry, coal exploration and mining, sheep import and export, oystering, illegal landing of Chinese immigrants, salt mining, fishing, crayfishing, pleasure cruising, boat building.

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The greatest gift

11/12/2024

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By Christine Grayden

OVER the past four and half years my concept of time has shifted radically. Prior to April 2020, time was the enemy. I grabbed whatever time I could to churn through 60 hours a week’s work for the various community groups I was heavily committed to at the time.

But life turns on a dime, and in a matter of days I was rendered incapacitated.

The healing body cares not a jot for deadlines. Healing knows only its own time. Everything became slow motion as life taught me the true meaning of time. Now I see time as a gift; in fact the greatest gift any of us can have, and give.

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What happened to Alice?

13/8/2024

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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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