Tangaroa G33K, history and family history: December 2024

Image from the 1963 travel diary. loading the land rover for the trip to Paris

2024 has been an interesting year family history wise through both loss and gaining new collections of records. To make the whole event even more interesting was the distance since I had to travel to New Zealand from Australia to bring them back with me. I have previously written about the little bits about my grandfather’s legacy like gaining one suitcase of family history stuff including 8mm film and digitising his voice letters. It did turn out that my Grandfather, Claude Williams was a very interesting bloke and respected by many people. I will include some of the photos of the memorabilia I ended up with in my possession

One of the suitcases

The biggest change occurred when my grandfather became ill, and I travelled to New Zealand in May thinking it would be the last time I see him. Luckily he was able to become slightly better, but unable to live in his home that he had build during the late 1970s. I would say at 93, it was a great achievement. Unfortunately, he had to move into a nursing home as he had been unable to look after himself as the last illness had knocked him around quite a bit

Grandfather's Nepal Visa

Doing a tidy up, I ended up with photographs that included slides and some family history records of his own research. It was then that I began learning a little more about his life as at the time I had heard little bits about his trips overseas. The first trip over I ended up with a few photos and other things including 8mm film that I had not realised were his. I had thought it was to do with his late brother as they were in the bottom of a wardrobe. One of the suitcases that arrived back in Australia was around 20 kilograms.

Party invitation for 1956 Olympics

When he passed away several months later, I helped with the clean up at the house and found even more interesting records that I had no inkling existed still. Some I was handed and some I just accidentally found sitting amongst photo albums. Some of the documentation included postcards that were my grandfather’s mothers from around 1915 when her brother went to the Western Front via troopship, textbooks from around the 1940s when he was in school, a boarding pass from 1962 for the vessel that would take my grandfather from Singapore to Fremantle, talking letter tapes that I would later get digitised. I never knew many of these records existed let alone in excellent condition for their age especially the older postcards. My grandfather was really good at documenting parts of his journey to Europe in the 1960s as there were fuel usage guides and how many miles they had travelled per day to get to the destination with his friends before separating in India, where he ended up in Nepal. The passport for that particular journey was also found containing the many stamps for the countries he passed through. The items I ended up with, I will treasure and there are still many more that I still have to go through. I should mention that there are random diaries

Passage boarding pass for ship from Singapore to Fremantle

Some of the stories I ended up hearing about were just as interesting especially from the old timers who are still part of the North Kirra Surf life saving club. I knew he had helped build the building and was a life member, but he was the only qualified carpenter on site and the others were directed by him as they were unqualified. The story is that there are many bent nails in the building. He was actually happy that I had digitised the 8mm film that I had come across and you never know there might be more too somewhere. The talking tapes that were part of the collection, I did get developed and that is another story. I do happen to have a good collection of photos of his house being built and that does include the hand drawn building plans he made that went with the development application.

Iran Passport stamp from the passport

It might be near the end of December now, but I am still going through the photos slowly and the other records too including the receipts. The funny thing is when it gets tidied up and then you don’t know where you are. I have ended up with an incredible collection that I will treasure.