Family, then and now............

Last month I was given this book by my parents. It has been a mammoth effort by some members of the Heinicke family to put this together, and makes for interesting reading. I can't imagine how my great great grandparents sailed from Germany, about 1863, down around the cape of Africa and across to Adelaide with 3 young children, the youngest only months old! Just amazing, and then packing their belongings in a wagon and travelling to the Barossa to make a new life. 

It was interesting to find out the the family once owned the Freeling Hotel, which featured in the film "McLeod's Daughters".

These are my great grandparents, Phillip and Lydia Heinicke, who moved to Monarto, where they brought up 12 children. The 10th child was my grandmother, Helene Gertrude (Gertie), who married Les Pearson and moved to a farm at Brinkley, near Murray Bridge. This is the farm that I grew up on, and is still managed by my brother

This is a photo of my grandmother, taken just before she turned 20.

And this is my grandparents wedding photo.

From the history to the present, a few photos of my family taken recently............

And while still on the topic of family, I have a few photos of the wedding that I attended on Saturday.

The bride is my niece on my husband's side of the family. The wedding was held under a large tree at a winery at Currency Creek, near Strathalbyn. It was a beautiful venue in perfect weather.

Dessert was an Eton Mess, which was really a lot of meringues, with cream and strawberries, that was almost 2 metres long!!

It was a lovely wedding, and a good chance to catch up with family that I don't see very often. Although this was a wedding on my husband's side of the family, it is also on my side of the family too. It sounds complicated, but really means that 2 brothers married 2 cousins.

I think that might cover a lot about family, all in one blog post. I have switched Max off for the night, after finishing the last quilt that I needed to get done for the exhibition this month. The next couple of days will be spent helping GD1 with a sewing project that she wants to do, and also more preparation work in the garden. I will be back soon with another post and some exciting news that I have to share.

Blessings, From Jude