Susan Coulter

Ancestors

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I have been researching my family tree for a couple of years now in co-operation with my brother. There were many secrets in our family as we were growing up and I don't remember much about my fathers relatives other than we were sheltered from them somehow and for many reasons. We were born in Redfern in Sydney where my mother lived and met my father. My father was a country boy having been brought up in the outback most of his life. In the early years of their married life my mother and father lived on sheep stations around Trangie and Warren as my father was a sheep station hand and manager. It was a very different life for my mother having been brought up in the city of Sydney and she missed her family and the life there. When I was still quite young they moved back to the city and rented a flat at Bondi for a time before buying a commission home in the western suburbs of Sydney. My father worked as a wharf labourer on the Sydney docks and my mother worked at a local pharmacy as a retail assistant and my brother and I attended the local high school until 1974 when my father decided that he missed the country life and wanted to be an opal miner at an outback opal field near Lightning Ridge in NSW, so they up and sold the house and moved to the field to establish an opal claim and mine for opal. They lived in a caravan while my father built a log cabin for them to live in and my brother went with them. There were no utilities such as power or town water on the opal field so they used a deisel generator and carted water to fill the water tanks. I however, was a city girl and did not want to leave the city so I stayed to study and work in Sydney. I lived with my maternal grandmother at Manly on the north shore where she rented a flat above a fruit shop.

Sadly my dear Nanna passed away and I moved to the opal field to be with my family for a number of years. I moved to Dubbo after a time as I missed the city life but again missed my family so returned to the opal field until my father passed away when I was around 17. My mother re-married and I moved to Newcastle to be near her while my brother stayed around the Walgett district.

After many years we are trying to find a link that is rumoured that we come from the Warajari people as there was a girl child stolen in our family tree, one of 2 sisters of mixed blood. It is rumoured that the blood is on both sides of the Ingram/Browne bloodline and my brother remembers my father bringing home a dark skinned uncle with the surname Browne who was a boxer.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Susan Coulter at registration.