A plea for compassion towards Refugees - 1881

A letter to the Editor 1881.

Almost 125 years ago a letter appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald which is as apt today as it was then. It was a plea to the government and community to show compassion for a group of refugees escaping poverty in Europe and who had experienced a terrible fate. These were my Italian ancestors. The writer’s name was Isaac Ellis Ives, a wealthy businessman (owner of Argyle Bond Stores fronting Circular Quay) who was later elected Lord Mayor of Sydney. He wrote:

Sir, the collapse of the Marquis de Ray’s expedition to New Ireland, and the terrible sufferings arising therefrom, as depicted in your issue of yesterday (24th March), are terrible to contemplate.
New South Wales in all matters of charity has always shone as one of the brightest jewels in England’s crown; the colour of the skin has not been asked, but it has been sufficient for us to know that fellow-creatures were starving, and our money has been brought forth in abundance.
With upwards of three hundred souls starving at our very door, shall it be said that we refuse them aid? I think not. This is not the time to ask if they were right or wrong in giving up their homes to seek new ones. That they are starving there is no doubt; and, as the City of Melbourne sails at noon, there should be no difficulty in raising a sum of money to be forwarded by her towards the immediate relief of the sufferers.
I am prepared to give towards this object, and have promise of an equal contribution from a friend.

Argyle Bond, 25thMarch 
Isaac Ellis Ives

In late March 1881, Henry Parkes, Premier of NSW and Colonial Secretary agreed to allow this group of Italians to land in Sydney and be granted permission to stay. A vessel, the James Paterson, was dispatched to the French Penal Colony of New Caledonia (Noumea) where they had taken refuge. They arrived in Sydney on April 7, 1881.

A Passion for Place

I picked up a book I've had for 10 or more years the other day. It was "About This Life', the autobiographical writings of Barry Lopez a North American storyteller and sage. He writes about the landscape and about people with an intimate knowledge of their land or their world. He moves from artic landscapes to intercontinental air freight and subjects them to the same incisive gaze and sense of discovery.

I was reading his essay "The American Geographies" where he grapples with the question of what is the land we live in? He sees that his country is often glibly represented by billboards and, in film by internationally recognised emblems of North America and he argues that this devalues the true nature of the landscape. He observes that true understanding 'resides with men and women more of less sworn to a place.' In saying that he also says that it's not an encyclopedic knowledge that these people have but a deep love and familiarity. They inhabit real spaces rather than inhabiting an idea of a place.

That got me thinking. I have an uncle Paddy like that. Every time I visit him in the Richmond River Vally where he was born he constantly talks about the weather and the river and the fish and hunting and seasons. It's as if he is a bird hovering above the land taking it all in. He can describe the route from his place to anywhere in the district as if by touch and feel rather than by street signs. Barbara Kingsolver does that in 'Prodigal Summer', the most remarkable book I've ever read. Everyone else in my circle loved 'The Poisonwood Bible' but I was captivated by her intimacy with the landscape and the people in 'Prodigal Summer'.

Barry and Paddy got me thinking. Thinking about what I'd read and written this past year. I realised that the books I most remember were set in places I knew or could know: "The Body in the Clouds" - Sydney; " All That I Am" - London and Germany between the wars; 'Spirit of Progress' - Melbourne. These are all Australian authors (I'm in a local Australian Authors Bookclub) but their stories are universal while specific to real places. I also read a series of books by young authors which were well constructed, well written and with interesting plots but, while they were set in recognizable landscapes, these landscapes were not named and the sense of place was not the same. I want to learn about a concrete world as well as a psychological world.

In terms of blogs, I've read less this year but the few I read I read regularly. On reflection I am drawn to sites which are grounded in place or accounts of place. Two of my favourites have been Sara Toa's 'A WineDark Sea' and Jennifer Morrison's 'Realia'.

Sara writes and photographs her fishing life and fishing community on the southwest coast of Western Australia. It's her writing I love. It is so true to daily experience. It is so deeply simple in the way she captures moments like launching a boat as the sun rises over the bay or loading crab pots or reading the weather. It's much more than notes about a good days fishing. Hers is writing with the intention of telling a story and capturing the reader in the moment.

Jennifer, similarly, captures moments in a very intentional way. Her moments are often about people she encounters on the bus or train on the way to work. Small observation of real life in Toronto, Canada. Jennifer teaches writing to adult groups and has a passion for storytelling and, in naming the streets and the destinations, she builds a picture you can step in to or could step into if you visited and followed in her footsteps. None of this is new. Writers have been documenting and capturing the world they live in since well before Dickens. I can still, forty years later, close my eyes and find myself in Steinbeck's 'Cannery Row'.

For my part I realised that my writing has also followed this path. I am more interested in writing stories of real experiences and real people than fictionalised accounts from my imagination. To my mind my stories are no less creative; the fundamentals of good storytelling are the same and that's where the craft and the creativity reside.

At this point my focus has been on my personal experiences and encounters I have with the interesting and absurd. Family and memoir has been a large part of my writing this year. It occurs to me that the landscapes that Barry Lopez talks about do not need to be the exotic; they could equally be the immediate locality, my community. How can I know my community and my local history better? What better way than to examine it, observe it and write about it.

I don't make New Year's resolutions but I'm hoping this idea might have a life beyond this immediate blog.

Happy New Year for next week.

Link to Barry Lopez on Storytelling

My Found Family?

Oh my God! Talk about the potential for the internet to disseminate false information.

I have just finished a conversation with a lovely lady in Sydney. I am searching for documentation of my Grandfather's birth. I knew he had been born in a northern suburb of Sydney (Thornleigh). I am not able to source any official record of birth through the normal Birth Deaths and Marriages State records.

He was born to illiterate Italian parents in the mid 1880s. I decided to pursue Catholic Church parish records as another avenue. I started by phoning St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney figuring that they must get enquiries all the time and would give good advice.
'Hello. I'm looking for some advice about what records you have. My grandfather etc etc.'
'Go to the State Library.' the woman said bluntly.
'I've explored the NSW Births deaths etc do any parishes....'
'All our records are in the State Library'
I had hoped for a gentle helpful historian or to be referred on to one.

A sucker for punishment I made three more calls. The St Agnes (Pennant Hills) lady was nice enough.
'You should call the Waitara Cathedral. They're the regional centre. We only go back to 1925'
The Waitara lady (all women so far) said 'Call Sacred Heart at Pymble. They were the central church for that district in that period.'
Jenny at Pymble was very helpful.
'Send me some information and I'll see if I can find time to hunt something down in our archives.'
So off went an email.

And then the phone rang.
'Hell. It's Georgina here. I'm calling back from St Agnes. You called us a little while ago. I've done some searching and found your fathers birth date.'
Whacko I think.
'I googled his name and found information on the "Roots" website.'
'Wait. Let me have a look.' I was excited but couldn't figure our how she'd found this information so simply.

Oh my God (again)! There it was in all its inaccurate detail. My grandfather's birthdate was there, apparently official; in addition it told me he died in Sydney. Truth is he was in the front room of our house in Brisbane the week before he died in a local hospital.

Roots is part of Ancestry.com and there, listed in detail, were dates ages birth death details and much of it wrong or at least contestable. Some well meaning family member has simply put up the best guesses and hand me down information with little attempt at cross referencing or the establisment of fact versus fiction.

I don't want to bag my relatives. They are just sharing what they know. It's the power of the internet and of sites such as Ancestry.com I have a problem with. I know how unreliable even the reliable information can be. I am immersed in the unrelaible details of family life, trying to put the puzzle together for a book following my great-grandfather Lorenzo. He changed his name twice; left an unreliable trail of confused information and has at least three possible birthplaces in Italy recorded in varying documents. No birth records for him either. Like father like son.

I must be more cautious in the future when I read the 'truth' on Wikapedia and kindred websites.

By the look of the photo I may be related to the Jackson 5. That my grandfather on the right looking like a the little spiv he was and his brother and sister beside him. Where did she get that hair? My pops hair was always like a wire brush in crew cut style come to think of it. If only he'd let his hair grow.

Pen Pals - Byron Bay

It’s kind of old fashioned isn’t it, to write to someone you’ve never met. A pen-pal, in this era, just doesn’t quite fit. I was reminded of that this weekend just gone, when I encountered a woman standing on a platform overlooking the beautiful beach at Byron Bay (where Andrea and I had gone camping for three nights).

I walked past her as I was heading for a swim and, out of the blue, she announced out loud, to no one in particular (though i was the only person within earshot) how wonderful it was to be standing there and being in Byron Bay. I hesitated and we got to talking. She was in her seventies and had always wanted to visit Byron and wander the streets with the hippies – it was once the home of the flower people, though it’s now more likely to be over-run by backpackers and boozing young people whose parents may have been into peace, and mind-bending drugs in a former life (now most likely high flying solicitors or stock brokers). This is the area where the Australian version of Woodstock (the Aquarius Festival) took place in 1973. The hinterland is still full of alternative life-stylers living life in rainforest retreats and surviving on love and organic vegetables.

I suggested that, perhaps she had once been one, and she quickly assured me that no, that was never the case. She was from Western Australia, five days drive away on the West coast of Australia. She was having her exotic late life adventure.

I asked her what her plans were and it turned out she was doing a trip down the East coast with her husband and, I assumed, towing a caravan. But no, she was visiting her ‘pen-pals’.

She had already dropped in on one in Hervey Bay (about five hours drive North) and stayed there a few days and was now visiting another in nearby Ballina. She had her next lined up somewhere near Newcastle, another five hours drive South. These were people, she told me, she had been corresponding with for over twenty five years but had never met.

She was absolutely confident that her friendship with these strangers was genuine and felt no hesitation in assuming that she would be a welcome visitor for a decent stay in each place. She certainly hadn’t come all this way to drop in for a cup of tea and a biscuit.

It reminded me that facebook and internet friendships were preceded by other forms of international and distant connections with unseen strangers – people who craved links to other cultures and who became friends by dint of written correspondence.

Marina returns

The name Marina Battistuzzi might not mean much to you. In my mind she is one of the marvellous examples of how small is our world; and the positive side of technology. Technology, a double edged sword, has changed the world dramatically but some things, the fundamentals remain the same

I recently read a review of a book (Shakespeare's Blackberry) which examines the impact of our addiction to technology. The author argues that we need to learn how to step away from this addiction and find space in our lives for doing less, perhaps even doing nothing. He says that the sign of real wealth in our modern society may lie in being part of the group who can afford to turn off. People who can live independent of technology. In some cases this might be because being independently wealthy reduces the need to engage in employment and its associated technological demands. Or it could be that those who choose to live simply, self sufficiently, relying on face to face communication and resisting the need to have 200+ "on line friends" are rich in ways only wealthy people can imagine.

What's this got to do with Marina? Well she is a young woman who I met in person once and to whom I sent a single postcard. That's two contacts over a period of 23 years and yet, she holds a special significance in my life.

I've written about her previously and won't repeat the story. In summary she was a 25 year old who assisted my wife and I to look for my Italian ancestors when we visited her town. We had the good fortune to find Marina at the local Orsago Municipio (Town Hall). She shut up shop for the afternoon and drove us from village to village knocking on the doors of Catholic Parish churches and practicing her English on us.

By a serendipitous event (involving a middle distance relative) I had recently acquired her email address (something which she didn't have in 1988). So I sent her an email asking her how her life had unfolded. Now three months later she has replied.

She is now forty eight. She says her English is poor but it's a lot better than my Italian. She says:

"Dear Steve

.. my God .. I remember and I will amaze you. I conserve your post card with your address. There isn’t the date, but the memories does not to delete."

I love that Marina speaks about not deleting my postcard from her memory. I value being in her memory much more than being in some data bank.

"I work in the same office and in the same writing-desk and I like a lot my work. I had a good life, not many money but I had a good health."

I have moved jobs four or five times since 1988, and, while I've enjoyed every move, there is some comfort in the thought that one can be happy without constant change. Marina is not sedintary as she goes on to talk about travel and driving tours of Europe seeking out "the beautiful things make by nature and by the man"

She goes on:

"Orsago, my lovely little country, is the same.

Now the population are about 4000 persons.

In Orsago there is 10% of foreign people, above all from Albania, Macedonia, ex-Jugoslavia, Romania, Marocco, Egitto, Ucraina, Moldavia, Nigeria, Senegal, …

They are not very accepted.

Italian People don’t remember that many years ago, from Italy, from Veneto, from Orsago also many family go away to look for work.

They went in Australia before, after in Brasile and Argentina in the end of 1800, more recently (in the 1950-1960) in Canada, Svizzera, Belgio, Francia, …

Italian People don’t understand the we are the citizen of the world, non only citizen of our house."

A comment is hardly necessary. My great grandfather was a refugee escaping poverty in northern Italy for a better life in Australia. We humans seem to go around in ever decreasing circles generation after generation driven by fear of those different from us. Ironic given that many of us live in immigrant and colonial countries.

"So our meeting with mail and internet after 23 years had provoke in me emotions, surprise, delight, astonishment, and I don’t know, I understand that even we are distant thousands of kilometers Orsago and Australia are near"

How neat is that?

writing not writing - Lorenzo's Laugh

Last week I attended the first of five writing workshops I've signed up for.

The series is called "The Year of the Novel" The tutor/workshop leader is Nerida Newton, a published author, who has run these for the Queensland Writer's Centre over the past five years. A group of fifteen writers of varying experience (some with none!!) will meet every 8 weeks to discuss our projects and to receive some guidance from Nerida.

The goal: a full length first draft manuscript by the end of the year. I had enrolled in their "Year of the Memoir" but that got subsumed in the "Y of the Novel" due to low enrolments. After one day I'm confident that the same writing principles apply so, though I was a little reluctant to transfer, I feel conmfortable now.

I'm telling you this because it is dominating my time and satisfying my creative urges, to the extent that blogging is taking a bit of a back seat in my consciousness.

I will use this blog to report on progress (as well as have a bit of a play from time to time) by way of keeping in contact with people and as a bit of pressure to stay on track.

So what is my project?

Working Title: "Lorenzo's Laugh"

Briefly its my quest to uncover the mystery behind my family name. Without giving too much away it was triggered by the discovery that we don't carry the name which my great grandfather was registered under on his voyage from Italy to Australia.

Lucky for me there is a rich story of hope and dashed dreams; of a cunning French Marquis who sells poor Italians a trip to a non existent paradise in the Pacific.; of beautiful landscapes and untimely deaths. And then there's me.

The one thing I learnt from Nerida last week was that even a memoir needs a protagonist and an antagonist which means that unless I try to write a factual history of these events (which I am not interested in doing) I will be there in the story and I will need to be brave enough to be fairly self revealing to make people interested in my quest.

I wrote 2000 words today. Much more than I expected. I thought I would get stuck on page one but the story kept flowing. I expect it will emerge as a series of episodic accounts of varying aspects of the puzzle. My plan at this stage is to keep writing without too much concern for the final product. Let the juices run free and, fingers crossed, hope the story takes shape through the telling and through some judicious (and tough Ouch!) editing when the time comes.

Backyard Beauty

Enough of rain and water and the pain and the thrill and chaos of it all. Today the sun is shining and it’s hot and humid. Sticky.

I’ve just come home from a Sunday afternoon drink with my son at Archive, the new beer café.bar in West End to find this woman asleep in my backyard.

She’s like some beached goddess. Pale skin, blonde hair, body poured over a blue mattress on deep green grass. It’s my wife. She’s in touch with the elements. She’s followed the cat and camped beside him in the coolest spot in the yard – in the shade cast by the house as the afternoon sun scorches its way across the sky towards sunset.

I grab my camera. As I do I’m having this strange conversation in my head asking me what is it about this scene that is so compelling. Why have I raced for my Panasonic? What is it about certain scenes, moments, experiences that demand that they be captured.

Can a frozen image ever capture what I see – the light, the surroundings, my relationship with the moment. The things that are invisible to the camera – the warmth of the timber house behind me, my son’s presence, the fact that this is an unusual choice for Andrea, my personal sense of beauty. All these things, all my senses are engaged and everything tells me that it will not be possible to do justice to this moment. And yet I cannot resist the urge to try to capture all this with one hasty click.
Backyard Beauty

I remember a young blonde

girl in a short skirt came

visit me in my alone life among

friends in a far away city.



amazing that on a blonde

day in the 70s

she arrived like an angel, kissed

me and changed my life



she's there again in

my blonde backyard on

another blonde day

escaping the heat of

the day burning with

the heat of my gaze.



Does lightning strike twice

is the sunlight blinding me

can this still live on beyond

the first glance and

is that not transcendant

beauty when the light

never fades and the gaze

is constantly re-engaged.

(C) Steve Capelin 2011

Stories Leadership Resilience

There's been some interesting ways that stories have played out in the life of Queensland and the local community in recent times. Floods, cyclones, inland tsunamis, whole communities swept away (and in recent days bushfires taking huge tolls on the other side of the country). The response in my immediate community (and others across Brisbane and the state) was remarkable. People came out without hesitation to help their neighbours and to help total strangers. We were told by commentators that this was characteristic of Australians.

I was a little sceptical at times, finding it a little jingoistic, but then heard one story (Bill and Bong - the next post) which seemed to support this and later spoke to an English friend who asserted that this huge public effort would not happen at the same level in the UK and other European countries. So are we self mythologising or is there something in the Australian character which is different or is it just academic?

Perhaps it's the telling of the stories that is significant. Do individuals, families, communities and nations have narratives which help shape them? The field of Narrative Therapy would argue that we all carry multiple narratives and it's in the choosing which ones to preference (or believe) that the shaping occurs. Narrative Therapists help people recognise the possibility of choosing a story of strength and optimism over one of the defeat and helplessness. We are the victims and the beneficiaries of our own narratives. Narrative Therapists have begun to explore the power of these stories at the community level using a process of listening, identifying issues, themeing, telling and retelling stories which offer honest pathways to recovery. This is being trialed in Aboriginal communities in particular.

In the days and weeks following the flood disasters I heard many stories told over drinks, dinners, in streets, on radio and in meetings, all of which spoke of the amazing experience of working together, of people taking the initiative, of resilience and the determination to survive. Almost all spoke of rebuilding, starting over, acceptance.

Even the Premier, Anna Bligh, not loved by many in this state (undeservedly in my opinion), received overwhelmingly positive response to her role. What did she do? She played the role of leader. She spoke of pain and of loss. She acknowledged the realities. Her constant theme was: "We are tough. We are Queenslanders. We will get back on our feet. We will get through this together." It was a bit twee at times but the community loved it. They trusted her. She tapped the narrative of hope and survival.

In stark contrast I have recently experienced a work environment where the leadership did not understand the importance of the survival narrative in challenging times. In that case the story of hope was not told and the result was an environment of despair and despondency. Leaders, as well as being good administrators need to be great storytellers. We can survive anything if we have hope. And stories can carry that hope.

Back to the local. I'm interested in what we do with these stories to help cement them within the collective psyche. Is that important or does the evidence of their existence indicate that all is well and we need do nothing? My gut feeling is that our personal narratives are powerful from the constant telling and retelling of the story, the narrative. Who can't relate to the family gathering where many of the same stories are told once again and the family storyteller reminds everyone of their family connections through story and tears and laughter. They slowly become normal, assumed as each generation takes them as truth. This is why the negative ones can also be so utterly debilitating.

Writing them down is powerful but in some ways the oral tradition is even more powerful as each member of the clan takes the story and makes it their own. Writing risks fixing the story and giving ownership of it to particular individuals. Perhaps the written accounts need to be even more powerful to justify their existence and be written in a form which invites reflection rather than passive acceptance.

I have volunteered to help write an account of the role played by the local community organisation in this recovery program. It is an opportunity to tell a story which acknowledges the importance of community strength and to bring to the surface some of the invisible networks which act as a binding agent within this community. I expect to find that a cool account of the week(s) will not be as effective as a series of simple stories which illustrate the range of ways the community worked together to overcome this challenge.



I am also searching for a way to embed a story component into the community development work I am involved in Vanuatu. The theme of that work is strengthening community ownership of decision making; strengthening the role of culture and tradition. At the same time there is a desire to gently challenge assumed norms in terms of the role of women and young people at the village level. Vanuatu is an oral culture. The challenge will be to work alongside the local leaders to find a narrative form which will carry the learnings from this work beyond the immediate project. What will the form need to be to ensure that the story is likely to be one which is told and retold? I suspect that it will need to be like the best of stories - dramatic, funny and grounded in the experience of local people.

Beautiful Day - Serendipity

Stringmansassy featuring Aaron Hopper
One phrase was all it took to change my life. Jan Oates said it to me in a park one sunny Saturday in 1980. 'You're good at that' she said, 'you should do more of it'. Six months later I'd thrown in my secure job as a teacher and was driving to Melbourne in a baby-poo-yellow Datsun 120Y to take up a three month contract as a clown with a small suburban theatre company.

My wife was by my side. She was pregnant and had left her equally secure government job where she worked as a speech therapist to live in a caravan in an as yet unidentified location somewhere in Melbourne. Why did we do this? In retrospect it seems a bit rash. But in effect it started me on a thirty year journey in the arts. I've been employed every year and Andrea and I are still together. And the baby is now 29. If anyone is to blame it would have to be Jan. And her one phrase.

We all like to think we make a difference, even if only a small one, don't we? So what does it mean when someone you haven't seen in thirty years contacts you and asks 'Is that the Mr Capelin from Ascot State School - year three 1980?' Aaron Hopper had heard me being interviewed on ABC Radio. I was their "Meet the listener" for the day and I'd told the running away to join the circus story. He's heard it and recognised the voice? the name? part of the story? and sent me an email to say hi. He's added ' I remember your classes, they were fun.'

When he says 'they were fun' he means we did a lot of art and plays and music making and notoriously set fire to the school swimming pool mid way through the year. We'd built some clay sculptures using raku clay and I'd done some research and found out that you could use a large metal rubbish bin as a kiln using sawdust as the fuel. So I found a bin and bought a barrow load of sawdust and loaded up a layer of sawdust followed by a layer of clay sculptures, more sawdust etc. Before this I'd drilled a series of twenty odd holes in the sides to allow it to draw air to make sure the fire survived. Once lit, the theory was it would slowly burn from top to bottom and reach high enough temperatures to convert the clay to pottery. It did. It worked a treat. Unfortunately it was not a quick process. For two days and two nights a plume of smoke billowed from the deep end of the empty school pool much to the concern of of the headmaster and staff of this very conservative school. I am still adament that I resigned and was not asked to leave.

Aaron was seven I was thirty. I ran away to join the circus. He went on to become an outstanding contemporary guitarist. I can't claim any responsibility for his guitar career, but perhaps I did play my role in helping sow a seed, a love of art and creativity, which played its part in his later choices.

Tonight he was in town for a one off performance. I went to see him perform. It was a great night. Four guitarists of widely differing styles each did a twenty minute set and then combined for a finale. Afterwards it was like a mini school reunion. I said hi to Aaron. His mother introduced herself and it turns out I know the young woman who manages his performing career. 'It was clear you didn't fit into Ascot' his mother told me. 'You were different. Though I was glad Aaron had you as his teacher.' I took that as a compliment.

Not fit in. Tell me about it. I had loved teaching primary kids but that school killed me. It was a rich kids state school pretending to be a private school. There were 'certain expectations' which I was aware of but not interested in conforming to. setting fire to rubbish bins in swimming pools was definitely outside the guidelines. Running around in parks wearing a red nose and being assailed by anklebiters was like being let out of prison. It was a dream.

In a strage way my posting to that school was a blessing. Perhaps I'd still be a primary school teacher if that hadn't happened.

I can identify a whole range of other moments each of which turned me in a new direction. Some were people I met, some were travel experiences, some were serendipitous crossing of paths no one but a fatalist would believe could happen. What or who was it for you?

To listen to Aaron playing 'Beautiful Day' as his duo Stringmansassy click here or on the image above.