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 I
grew up in Surfers Paradise, Queensland on Australia’s Gold Coast. My parents
moved there in the 1950s, my father migrated to Australia from Krakow, Poland
after WW2 and my mother came from Sydney being of Anglo-Scottish ancestry. I got
interested in family history when I was 14 and spent many hours studying my
mother's old photos and I visited Sydney where I stayed with my aunt Iris
McCrohon (nee Perry) in Earlwood and my uncle Alex Perry in Parramatta. I looked
through their family photos and heard many stories about my Perry and McMorran
relations. I also met my mother's McMorran cousin Mary Mackay (nee Scott) during
a holiday trip she made to Queensland and I in turn stayed with her in Lawson in
the Blue Mountains and being the oldest of her generation, she had many
recollections to share and in fact Mary gifted her family photographs and some
documents to me. I wrote to my grandfather's Perry relation in Cornwall and
Devon and my grandmother's McMorran relations in London and Poole and
subsequently have had several opportunities to meet and stay with them. I made
copies of many of the photos in their possession and further increased my
knowledge about our ancestors through their stories and along with numerous
hours of research, writing away for certificates and visiting many institutions
and repositories along the way, a substantial family history has evolved. My
Safier ancestry was somewhat harder to trace due to the paucity of records and
my not speaking Polish but the internet has been a great boon in overcoming my
initial difficulties as has contact with various members of the family scattered
to the USA, Israel and South America.
The internet has led to many contacts with various first, second and third
generation cousins and revealed amazing stories that parallel with my interest
in history and my substantial interest in photographic history.
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