I'm grateful to have very clear memories of my father’s mother, 'Bernie Frazer'. As we lived in the remote Cunnamulla area I didn't get to see my Brisbane grandparents often, but I have many happy memories of visiting them. I was particularly fond of 'Grandma Frazer’, who is pictured on the Home page. When she was 38 years old her father died. (Her mother had died not quite two years earlier.) Six months after the loss of her father, her husband “Sonny” died very suddenly.  She was left with four children, the eldest 15 and the youngest 8, and very little money. Shortly after her husband’s death she adopted another baby. By all the accounts that I ever heard, she was known and respected as a loving, kind and generous person.

I remember as if it were yesterday being in grandma’s bedroom at Coorparoo, and looking up at three large photos in matching frames. They were of the grandfather I never met, “Sonny”, and grandma’s parents, Thomas Henry and Margaret Jane Grant. I remember the noises and smells of grandma’s garden, and the variety of plants that she grew within the concrete bordered garden beds that were all around the house. Amidst the strange city noises there was always the comfortingly familiar sounds  of chooks, cooing pigeons, and a pet cockatoo. I was awed by the shiny beauty of  grandma’s coloured chilli plants, and I remember being repeatedly warned not to touch them! I was utterly fascinated by the white legged coleus cuttings that she would strike in jars of water on her sunny kitchen window sill. I loved being with her in the kitchen, exploring all the bottom cupboards and sampling her amazing variety of homemade relishes and jams. 

I was only about 10 years old when I last saw her, but she has remained an inspiring, strengthening, and loving presence throughout my life. I am so glad that I knew her. - My deep sense of affinity with my grandma Bernadine Monica Grant has strongly motivated my researching of the history of the Grant family.

Thomas Henry Grant and Margaret Jane Grant (nee Doyle) lived their final years (the early 1930's) in 170 Boundary St. West End, Brisbane.  The above photos of them, and the one of “Sonny”, are the three images that were displayed in large frames on the wall of their daughter Bernie’s bedroom at Coorparoo.

Grandma “Bernie” Frazer stayed living in the Barcaldine area for some years following her husband’s death in 1936. She moved to the Grant’s West End house in the late 1940s. She had been widowed at 38 and she raised five children on her own. I know from family stories told by my mother that Grandma did it very tough. I'm sure that Bernadine would have been a great fan of the work that Micah Projects Inc does, and that she would thoroughly approve of the Hope on Boundary Street Café that they run from the present premises located at 170 Boundary Street.