New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings. ~ Lao Tzu

Early in 1971 a share of the proceeds from the sale of  Werona was used to purchase a house in my mother’s name in Toowoomba. The house was called Kallioota, which means "Green country”. My father lived with us again for just over a year after he left Cunnamulla. He then moved out and my parents were divorced. Mum found a job, and my siblings and I all attended schools in Toowoomba. Dad remained living in Toowoomba until his death by alcoholic poisoning on 15th October 1974.

After some years my mother remarried. She insisted on keeping Kallioota saying that it as all that was left of ”all those years of hard work that went into Werona.” The house was completely renovated by my stepfather, and my mother oversaw the extensive redesign and constant upkeep of the large garden. The Campbell Street house remained her home until just prior to her death in 2014.

All the direct descendants of  Alexander “Sonny” Frazer, whose father established the property Werona, have long since left Western Queensland. The elder of my brothers was the last to leave the West. He and his wife and family established their own homes in Toowoomba.  The beautiful old cart (Right) is among his collection of  treasured memorabilia. It is evocative of ’life in the bush’ in another era.

With our move to Kallioota the Alexander Frazer line had yet another ‘new beginning’. Our children have all been raised and educated in cities, (some of them overseas). They are working in a wide range of jobs and many of them are well travelled. Our grandchildren are growing up having always had access to the internet. I have created this website primarily for them, so that they may have the opportunity to learn something of the first 200 years of the ‘Australian Chapters’ of their family history.

Someplace Green

The good Lord made man, then he rested for a little while

Said look what I've done, ain't he pretty, then he cracked a smile

I'll watch him grow, I'll hear him talk, learn to love and fight

But when he's had his fill of these I'll walk him through the night

To someplace green (someplace green)

Someplace nice (someplace nice)

Someplace that I (ooh-ooh) call paradise

Growin' greener in the rain

Waitin' there for man to claim.

Written by Rod McKuen, sung by Jimmie Rodgers (1963) and Kamahl (1970)

Dad and Mum both loved this song. They sang it often on Werona during the hard dry years of the mid 1960s. Mum loved singing, and she loved Kamahl. When he released a version of Someplace Green in 1970 she was thrilled. She often sang it along with Kamahl at Kallioota.

  • • I would like them to realise that some of their ancestors arrived in Australia several decades prior to the invention of the first telephone!  (The first telephone exchange was opened in Melbourne in June 1880).
  • • I would like them to know that my grandmother Bernadine, who took many of the photos that are featured on pages of this website, was married the year before the Vegemite that they love was invented. (1922)
  • • I would like them to know that we have ancestors who were part the first European settlements in Victoria and Tasmania, and others who arrived in New South Wales or in Queensland  within forty years of the first European Settlements of both Sydney and Brisbane.
  • • I want them to know that although I’m proud that our family history spans all but fifteen years of the time of European Settlement in Australia, I see this as being in fact a very short history. The oldest fossil evidence of life on land was discovered here in Australian rocks. Our beautiful ancient country was actually colonised about 20,000 years before humans first arrived in Europe. - There are Northern Territory artefacts that suggest that the first peoples have been present in Australia for up to 65,000 years!
  • • I want them to know that I acknowledge that the British colonisation of Australia had a devastating impact on the Indigenous people who had lived on this land for over 60,000 years. I also acknowledge that ‘the history of forced resettlement on reserves, the placing of many thousands of children in institutions, and the loss of land and culture are evident in the disadvantages still experienced by many Aboriginal people today’. http://bit.ly/2i9tSN6  It is important to me that I make this statement quite clearly within this, my record of our family history. I believe that “We must never underestimate the importance of telling history as it really was. ... Current and future generations of Australians need to understand the history. They need to know what really happened. It is only through the accurate recording of history that we will ensure that it never happens again.” Bruce Scott MP, (speaking about the depiction of Australian prisoners of war in the film 'Paradise Road’  http://bit.ly/2zm0U0u )
  • • Finally, and importantly, I would like to share with them the encouragement that I have received from researching the lives of so many of our ancestors. In a nutshell it is this: Whatever happens to you in your life, be it of your own doing or due to circumstances beyond your control, don’t be afraid to move on and start a new chapter!

 Toowoomba - Someplace Green.

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