Your Family Stories

Sharing stories of those who came before us … Please scroll down to read the stories if you are viewing this site on a mobile device. There is no need to subscribe to read them. Thanks, Karen

  • Cost of Living is £2 a Head

    Letters from Australia Series: Letter 2 First Impressions In Flight Across the World, published on 22 August 2026 – the 60th anniversary of our arrival in Perth, Western Australia – I shared my Mum’s first letter to the Runcorn Weekly News, a British newspaper. It described our journey from the north of England to our new Australian home. The second article in the Letters from Australia series was published on 10 November 1966. It describes Mum’s first impressions of Perth and Fremantle and addresses one of the most practical concerns for a young mother: the cost of feeding a family…

  • Flight Across the World

    Letters from Australia Series: Letter 1 Our Family’s Big Move The 22nd of August 1966 plays a pivotal role in the story of our family. It was on this day, sixty years ago, that we arrived in our new home — Perth, Western Australia. My parents, Keith and Christine Lucas, had earlier made a big life decision. Like so many others who took advantage of the Australian Government’s Assisted Passage Scheme, they uprooted their family’s life in the north of England and embarked on a journey to the other side of the world. I was just two years old, and…

  • The Rockingham, the Leeders and My Mum’s Historical Novel

    When Fiction, Facts and Family Intertwine My mum was a writer – she always wrote. And she always wanted to write a book. As a child she wrote stories for her younger siblings, creating an ongoing tale called The Mystery of the Disappearing Horses. She would read each instalment aloud before leaving her audience eagerly awaiting the next chapter which had yet to be written. When we migrated to Australia, she wrote a series of articles about life in our new home which were published in a British newspaper. She wrote short stories and poetry that were published in magazines…

  • The Chair in the Front Room

    Memories from a Home on Dinas Lane, Liverpool I was born in the front room of my paternal grandparents’ house at 82 Dinas Lane, Huyton. But that isn’t what makes this street so significant in my family history. There were many hellos and goodbyes in this house (yes, I know that I’m sounding like a Beatles song). So many happy times, so many tears. The main characters in this story of the Lucas family are: my Grandad, Stanley Lucas; my Nana, Frances Lucas, nee Foster; my Dad, Keith Stanley Lucas; and my Uncle, Rodney Lucas. There’s a Chair in There,…

  • The Silent Wedding That Filled a Burnley Church

    Image: Hannah Barnes, nee Cunliffe, with daughters Cissy and Gladys, circa 1920. A Victorian Wedding with a Difference On a September morning in 1877, an unusual crowd gathered at St Paul’s Church in Burnley, Lancashire. Some came out of curiosity. Others came because they had heard that something extraordinary was about to take place. Victorian weddings often attracted spectators eager to admire the bride’s dress, inspect the groom’s appearance, or simply enjoy a little local excitement. But on this occasion, the attraction was something entirely different. The bridegroom, Thomas Cunliffe of Oswaldtwistle, and the bride, Mary Kershaw of Burnley, were…

  • The Wedding Photograph and the Letter

    The Photograph I love old photographs. My aunt has my Nana and Grandad’s family album, and in it I found a beautiful wedding photograph in which my Grandad is the best man. As it is glued in, there is no way to see if anything is written on the back and, apart from Grandad, I didn’t recognise anyone in it. I asked all my older relatives about it, but nobody could shed any light on the bride and groom. My Grandad My maternal grandfather, James Frederick Edwards, was born in Runcorn, Cheshire, England, in 1907 and moved to Western Australia…

  • Television, That Deadly Box!

    Introducing Mum: Writer, Poet and Storyteller My mum, Christine Lucas, was a writer. As a child, she filled notebook after notebook with her stories and read them to her six siblings. Her younger sisters used to hang on every word, and mum got frustrated when her own mother would tell her to put her pen and paper away and get on with her chores. I remember mum buying her first portable typewriter when I was in primary school. She regularly set it up on our dining room table, and she’d tap away at the keys for hours. Mum wrote articles,…

  • Motorcycle Tragedies and the Thompson Brothers

    Two Brothers – Two Accidents – Two Years Apart Nobody wants that knock on the door from the police telling them that a loved one has been killed in a road accident. Sadly, this happened to the Thompson family in South Australia nearly 100 years ago, not just once, but twice, less than two years apart. Two of my husband’s great-uncles died in motorcycle accidents in almost the identical spot. They were brothers of Edward (known as Norman) Thompson, my husband’s grandfather. Malcolm Ronald Thompson died at just 17 years of age in August 1930, and Clifford John Webb Thompson…

  • Genealogy Gold!

    I love my distant cousins. I didn’t know most of them until I started researching my family tree. Over the years, I have corresponded with and met many cousins, having connected via DNA matches, shared ancestors on family trees, or simply being introduced by another relative who said, “You must speak with so-and-so. They know lots about our family history”. Take, for example, my second cousin once removed – Michael. He is a cousin on my Foster line (my paternal grandmother’s paternal line). Like me, Michael was born in Liverpool, England. Michael’s grandfather, William John Foster (1899-1965) and my great-grandfather,…

  • What Will Happen to the Horses?

    Inset image: Joseph Lucas – photo taken at the 1905 wedding of his daughter Mary Elizabeth (Lizzie) Royal Mail and the family story it brought me I was very excited when I received a letter from a distant cousin in England (yes, a real AIRMAIL letter, delivered by the postman). It contained a family story that had been passed down through the generations. The story relates to my paternal line – the Lucas family, who I have traced back to the early 1700s in Liverpool (which is where I was born in the 1960s). The central character in the story…

About

I’ve always had a fascination with history. When I was a child, one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up was an archaeologist. Now thinking about that, it’s really the stories from the past that intrigued me.

In recent years, I’ve been exploring my family history and have connected with newly found cousins around the world. I now know so much more about many of my ancestors and am enjoying telling their stories.

Karen – Perth, Western Australia Email – kaz747.thompson@gmail.com