Gran & Grampy (1968)

This is a collection of clips of my Grandma Olga (known to us as either 'Gran' or 'Grannilumpkin') and Grandpa Lindsay (known as 'Grampy').



First, there's a clip of Gran getting out of the family car - which was shared by my Mum and Grampy - going into East Kew State school. Mum says she's pretty sure this was Gran on her way to do her cleaning job there.

Then, a short clip of Gran, Grampy and some unknown lady in Gran's lounge. We think this is at their house opposite the old fire station in East Kew (40 Belford Road). I can even recognise some of the chairs and the curtains in this clip as they were kept and re-used at Gran & Grampy's retirement house!

A small interlude of some of Grampy's roses - of which he was very proud - and finishing on one of my favourite clips... This shows Grampy, who died when I was 10, feeding a wild bird he'd befriended in the front garden at the Belford Road house. The film reel says the bird is 'Larch' but whether this was the bird's nickname or breed, I don't know. This clip is special because there are so few clips of Grampy as he hated being filmed. You can also see the family car in the background.

Grampy's garden (1968)

Grampy didn't like being filmed much but he was very proud of his garden. This is some film Mum shot back in around 1968 of some of his favourite plants in the garden at Belford Road, East Kew in Melbourne Australia. I decided to send it to Google for easier sharing with family as well as safe storage. One day I'd like to work out what the plants are and plant some all together as a garden in his memory. (Unfortunately this only shows closeups of plants, no view of the overall garden, and there's no shots of Grampy himself but hey it's better than nothing!)

Ellinis docking in Melbourne (1968)

This is some film of a big ship called Ellinis docking at Station Pier in Melbourne sometime during 1968. Mum can't remember taking this but we know it is this from the label on the filmreel. Our guess is that it is either meeting someone who was a friend of a friend migrating to Australia; or simply Mum being creative on a church youth group outing. She said going to see a ship arrive is one of the things that people did back then for fun. Besides the Ellinis, there is also a cameo appearance by a tugboat called Batman.



I like this clip partly just 'cos it seems like a totally different world, very different arriving by ship to arriving at the airport! Mum's also been quite creative with her splicing together of various clips in this. I thought I'd share it on Google just in case anyone who sailed on it stumbles across it... I can imagine it'd be a nice family heirloom to have a clip of the ship you migrated to Australia on.

Me as a baby! (1970)

Dad sent over some old reels of Film which I had professionally converted to VHS so I could see what was on them. (We used Aarchive Film who I'd recommend if anyone else in UK is seeking help doing this). There's lots of interesting clips from this but my favourite so far is the footage of me as a baby!

Here are some clips:

Me as a baby, aged 9 weeks according to Mum, being given a bath and then a bottle from Dad


Me, aged around 7 months, playing & being generally fussed over. My favourite parts of this are the piggy-back ride; me stubbornly refusing to move; 'walking' with Gran holding me upright; and learning to splash in my first swimming pool! There's also a very cute little red horse pram thing that I don't remember at all but Mum says I loved and she used to push me in all over East Kew.


All are filmed at Gran and Grampy's old house which was at 40 Belford Road, East Kew in Melbourne Australia. I especially love the (now very trendy and retro) kitchen you can see in the start of the second clip. Mum says that it was trendy originally in the 1950's but out of fashion by the time this was filmed, but Gran still liked it.

Banska Bystrica ice-skating videos (Nov 1985)

These are a collection of the various routines for some skaters from the Australian team competing at Banska Bystrica in November 1985. Banska (as we called it) was an annual fixture on the Eastern European junior figure skating competition circuit... lots of skaters competed in this & the sister competition in Olomouc as a warm-up for the Junior World championships which followed a few weeks after.

I figure these videos aren't going to be of interest to many people besides a few relatives & old skating friends, but I figured Google was a safe place to store it & easiest to share. I've included everyone's full names as I've lost touch with many of them so figured that one day perhaps if they google'd themselves they might come across it(!)

Fleur and Mark: Pairs


Lyn and Duncan: Dance


Sean: Mens


Finally, here's some footage of a party on the last night which I found at the end of the tape. It's quite amusing, if only to see the dodgy 1980's clothes! Basically it is a late night tour of the hotel we stayed at with much messing around.



If any of you do find this please get in touch... just leave a comment on the blog. (And of course, if you'd like me to take the videos of you down just say so). Also, I have videos of quite a few other skaters in this event from other countries... there are no names so I can't tell who any of them are but if you competed in this event in this year and can tell me what you looked like I can try and unearth it.

Animals at Healesville Sanctuary video (Aug 2005)

Yay! This google video thing actually works! It took a few days but then it was over the weekend... but all the videos I'd uploaded have gone live now.

Here's the very first one - a short montage of cute animals drinking & eating at Healesville Sanctuary.

The description: "A few clips taken on a recent visit to Healesville Sanctuary in Victoria, Australia. There's a really cute looking wombat eating from his bowl. A white ibis clacking his beak as he eats a fish. And my favourite, a black cockatoo drinking water from a puddle"

Why why why

Well, you can blame google. I wanted to try out their new Google video service. If nothing else, I figured it'd be a much easier way for me to share occasional home movies with friends & family, without me having to deal with burning them onto disks or emailing.

But, they insisted on having a URL as part of the submission. So, I figured I'd set up a blog which can not only serve as the URL but also I can add a post whenever a new video has been uploaded & accepted by Google.

So far, I'm just testing it out and have uploaded only one video - a 25 second montage of some cute animals Dave took when he visited Healesville Sanctuary last week. I don't know how long it'll take for Google to process, we'll just have to wait and see!

As soon as it goes 'live' I'll post another entry with a link to it.

UPDATE (Apr 2011): now that Google video is no more, I've gone through the tedious process of migrating everything over to Vimeo and updating the links on here. Hopefully I never have to do that again.