Last year's Christmas letter

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007- the email and web addresses in these are probably defunct (2002 must have got overwritten)

I have always wanted a 4wd but have hated the north shore shopping trolleys of modern days. So recently we purchased Kermit.

Now that's a 4wd!!

My second love in life is a good train trip. I will travel on a train anywhere - as long as it isn't for work.

I recently took mum to Katoomba on a train. Apart from a trip on the Indian Pacific I have not been on a train in the mountains for many years and it was just great.

John and I, father's day 2006 - the hands belong to Evan and Pat who love to drape their arms over us to prove we are shorter than them.

Cheryl and Ron of Arabia - (UAE - United Arab Emirates) - far easier to say Arabia - Cheryl really doesn't have to wear the abbaya and shayla - she was just visiting a very special mosque.
Catch up with their exploits at their blog from UAE

How I got started collecting the names that I have:

(you can't really call it genealogy or family history as I don't dedicate myself to research)

Who we are:

My name is Helen Castle, I am married to John.  We have 2 children, Evan & Pat.  We have a grandson Jack who we haven't seen in a while.

We live in Narangba Qld. After starting out our married life in 1977 in St Clair NSW, we then moved to Shellharbour NSW in 1993 for 10 years.  Our sea-change was Shellharbour but it got too busy and hectic so we moved on.  John came kicking and screaming and we now live just north of Brisbane.

John worked on NSW railways for 30 years and took his gold watch, gold pass and a redundancy and never looked back.  After stints as a carer, welder, traffic controller, water truck driver John now works at the Royal Brisbane and Womens' Hospital as a patient support officer..  I have been a public servant since 1991 - I work for Treasury.

Evan and Pat have left home (finally!!) - Evan in Zillmere and Pat in Shellharbour.  Both boys were living in Qld when we made the decision to move so it wasn't such a strange thing to do - we didn't need to be near them but thought we would at least live in the same state - so much for that idea.  Pat moved home to Shellharbour the week we moved up here.  Evan moved home to us not long after we arrived.

Why computers have a lot to answer for:

Some years ago, prior to 1989, I used to have a Dick Smith VZ200 which my brother Mike no longer used - the boys used to get me to type up the code for a game and they would play it for hours. Then we got a tape deck that we could save the code in, they learnt how to do it themselves and they played with it for hours. It plugged into the TV so we had to buy a third black and white TV solely for the computer - no need for colour as it only showed 2 colours.

In 1989 I purchased my first IBM compatible computer from Mike for $1000 ($700 of it was a modem) and the kids and I learnt about bulletin boards and how to run up the phone bill by dialling up too many times a day - after about 6 months I gave the modem back to Mike and told him it cost too much and I wasn't interested in it. I have regularly updated my computers every 2 years since then - on average they have always cost less than $1000 each time. However I haven't had an upgrade for about 4 years now. I still have a computer box that is in the shape of a cat that I got in 2000. I used to build my own computers but gave that up about 8 years ago. However I still pull mine apart on a regular basis for one reason or another.

The boys and I spent many hours on the computer - I began an interest in databases and how they worked. I used the ex student information from John's and my schools to practice and learnt how to manipulate data, do mass mailings and do stuff that is quite commonplace now.

Somewhere in there I did an Associate Dip in Business and a few computer courses. I was hooked.

About the same time mum was learning about databases for a reunion for which she has kept the records for the past 20 years. Mum and her friend Steve spent many hours working on their projects on the computer. Mum was active for many years in recording the archive information at Nepean Hospital. Mum can do more things with Microsoft Works than most people can do with Word, Access and Excel. She also does really cute cards and can handle internet and email quite easily. She has recently started using MSN Messenger. Mum is 77 this year. When we upgraded her computer for her this year a scanner and printer was an absolute must.

About 1995 I started out on the internet with 4 hours a month and no-one else in the house was interested. I have had several ISP accounts and am currently on broadband. We are logged on 24/7 and an email will usually get to me straight away. You will find me regularly reading the soc.genealogy.aust+nz newsgroup and that I have about 6-8 working email addresses. The Telstra/Bigpond ones are defunct and so are the Ozemail and ShoalNet ones. The rest are current and are used for particular reasons - family and friends, subscriptions, junk mail and web contacts.

To give you an idea of what sort of a nerd I am we are currently running 2 laptops, one for John, one for me and a home server that can be quickly reconfigured to a PC if someone is visiting. I can't stand anyone using my computer anymore. However I have been known to let trusted friends use it in an emergency.

Some years ago, about 1994, I was given a genealogy program for the computer and being the nerd I am I decided to learn to use it. I put the info I knew about my immediate family in and thought what a cool little program.

About the same time I used to look for reasons to get out of football canteen at Shellharbour.  I saw an information day at Kiama Family History Centre and it was all day Saturday - a good reason not to do canteen!!  I went along for the day and it was enthralling.  I really enjoyed the talk by Ray Thorburn and got a little hooked.  I must say it was the first time I was ever convinced a computer couldn't do a better job. (Ever tried searching birth, deaths and marriage records?)

A little later a fellow at work gave me another program and I met Peter Castle of Mangerton who gave me a lot of info on the Castle family.  I just kept filling in the blanks and accumulating information.  I was very much the newbie with a lot of lessons to learn (one of them was that you can't possibly remember where all the information came from - however at first I did).

Meet the rellies:

My dad told me about another cousin, Cheryl Mongan of Yass, who had done some family research and one day mum and I went on a trip to visit my older brother's grave in Orange, he had died in infancy before I was born. We called in at Yass on the way home.  Cheryl made us very welcome and gave me a really good start with Malloy family information.

About that time mum got a bit disgusted as her father had arrived here in early 1900's and there was no information on her side of the family.  She had been to England and visited her father's brother's family in Market Deeping so we wrote a letter to the local minister.  Apparently he passed it onto someone who put it in the kitchen drawer!!  Some time later we decided international phone calls aren't all that dear and made a couple - we found out about Alan & Val Eve who were coming to Australia and years down the track we have become firm friends with the Eve's.  John and I have been to Market Deeping twice now, we met other Eve family members and have been to Florida to visit another line of Eves.  John is as much at home in the workshop at Alan's business as he was in the railway workshops all those years.

Alan & Val have travelled with us and we have been to Western Australia to visit some Malloy family members who we never knew existed for a long time.  In 2005 we met up with Alan & Val in New Zealand and in 2008 I planned to be a participant in the Deepings Raft Race - Alan & his sons Karl & Albie prepare a raft most years and have previously been Hula girls, Fred & Barney, Harry Potter - so I have to think of an Australian theme - I was thinking we could be Steve Irwin's on a boat called Crikey or maybe the Wiggles (did you know my cousin is the Blue Wiggle? his grandmother and my grandmother were sisters!!)

Over the years I have met hundreds of people who have given me all sorts of information.  If only I had the time to follow it all up and do proper research.  I have too much fun visiting the rellies that are alive.

Why do I do it?

Some people have an inflated idea of the research that they do and it consumes them - I just like to meet the people, do the travel and have some fun.  I learn lots about people while I am at it and John and I have had some really good holidays.

Some of the things we have done because I got interested in computers:

• visited Changi Prison in Singapore where John's grandfather was interned during WW2
• been to a WW1 cemetery in the French countryside and been treated by the locals as VIPs
• stayed in the Jamaica Inn in Ireland one of the best youth hostels you will experience
• watched a game of Gaelic football and hurling in Ireland
• walked across the River Shannon in Ireland at Killaloe where Nana Malloy's family come from
• found a great aunt who was 92 before I even knew she existed
• travelled on the Indian Pacific to Perth and met family we never knew
• been to Florida and stayed in West Palm Beach where the millionaires live
• been on the 7 mile long bridge in the movie "True Lies" (Jamie Curtis/Arnie Schwarzenegger)
• had our photo taken in front of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles (however you can't see the sign for the people in the photo!!)
• found out it takes 4 right turns to make a left when you drive on the wrong side of the road
• walked through St Peter's Cathedral, the Roman Forum and the Coliseum in Rome
• seen the ancient ruins of Pompeii
• visited the Blue Grotto on the Isle of Capri
• Shakespeare's home in Avon
• Cheryl & I have stood on Canton railway station in China and had real Cantonese food in Canton (now Guangzhou)
• eaten Yum Cha in Hong Kong
• visited the terracotta soldiers from Xian who were on a tour of southern China
• seen thousand year old churches or temples in China, Macau, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England
• visited dead relatives in cemeteries that are hundreds of years old
• gambled in Las Vegas
• had Thanksgiving with Australians in the old Mexican town in San Diego
• visited Nessie in Loch Ness
• John even had a sleep on the grass at Westminster Abbey because he wasn't looking at another bloody church!!!!

If I had never opened that quirky little computer program I would never have gone down the path we have gone down and we would never have had so much fun.  You never knows what life brings you.