I have just joined a Facebook group called Castel Felice Ship and found lots of photos and stories of their crossings to Australia from other members. There is no way I can learn who took all these photos so I cannot give credit to the photographers... My parents, younger brother, Ian and I set sail from a snowy Southampton on December 10th 1967. I had my 11th birthday two days later, Mum and Dad gave me the presents from our family. We had intended to fly to Perth but an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK meant we had to sail as a form of quarantine. The ships usually went through the Suez Canal but as the ongoing war/conflict between Egypt and Israel made it unsafe we had to take the long way around stopping at Los Palmas in the Canary Islands and Cape Town in South Africa. We children were required to go "school" each morning to keep up our reading etc as the trip lasted 29 days in all. Being under the age of 12 yrs I had to eat with the younger children and th...

 I'll make a start here while it's fresh from Pete's pen! Or was it his father George Adamson(Mum's cousin) that wrote it first? Diary of a First World War soldier found in an attic Preston soldier Joshua Kelsall kept a diary while serving on the Western Front, which only emerged decades later when it was found in his son’s attic, as great nephew Peter Adamson reveals. Sergeant Joshua Kelsall’s stained, canvas-covered diary of his experiences in war-torn France between August 7, 1914 and February 3, 1915 lay undiscovered until November 1993, when it came to light among the effects of his son Rowland after his death. Rowland’s widow gave the diary to Joshua’s daughter Mrs Freda Howarth who, after a casual glance at the tattered cover and faded pencil jottings, thought she had at last found her father’s legendary old recipe book of herbal remedies which she has heard about and had vanished years ago. Closer examination of the more legible entries showed it to be something...

 With the recent passing of both our parents it's now up to me to continue the telling of our stories, handing down the verbal and photographic tale of where we come from and what makes us who we are.  Ian and I have our own families now and this is for them. For our families and also so that those generations who were much loved and admired can be remembered. All my life I've been listening to and fascinated by the tales of when my parents and grand-parents were 'young': what their family life was like, what did they eat, wear and how did they spend their time? How thrilling it truly was to sit by the open coal fire and listen particularly to my Grandad Gardner tell us of running barefoot around Lancaster, of a little sailor suit that spent a great deal of time in the Hock Shop and of family sing-songs in days before television. I scribbled notes on the backs of envelopes and in notebooks on the bus to Burswood with my Dad, whilst on the phone to his brother, our uncle...