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This page contains various snippets about the Hagen family of Hurstbridge and some of our immediate relations. We live out on the fringes of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, where the city meets the bush.
If you are looking for something less egocentric then you should
probably head for Rod's Home
Page .
There you will find snippets of anthropology, information about a
range of indigenous issues, including Native Title, some bits and
pieces about the environment, and other sundry thoughts, together
with a collection of links to similar stuff elsewhere, and to other
passing fetishes of the author (such as Macintosh computers,
Citroens, the weather, the law, dogs, cats, horses and chickens,
science , the mass media or whatever else comes to mind).
Noel Hagen lives some way from Hurstbridge (roughly 750
kilometres away from us) in the sunny climes of Sydney. Renowned for
a somewhat whimsical sense of humour. Spent most of his working life
peering into people's mouths saying "this will only hurt a bit" BUT
really wanted to be a doctor or an historian or a playwrite - or even
an anthropologist!
Currently runs French courses for the University of the Third Age.
Continually threatening to write a biography of his grandfather (my great grandfather), Conrad Von Hagen, an interesting bloke of Schleswig Holstein origins, who grew up in London but moved to Australia as a young man. Conrad spent time working on Warrangesda Aboriginal mission with the Reverend Samuel Gribble and on Vindex Station in Queensland.
After this Conrad became involved in the Australian federation debates (he had a terrible penchant for the views of Henry George), was an active pacifist during the Boer War, and on one occasion stood as an independent against WW1 Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes. Despite this apparently valuable life however, he also seems to have played a part in introducing Hire Purchase to Australia. No doubt Noel expects me to finish the biography if he doesn't. Sigh!
Noel also introduced me as a child to the joys of beach fishing,
camping and French motor cars, for which I am eternally grateful!
Our
younger daughter, Freya Ruby Hagen, currently 11 years old, tried
serious travel for the first time a couple of years ago. Here
she is with Dimanthe, an Australian Sri Lankan gal, who she met in
Bali . The starfish, I'm assured, were returned to the place from
whence they came.
Freya goes to Hurstbridge Primary School , which somehow still exists despite the best efforts of the current Victorian Government who think that public funds are best spent on aiding casino owners and grand prix race tracks rather than on trivial luxuries like education, health and environmental matters.
Freya is into friends, computers (Macs of course), swimming,
drama, jazz ballet and music. She likes old fashioned music like the
Beatles, (though I have a sneaking suspicion that Brittany Spears now
take pride of place in her personal pantheon). I KNOW that she
has a hankering for Leonardo De Caprio too). She made her
stage debut recently for the Hurstbridge Singers and danced her feet
off in Disco Inferno and Summer Nights.
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Freya's big sister, Ari Spierings, in earlier days. She always liked this photo taken while camping at a very pleasant East Gippsland estuary 17 years ago. (I am not allowed to divulge the name of the estuary, on pain of death, because of fears that it will be over-run with sports teachers listening to Whitney Houston on ghetto blasters). |
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A few years later she looked like this, blowing up a storm on her trumpet. |
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Then, of course, came the horse. Sherry is a 12 year
old ex-pacer, who manages to injure herself often
enough to avoid being ridden with any regularity. The last
one was a nasty one - a box thorn on an agistment property
went right through one eyeball, leaving her blind in that
eye. |
In 1998, she's taking a break from study, enjoying earning the odd dollar or two and contemplating the future....In 1999....working for Optus but still contemplating....
Linda Karen , mother of Freya,
daughter of Lorraine, wife of Rod, step
daughter of George, step mother of Ari
etc. etc.
I first met Linda when she interviewed me for a job. She says she was
the only one on the panel who didn't want to hire me (something about
the way I put my feet up on her desk during the interview).
I knew we were meant for each other when she mailed me an
invitation to a party wrapped around a potato (raw, with the earth
still attached - its amazing what Australia Post will deliver . Its
amazing how symbolic the potato is for Estonians too. Linda's father,
Raoul Siska, came from
Estonia. Did Sir Walter Raleigh visit Estonia after plonking
the marvelous tuber in Queen Liz's lap? Or maybe some ancestral
Siska, unfeted by the history books, could have been amongst the
increasing crowd of Europeans who seem to have made it across the
Atlantic before young Chris Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Or maybe
the Basque cod fishers (who also seem to have made it across the
Atlantic before CC) brought back the spud and shared it with their
fellow non Indo-European language speakers in Estonia...
Linda works for Telstra
(the Australian publicly owned communications giant currently being
flogged off by little Johnny Howard), but, until the outrages in East
Timor, she would rather have been in Bali.
Linda with Chooks
Another patriarch!
George
Pinches, seen here with Freya
(who is just back from Bali, as you can see from the hair), has just
retired after along career in the oil industry. George spent most of
his childhood in western Victoria near the foot of the Grampians, and
WWII in Canada and Europe in the airforce. After the war, he returned
to Europe in 1951 to work for Shell Petroleum in The Hague. He
married Linda's mother, Lorraine, in 1983.
George has a passion for cars. Changes them more often than I have
a haircut. He's owned just about everything you can think of,
from a Renault 750 on. His current steed is a rather fine
middle aged Merc, but my favourite was a black Alvis that he parted
with a couple of years ago.
Saving
the best to last - The MatriarchsLorraine, wife of George Pinches , mother of Linda and her brother Raoul Jnr, former wife of Raoul Senior (Linda's dad). Lorraine grew up in Melbourne and Fiji. Lorraine, (known to some of us as Isabel), makes one of the world's greatest Christmas Puddings. She and George have done a fair bit of travelling in recent years (to just about everywhere from Belgium to Banff).
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Lorraine's grandfather, Dominic Sonsie came to Australia from
Italy.
On her mother's side, Lorraine's great, great, great
grandfather, Major Anthony Beale was on the island of St
Helena when Napoleon was imprisoned there. He came to Melbourne
in 1839. The north eastern Melbourne suburb of St Helena takes
its name from the house which he built there soon after his
arrival.
Lorraine is known to every blackbirds and magpie throughout the
Mornington Peninnsula, all of whom can be sure of decent feed if they
swoop past her kitchen window.
Margaret , mother of my sister, Rosemary and I, grandmother of
Ari and Freya (how did Freya manage to wangle her way into all of
these photos!). Margaret lives with us in the mud hut in Hurstbridge,
where she plays a major role in maintaining the life support systems
and general psychological well-being of the chooks, dogs and
cat. She makes an irresistable fruit mince pie!
Margaret was born in Sydney. Her mother Rachel Fulleylove hailed from Derby, England and her father, Albert Parker came from Yorkshire. They came to Australia just after WW1 and lived in Rockdale, where Albert ran an engineering business.
Margaret spent her working life as a teacher. Her first
serious stint was out at Weethalee, a one teacher school in the wheat
belt of western NSW. After interruptions occasioned by the birth of
Rosemary, my sister, and I , trips to England and the like, she went
on to teach again at Narraweena Primary, French's Forest
Primary and Beacon Hill Primary School in Sydney's Northern
Suburbs. After retiring she hit the road, circumnavigating
Australia and heading off on various lightning trips to places such
as Cape York and the Flinders Ranges.
Well, I guess having inflicted the above on the poor long suffering family, I ought to say something about myself.
Born at Shoreham by Sea, Sussex, in 1952, during one of my parents' sojourns in England. Came to Australia at the age of 4 on the SS Arcadia. Back to England a few years later (G'day Bruce Hunt, if you are out there somewhere!) before finally coming back for good in 1964. Headed off to Macquarie Uni in the early 1970's, where I pursued a highly eclectic bachelors degree, starting off with lots of science and psychology and somehow ending up in the anthropology and comparative sociology honours program.
Went from there to Alice Springs in 1975, working for the Central Land Council,an indigenous organisation with statutory responsibilities for land related matters in the southern half of the Northern Territory. My first daughter, Ari, was born there in 1979.
Moved to Melbourne in 1980, and worked as a consultant
anthropologist, engaged by various indigenous and government agencies
until 1985, working on projects such as Environmental Impact Studies
at Portland, Victoria and Roxby Downs , South Australia for
indigenous groups, and on various Northern Territory Aboriginal land
claims and sacred site identification projects.
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I'd rather be there! |
From 1985 to 1990 I ran a community organisation / legal centre in Melbourne called "Job Watch", which investigated exploitation in employment and training, undertook research into matters such as student work experiences and employment advertsising and produced educational resource materials. I met Linda at Job Watch and we were married in 1987. Freya came along a year later. Then it was off to the Victorian Occupational Health and Safety Commission, running a major research project into drug and alcohol problems in the workplace and to Environment Victoria, managing a community based "traffic calming" program.
Since 1993 I've been back in the anthropology game, working on
anthropological and historical material associated with Native Title
issues and other areas involving indigenous interests in land.
Email the
author.
©Rod Hagen, 1998
