Colleen Hewett - Life Matters (2015)
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MusicTranscript
00:00This album, though, is personal in another way because it taps into this terrific family
00:21history story that you've unearthed.
00:23I always knew that my grandmother was a different colour, particularly when it was highlighted
00:29to me when I was about seven years old.
00:32And I knew that some strange things used to happen when my sister and I would go up to
00:36Bendigo from Melbourne, up to Bendigo to spend holidays up there with Nanny and Grandpa.
00:41And things used to happen that used to, you know, big question marks were popping out
00:45of the top of my head.
00:46What sorts of things?
00:47Oh, she used to get little bags of flour, it looked like talcum powder or something
00:52thrown at her, abuse.
00:54I only saw her as Nanny.
00:55I didn't know that there was anything different about her until when I was, I don't know,
00:59about 10 or 11 and the little kid across the road, my grandma was coming down to visit
01:04us.
01:05And I said, you've got to come over and meet my Nanny.
01:06Nanny Marjorie?
01:07Nanny Marjorie, yeah.
01:08And come over, you know, because this kid was Scottish and I knew that Grandpa was a
01:15Scot.
01:16And so anyway, yeah, one thing led to another.
01:19He came screaming through the back door, excited to meet my grandma.
01:25And he went as white as a sheet with his mouth open and said to her, I didn't know
01:29what he'd say really because of the Scottish accent, he went, you're black.
01:33And he's gone running out the back door.
01:35And I thought, what did he say?
01:36And I've looked over at my grandma who dunked her biscuit and continued on.
01:40I mean, she'd heard it all her life.
01:42God love her.
01:44When a person's been there all your life, you don't notice those things.
01:47She was a beautiful, big, cuddly, soft lady.
01:50Yeah, but that kid got a belting that he will never forget.
01:54So there's a song on the album called Starlight.
01:56Yes, that's that's my great grandfather, all about him.
02:00Who was he?
02:01He took a shine to the goldfields, the goldfields took a shine to him.
02:04Yeah, well, he was he turned out to be a famous boxer, too.
02:06He come out from Guyana in the Caribbean and came, I think they started out in Castlemaine
02:14in Victoria.
02:15And then, you know, he travelled around, he became, as I say, this boxer by default, really.
02:20And then he met my great grandmother, who had come out from Boston via Africa somewhere.
02:27And they met and they produced my grandmother.
02:30It's a wonderful story.
02:31Has that been told, that story in your family, or is this a recent discovery?
02:35We had always heard about this Starlight, Starlight.
02:38And because he was a star, he was a star.
02:40Well, he was a famous boxer, but I'm talking about in the early 19, you know, 1920 or whatever
02:46it was, you know.
02:47I mean, Prince Edward at the time, he saw Starlight fight when he was in Australia and
02:55invited him to England, where he presented him with a beautiful walking stick with a
02:58beautiful, you know, gold top on it and all this.
03:02He loved him.
03:03This is before boxing gloves.
03:04This is like barefisted fighting.
03:07And then my uncle, my mother's brother, he turned out to be a boxer as well and had the
03:11same stance and the same behaviour, apparently, as this famous star.
03:17But we weren't allowed to talk.
03:18Well, the parents, the grownups, every time we'd walk into a room, we'd always know something
03:23was going on because everyone would stop.
03:25They were discussing it.
03:26Was it a hidden history?
03:27Yeah, it was hidden.
03:28Why do you think it was hidden?
03:29Because Nanny was illegitimate.
03:31She'd been the product of an affair.
03:33Yeah.
03:34But then later on, they did the right thing and they did marry and, you know, it all become
03:38above board.
03:39But Nanny was illegitimate in the beginning.