In every conceivable manner, the family is a link to our past, bridge to our future. – Alex Haley
The time you spend with family keeps your inner clock running. – Anonymous
20th February 2023
The plan for the day was to drive to Auckland to meet my sister, Tam, and my brother-in-law Gary at the hotel they stayed in last night. The Australia Day long weekend has given them the opportunity to come over to Auckland for a few days to spent time with us and, especially to meet Lynette and her family. In fact, Lynette already met them when they arrived at the airport yesterday – as she did for us when we arrived in Auckland two weeks ago – and they had a coffee together at the airport.
The drive to Auckland from Taupō is about 270kms and will take at least 3 hours. We can only check into the Air Bnb in Huntington Park at 2.00pm so we plan to be there at that time to check in and then go to pick Tam and Gary up.
It’s been quite a few years since I last saw Jackie but it was as if we had only just seen each other a few weeks ago. It just doesn’t seem all that long ago since we were teenagers wearing bell-bottomed jeans and sitting in the lounge in the Moffat’s Spanish-style house in Rondebult Road in Boksburg drinking coffee and listening to Fleetwood Mac, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and the Moody Blues. And yet it is nearly 50 years ago.
We were very sorry to bid Jackie and Peter farewell after breakfast and go on our way. It was very good to see them both and to get to see the lovely house they built at the bend of the river. It has such a tranquil location and absolutely glorious views. We’ve very much appreciated their warm welcome and generous hospitality and I hope that it won’t be too long before we see them again.
Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life. – Albert Einstein
The connection between Lynette and her siblings and me and my siblings goes back a lot further even. I started to do some research into my family tree about a year ago and had a DNA test that identified Lynette and I as 3rd cousins by the amount of DNA we share.
I didn’t recognise Lynette’s name but sent her a message with a brief rundown of my family background. She responded very quickly and we were excited to determine that her mother and mine were direct first cousins, their mothers being sisters. Once I learned who her mother was I knew exactly who she is and how we are related. I remember meeting Lynette and her siblings once before many years ago when we were children and they were visiting South Africa.
I’m not sure when this photograph was taken but Magdalen died on the 25th of August 1958 in Johannesburg. The three sisters were the youngest of Magdalen and Friedrich Dankworth’s six children. Molly (Amelia,) the eldest of the three girls, was born on the 12th of June 1903. She married Louis Lindeque in 1924 and they had a son called Victor Louis in 1927. Sadly, Victor Louis died on the 15th of June in 1931 the age of 4 from Diphtheria. Molly never had any other children.
Dora was two years younger than Molly and was born on the 20th of May, 1905. The youngest sister, my maternal grandmother, Mary (Marie) came along five years later and was born on the 18th of September 1910.
There are some interesting parallels between the 2 younger sisters. Dora married Bunny (Ernest) Goercke and they had two daughters, the older sister was a dark-haired girl they named Yvonne Dolores and the younger was a blonde-haired girl called Shirley Hope. Lynette’s mother, Yvonne, was born on the 24th of January 1929 and was 6 years older than her sister, Shirley, who was born on the 4th of February 1935.
Mary married Icky (Charles) Juchau and had two daughters, the older sister was a dark-haired girl they named Alma Thérèse and the younger was a blonde-haired girl called Marian Nannette. My mother, Alma, was born on the 16th September 1933 and was 5 years older than her sister, Marian, who was born on the 15 August 1938.
The Goercke family lived in Regents Park in Johannesburg when the girls were young and the Juchau family lived not far away in Alberton. In a alternate version of this story, Dora and Mary’s children and grandchildren would have grown up not far from one another and we would no doubt have known each other well but, as it happened, the four cousins were separated when Dora and Bunny moved far away to Northern Rhodesia and the two families became disconnected over the years. Thanks to the magic of the internet, we are now back in touch.
As I have discovered thus far from my research into all 4 of the family trees that my siblings and I spring from – two for each parent – there were numerous adventurers among our forebears who travelled far and wide to seek adventures and better opportunities for themselves and their families and to connect with like-minded people. It is not surprising that this trait is continuing into the next generation.
In 1943, Bunny got a job with the Roan Antelope Copper Mine in the Luanshya District on the Northern Rhodesian (Zambian) Copperbelt. Dora and Shirley went up to join him a year later just after Shirley’s 9th birthday.
At the time Dora and Shirley moved to Northern Rhodesia, Yvonne had just turned 15. It must have been decided that she would remain in South Africa to finish her schooling at Germiston High and stay in Alberton with her Aunt Mary (my grandmother) and the Juchau family for those few years. Yvonne and my mother were close and I remember my mother speaking very fondly of her cousin.
Time passed.
In Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia, Yvonne met (Bernard) Leo Edward Geard Orpen who was born on the 21st of November 1922. Leo and Yvonne got married in Bertrams, Johannesburg, on the 25th of October 1949, when Leo was 27 and Yvonne was 20. Ickie Juchau was one of witnesses to their marriage.
Alma married Peter Trevor Williams in Alberton on the 11 June 1955. Peter was born on the 21st August 1932. They had four children: Karen Jean, Rhett Owen, Tracy Lee and Tamra Andria.
Yvonne and Leo had five children and then decided to follow Leo’s brother, Theo, in emigrating with his family to New Zealand in 1962. They named their children Dorothy May, Lynette Clare, Brian Hugh, Carol Ann and Neville Stanley. The family settled in Howick which is a suburb of Auckland south east of the city centre and 3 of the four siblings still live in that area. Sadly, Brian passed away in 2014.
You can imagine my delight when Lynette invited us to meet her and her older sister Dorothy and some of their children and grandchildren this afternoon at a beach in Cockle Bay. After picking up Gary and Tam, we headed to the beach and got there just after 5.00pm.
It was a very windy afternoon and the younger children were running around the play area exulting in their youthful exuberance and the wild weather. The adults were sitting on picnic benches and it was wonderful to finally reconnect with some of our long-lost family. I just know that our grandmothers’ and mothers’ spirits would rejoice in this reconnection of some of their children and grandchildren.
Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. – Norman Maclean
It is an odd coincidence that when Michael’s brother and his family moved to New Zealand in 1998, they settled in Cockle Bay and lived there for many years. They lived in Pah Road which is just around the corner from Cockle Bay beach. We had no way of knowing when we first visited Jackie and Peter in New Zealand years ago that Yvonne and Leo and their family were also living there and were so close by.
Unhitched 