Writing and filming personal and family histories to keep forever.
Stories to Keep is my brainchild, something I nurtured in the back of my mind.
Beginning in my mid-teens, I was for 30 years a journalist for Fairfax and The Age. While I spearhead this venture, it is backed by other journalists and videographers with years of experience at the highest levels of journalism.
As a reporter and editor, I won awards and had many front page stories, but the stories that I recall with the greatest affection are those of ordinary people with great yarns to tell.
They may have lived through a different era or done something to make them a bit special. Or maybe they just survived or flourished through an illness, 50 years of marriage, or a dramatic event. These stories often had pride of place for their families, placed on fridges, on pin boards or in frames.
It proved to me that every person had a story inside them, that they could and should tell. While they were enjoyed by readers, they were treasured by family members.
But for every story I wrote, there was often an element that was only fit for friends and family. These never made the paper or the web.
Sadly, that beautiful skill of spinning a feature story about ordinary Australians is rarely told in the modern media. So hellbent on chasing the here and now stories, we are losing touch with the very fabric of our own humanity.
My love of story telling and career as a journalist comes from my grandfather, Gerry. He could entertain his nine grandchildren for hours with stories of when he was little – peppering the tales with funny songs from his childhood.
We never tired of asking him to retell the one about . . .
As he grew older, with my grandmother gone, he would talk to me about more serious parts of his life. As a young adult, I felt touched and honoured to have heard his thoughts and philosophy on life. He was a great man who lived a quiet yet amusing life.
I’m grateful my mother recorded many of his stories while waiting for his endless medical appointments.
When I embarked on this venture, I intended to interview my surviving, paternal grandfather. Christy was a 91-year-old Irishman, full of brogue and Blarney cheek. By the time I was ready, I was too late. He died just weeks before I was able to travel into country Victoria to interview him. Just months earlier, he had been digging potatoes for my family out of his garden.
Stories to Keep knows it it is not just important to hear family stories but to treasure and preserve them while we are well enough to tell them. They are important not just for ourselves but for future generations.
We can’t know ourselves unless we know our story.
– Deborah Gough
