My Life Journey worts & all?

Hi to you all i am new here, but i would like to tell my story before the dreaded memory loss gets to me later!

I hope a can tell it worts & all, because that is the only way that my life story can be told, it's a life of a man of colours & my many adventures ?

It's a journey from my birth to my retirement at 55 years old! with plenty of drama & wonderment.

cheers GCF

Thanks for the very first reply on here, lol

Well i better start on the key points first.

1.... happy with brothers at early age.

2.... damaged at 6

3 ....abused at 8

4....plenty of sports of all kinds from 6-17

5....apprentice signwriter .........then owned my business 1974-1987

6 Lost everything ( big business & political wranglings did that) & changed direction & became a sedan speedway driver on dirt.

All in the meantime yes i got married & have 3 children well i don't think they are children anymore, & also am a Grand Father 2 times over now!

cheers GCF

Ritergal said:

Hey Man,

You have a great start. Keep writing. I'm enjoying your story, and can just see a young boy balancing out on the limbs of that old tree. You have a flair for story telling, and I think you write like you talk.

As I tell people in my book, just keep on writing, one story at a time, and you'll get it all down.

Click to expand...

Thank you for those inspiring words, you are spot on i am just typing it as it comes as a flood, not a little stream with all the fancy words, it is my story so i suppose i am doing it as i would talk, my father had the gift of the gab, so maybe i have a bit also.

But the drama part hasn't started yet.

I was looking at some family history stuff i did years ago, & came across the gold rush finds. but also had another name on it , i must have had it down as a don't forget to ring reminder, well i just rang that number & it directed me to his Mobile phone , Dirk, who is only 4 years younger than me, always played with my eldest half brother, so the 2 half brothers were friends for a long time & did things together ( went up north to the top of Queensland )... is the guy on the other end of the phone & he is part of the Dutch family my father sponsored after the war.

He asked me am i still going to write that book i said maybe, then i gave him a shock, lucky he was sitting down & resting, i told him a bit of a story in the drama abuse section, & he couldn't believe what had happened all those years ago. Anyway he is also a half brother to ALBERT & MARINA, HE HAS FOUND HIS BIOLOGICAL FATHER, in Sydney & is visiting him, that was a great job of him finding his father before he passes away.

Dirk & i are going to get together when he comes back, i know he has a lot of stories he can email to me about the missing years before i was born, i can not ask my mother because she passed away 3 years ago, & my father passed away in 1986, the same year my mother in-law did.

I know my father did a family genealogical search in the early 60's but mum said he stopped it, i found out why, but that story will be latter on down the track so to speak.

If anyone wANt's to look at my photobucket pics & vids YOU are very welcome....... SHARE ONE SHARE ALL I SAY

HERE IS THE LINK ....... ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS SIGN UP it is free & enjoy my pleasures in life , there are photos of my work i did years ago. NOT MANY BECAUSE HALF OF THEM A DAMAGED, BUT THERE A SOME I FOUND OF WHEN I DID THE TURF GRAPHICS ON THE FOOTBALL & HORSE RACING GRASS, but that is another part of my lifer i will get to when the time comes, like i said i have many facets to my life!
http://s99.photobucket.com/albums/l305/tassiedevil_usa/

cheers GCF

Ritergal said:

Man,

It looks like you are writing your whole story on the Forum here. I hope you are also saving it in a document at home!

Click to expand...

Well i did say it was a life story , but it isn't a dairy, if it was i think it would be a really loooooooooong one

This is about my growing up & the dramas & things that have happened to me.
Wait until i get to the part when i own my own business.

Yes i am saving it FROM this site, i have it bookmarked so i can save the writing on an external hard drive.

cheers GCF

After my grandfather died Nan sat me on her lap & told a 10 year old kid about the discovery of the Victorian Gold Rush, she said i will tell you because you are more interested in History than all your other brothers.

So i had heard of the GOLD discoverer at school, but never thought that we might be related to the story. You see she said your grandfather Had a middle name of ESMONDE, & Thomas Esmonde was the father of a daughter that your great grandfather the swede Married, well he is the kin & James william Esmond the gold discoverer that came to australia From IRELAND at an early age around about 19 years old.
Well that really got my attention i would say, i wanted to know more, but she said that is all i am going to tell you, so when you are a teenager or an adult you can find out all the stuff that your Grandfather didn't tell me.
She said that there was something going on & that people in the gold district that he found the gold didn't like him & i suppose the relatives in CLUNES still won't talk about him, I thought wow there must be some sort of feud going on, i said to nan, i thought feuds were only in the deep south of America, she had a laugh that was fantastic to hear.
Nan looked at me gave a big smile & said if anyone is going to find out i think it will be you. So i jumped off her lap & gave her a big smile back & i said i will do my best to get to the bottom of this some day.

Well i did but i did it when i shifted up to Bendigo. with my wife & 3 children in 1989.
& this is what i discovered.

There is a lot of info that i found, but it wasn't easy.
He came to Australia did a few jobs, Heard about the california gold rush so

He travelled to the California gold rush , but got there to late to make a claim, so he became a mine manager & observed that the best way to wash the gravel was with the craddle.
This sounds more like drama rather than a story, i will continue his amazing story.
so on his way back to australia he came across & chattered with a man That just happened to be going back with him & his name was Hargraves, Ihave just been reading about that story,& a man on the docks shouted to him & said there is no gold in Australia. At which Hargraves politely said to the dockman I KNOW WERE IT IS, IT IS IN MY COLONY.
He was also on the gold mines but did not like manual work Hargraves was a lazy bum! But made a lot of money over there!
When the too got off the docks in Sydney They both turned to each other & said they know were gold could be ! So Hargraves found the gold in Bathurst & STARTED THE AUSTRALIAN GOLD RUSH, So NSW became overun with yanks , irish , europeans, & aussies from all over the colonies!... So Hargraves go the first gold rush going.
A little while latter Esmond found the Gold near clunes in Victoria & started the biggest & richest gold rushes the world had seen at the time. because he found the first payable gold in Victoria
When he declared GOLD IN THE HILLS! JUST BEFORE THAT, MELBOURNE WAS BEING DRAINED OF IT'S POPULATION to NSW. & to Bathurst

SO THE FOREFATHERS OF THE CITY of Melbourne capital city of Victoria posted a reward for anybody who finds Gold in Victoria in a specified radius from Melbourne WOULD GET THE REWARD!
There's alot more of that side of the story, but it is written in the annuals of time, so that is were i will finish the discovery. & START THE AMAZING STORY OF the EUREKA STOCKADE with him being a very influential part of the SOUTHERN CROSS, and the make up of early democracy in Australia!
It's really funny that all the films that were made of the EUREKA STOCKADE they deleted his name and when i travelled to the new Eureka Stockade museum In Ballarat, it was celebrating an aniversary of it the uprising His name was not on the list of rebels on display. So i asked one of the attendants there & they said he was not there in the battle field so he was not intitled to be on the list.
Yes he was there & the History of Ballarat published in 1870. says that he procured
the arms & ammunition for the uprising & paid for the goods on receipt !
BECAUSE AS THE WRITER SAYS IN HIS Preface that Esmond was still in Ballarat & he wrote from what Esmond had sent to him to read ! the writer verified it by do his own search in the area by talking to the eye witnesses!

but the worst part about him is that he died a pourpper & Lalor became a politition in Victoian Government! & in the end could not give a hoot about him.
the gold was discovered in early 1851in NSW & THE GOLD OF JAMES WAS JUST A FEW MONTHS AFTER IN JUNE! so there was a long time of mining for him before he got involved with the rebels& Lalor in 1854. He became a very respected man well before the uprising in Ballarat because of his mining prowess!
just read a bit about the saving of the solicitor when he & 2 other rebels got a triple reciept for their gathreing of deadly arms & the solicitor says if it hadn't been for Esmond the gold discoverer he would have been shot on the spot by the other rebel if he didn't hand over quick! &he says I have little dout my life would have been taken that night only for Esmond !
He certainlly was at the Stockard and as one of Lalors officers in charge of the musketeers men & 3 other offices that i will not name as they could have ralatives still living, but this book certainly says he was there!
there are a lot of turning & twisting events that tool place in those turbulent times, so there is alot more to come as at long last i have found the truth about his adventures!
On the 3rd of September 1886,
they had an anerversary march to the site of the stockade & them marched to the cemetery . the person that headed the procession was Mr. Esmond, carrying a pole draped in sable, with black crape streamers.
THIS Story of James w. Esmond ( notice when i spell his name the" e" is missing from the end) still have not worked that out yet > even in Ireland ( he was born very close to the Esmondes) could have been that his father decided to drop it to make it more English rather than Norman?

After my detective work of asking my aunties. i got nowhere!
Something must have happened & no one was going to tell a 10 year old kid ! At age 38 i wanted to know the truth ! so went to a research room in the State library of Victoria & FOUND ALL THE PAPERS AT THE TIME OF THE GOLD RUSH had plenty to say about him. Satisfied i had accomplised my mission I turned to my own Family tree research & he wasn't mentioned ! THAT WAS STRANGE I THOUGHT !
Birth death & Marriages would have to be the way to go.

It was just lucky that a program had just been invented by the goldfields family register & you could access it from there computers in libraries all over Victoria.
Typed in james william esmond & it came back & said do you want to try Thomas Esmonde & his family from Rushworth, also a gold town in victoria!
Try anthing at this stage !
Eureka ! it was Thomas's daughter that my G.G. FATHER married
So i abandened James & went on the lookout for the ESMONDE'S of NORMANDY
woo hoo, That name & the other ways of spelling it Have got royal conections to the thrones of France, Normandy, England, the high kings of Ireland & very prominent in the crusades, 3 times, French royalty, Norman Royalty, English castles, Irish casles
War with cromwell in Ireland. & before that helping the spanish armarder in Ireland
Being Knights they just fight for money, not much loyalty between the knights!

Most of these Esmonde clan Either ended up as priests doctors, in parliament
& there is still Barranet's in Ireland today!
The Canadian & American ones are related to these powerfull Esmonde's. In that they had to flee the potato famine ! & the british. to make a name again in another country.
The American ones are proffessors, doctors , Academics in Science & Authors of Science! seams like they kept there forefathers ambitions of Ireland!
Looks like my gmother got it wrong by one generation & the wrong Esmonde!
My side of the Esmonde goes to about the 12th to the 13th century.
But really starts about mid 16 hundreds, mainly because there were no more legitimate aires to the Barranet, so the uncle took over to keep the barranet's of Ireland going & prosper! & to this very day they are still a respected familly in Ireland , america & australia!
Before that the De ESMONDE are knights in England that built & destroyed castles
& the remnants of these knights fought for Strongbow over in Ireland before the English King could get his army together Strongbow & these knights had already taken over the county. There is more to that..... ALL OF WHAT HAPPENED AFTER IS WRITTEN DOWN IN iRISH & NORMAN.......FOLKLORE !

Most of that is in the peerage books today under " Esmonde "
James w. Esmond is related to my ggfathers wifes side. but i still have to verify it.
I N THE 1920 's the main Esmonde barrenet came over by ship to Australia for a holiday with his wife & children
. & the first place he went to was Clunes to see, as he said a very prominent person from my kinship & pay tribute to his pioneering endeavours & to make Victoria what it is today! & there was a photo of him standing in front of the monument that was donated by Melbourne & Geelong people Rather from the CLUNES townfolk.
Even today in Clunes there are desendents of people that tell you that James.w Esmond was i liar & IT WAS THERE KIN...... that started the gold rush off!
To me it sounds more like the Scots & Irish not liking each other in those turbulent days. Because the ones that are disputing him have all got Scottish names! & the township is still more scottish. but you can still talk to people there that have an open mind on the subject!

A couple of years ago i got a surprise that an elderly relation of James was still alive & has a lot of Eureka chattles & things but is very reluctant for people to see them. what he has got should be in the Eureka stockade museum!
these items were given to him by maybe his father or uncle from James.
The very reason they not there is that he whent to the 100th. gold celebration Ball & was verbally abused by the decendants of the other gold miners in the town & the ball nearlly had a brawl & he had some of those trinkets there for them to look at & see for themselves that James was at the Stockade.
So there was the ones that said he was a liar for the gold, & there were the ones that disputed that he was at the uprising. Yeah i would have got my temper up if they said that & could not verify it! So no one got to see the tringkets & he said no museum will get them either. Bloody must have been really mad!



I am glad i kept all this history on a hard drive so it is easier to cut & paste it.

AmyBA said:

Hi Manofcolours! We're glad you've found us-- if you're looking to share your work with us, we have a password-protected board just for posting our writing for feedback and critique, at http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=163. The password is vista. See you there!

Click to expand...

Thank you for giving me that info, i will do that a little later on, i still have plenty to go in my family & Relatives sagas, that is what the vikings called there stories, so i suppose i can do the same seeing that i have Swedish & Irish in my blood, the vikings & gaelic kelts were very much the same.

Well readers my family just didn't do sports we also went on fishing & camping holidays with our extended uncle bert & auntie nelly & there kids.
We would go either to a popular camping ground or some isolated fishing spot, We did the usual things you do when camping &fishing, there were hikes up mountains or if it was hot enough we all jumped in a lake & the beach.

Campfires every night with singing & dancing, but me & my brothers had to find the wood first , so we all went fishing for the wood, we gathered it up & piled the logs near the site for the campfire, & let it dry out, in the sun, while we either went rowing in a flat bottom alluminium boat, or got to learn how to do water skiing if there was more people around the lake.
Marina who grew up with me was a great friend to have, as we were growing up & uncle bert & auntie nelly, (That name was also my grandmothers first name Nelly,) Always made sure we played together where ever we went either at the beach at Frankston & Seaford or at my house or hers, i had a feeling at about 12 years old that they wanted us to marry later on. But i posed this question to her & she said this isn't Europe & they can not make that happen unless we wanted it to, I liked the thought & so did she, but we had our own lives to look to the future, but she was my first Girl friend i suppose at a very young age?

But i also grew up with 3 other girls from pre school to 6th grade we all had our own things to do but those years were great to communicate with the opposite sex, i had 5 other brothers & no sisters, so a bit of female company was a good thing for me.

i WAS JUST WATCHING THE LE TOUR DA FRANCE introductions, (yes we have an aussie going good in the yellow jersey go Cadel EVANS GO to PARIS)
OVER HERE LIVE & THEY HAVE a cooking segment just before they go to the race, & it just brings back the home made yummies , but it also brought back memories of the best girlfriend i had in my 2nd year of tech school, i liked riding & isn't it strange how watching something jolts a memory, weather it be a good one or a bad one, this memory was both, but that will be said it it's timeline.

cheers GCF

endless rewrite said:

Couldn't you just post a link to your work rather than posting it all here? Maybe you should check out more of the forum and see how things work here.

Click to expand...

Yeh i agree with you, i am on a few motor racing forums & they are a blast to a revhead like me.

But i did say in the first post that i was doing a life story & asked if it was alright to do it , & i got the go ahead from a poster, so i thought it was alright to do it that way, i did find it a bit strange that it a forum usually not like that, is there another place on this site that i can tell the story as it comes out of my memory, rather than having to write it down .

cheers GCF

Watching the bike race live & seeing all the romanesque buildings still standing in the provincial towns of France, it grinds my gears that The roman & roman british buildings were so far ahead of there times & had there own hot water & centrally heated houses, that when the barbaric Saxons & Engles from germanic tribes invaded Britain, they destroyed manificent wonders.

All the Barbarians did was burn down all the great structures or tare them down & constructed everything in Wood & thatch, now that put England back 5 hundred years in technology & science, they also cut down much of the vast forests for the materials, england was really glad when the Normans came over, maybe not the earls & princes, but the Stone building style of the Normans made England a power again in technology & sciences.
Pitty the Normans only lasted 4 centuries in England!

Angelinity said:

Hey GCF,

What do you think you've doing throughout all these posts? Haven't you been 'writing it down'??



NO matter where you try to hide you can't get around writing it down, so you might as well do it, eh?

Click to expand...

No i have been typing it on a keyboard, rather than handwriting as i use to do before i started to type, i don't do it in touch tipping i just use 2 fingers. lol.

I better get back to watching this great race of peddle power

I have saved what i have done so far on the story!
I will just use this as a forum from now on & keep doing the story in Microsoft word. I might get some ideas how to do it better seeing that you writers have more experience than me.

I am probably doing it to organic with to much passion rather than seeing it from a readers perspective.

The best book i have read was David Nivens funny & witty book he did in the early seventies, i think it was called THE MOON IS BLUE.
Me & my wife both loved reading it!

cheers GCF

Now i think it is more like the other forums that i do, i have left the stories that are HISTORY in Australia & where well documented & researched by scholars over here!

So if you want to chat on the things that i have deleted i will play along with you.

cheers DR

I had a few ideas of giving the story a title.

MAN OF MANY COLOURS. as the main title.

Then a few tag lines i thought.

"Brush strokes through life"

"Brush strokes drips & all"

"Brush marks & smudges"

"Brush marks with paint drips"

there they are but maybe some of you could come up with better tag lines

My life wasn't all sports just the years before i became a signwriting apprentice. There are many colours to my life & my family.