This is my paternal grandmother, Edna. The baby that she is clutching is my father, Jack.

By the time Jack was 8 years old he was a resident at the St Joseph’s Home for Boys, an orphanage at Kincumber on the central coast of New South Wales.

The unfortunate consequence of Jack being raised by the Sisters of St Joseph at Kincumber was that Jack didn’t talk about Edna. The unfortunate consequence of Jack not talking about Edna was that I grew up knowing almost nothing about her. I knew that her maiden name was Dorney. I knew that she was from Redfern or Waterloo in Sydney. And I knew that she looked desperately unhappy in the only two pictures I had ever seen of her.

Dad grew up in an orphanage and all children in an orphanage are orphans, right? As it happens, wrong. Children in an orphanage are not necessarily orphans.

My father and his two brothers were placed in that orphanage while their parents were both very much alive. By the time that I learned this truth, everyone who could have helped me to understand what happened was very much not alive.

I have spent more than 20 years trying to find out the truth about Edna, who she was and where she came from. Kindling will explore my journey through researching Edna’s past.

You see, my dad was born in 1933. If he is about 1 in the picture then it is 1934 and Edna looks to be about 25 which means that Edna would have been born around 1910 and no one named Edna Dorney was born in New South Wales, or anywhere else, around that time…

Note to readers: to follow the Edna story in order, click on the tag ‘Edna’ below.