We began our search for Jonathon's family after his mother died in 2014. Jon and I had met in Brisbane where he had brought his mother into my office. I must have passed muster, because Jon and I decided to begin a new life together shortly after. I was curious about his family's background, but quickly learnt that questions about the past were an intrusion. Jonathon's mother had children born after him, and although distant from Jon, they seemed to be a close knit family. After many adventures living and working in NSW, we eventually settled in the Burnett region in SE Queensland in early 2015. We could now at last look for Jon's grandmother's grave we had been told was in Tin Can Bay. Jon's grandmother Eleanor Walker was Christina and Michael Ryan's youngest child. Eleanor, known in the family as Hon (short for Honey), looked after Jonathon when the relationship with his stepfather became life threatening. Jon was very close to Hon and from my perspective, she was the reason he survived more or less in tact, the many traumas that were to come his way after leaving Hon and her partner Frank Wild's household in Redcliffe, Brisbane.
In Tin Can Bay the day before Christmas Eve 2015, we made our way to the Cooloola Coast Cemetery, but it was evident that Hon was not buried there. After a few phone calls, we were told instead that Hon's mother, Christina Copson was buried in the Gympie Cemetery and that family related to Christina were keen to meet us. It was a surprise as well as shock to realize that relatives were living in Gympie. Within half an hour we met Christina's great grandson Les, who telephoned and rallied his children to come and meet us in the Gympie funeral home grounds. It was here that we learnt that Hon's elder brother Edward had a child in 1913 with a young local girl, which had been kept secret until Jon's sister Melissa wrote about Christina in a 2013 essay for the book 'Destroying the Joint.' This essay had brought Edward's long held secret out into the open, for better or worse. There was indignation expressed over what was written, as this family now felt they had claims to Christina that needed to be aired. Over the next weeks, we met other local Gympie people who claimed to be related to Christina. We were told stories of this family which appeared to be founded mostly on gossip and hearsay. In the absence of corroborating evidence to verify these tales, I embarked on a search, trawling government department records and documents. People in Goomboorian, Wolvi, Tin Can Bay and Gympie were found who remembered the family from the late 1930's. These records and interviews became a valuable source of information that helped fill the many gaping holes in the family's evolving story.
Christina's grandson Les and his family had begun a search that had unearthed birth certificates of Christina and Michael's children: Edward born in 1894; Ivy May 1897, Florence 1899 and Eleanor 1902. These birth certificates also note that there were two infant deaths, a female before Ivy May and a male before Florence's birth. We found evidence of what Jon had been told living with Christina, Hon and his mother in Tin Can Bay in the early 1950's, that they were Gubbi Gubbi. Christina and Michael Ryan's children's birth certificates record that Christina was born in Kenilworth and Michael in Ireland. We heard anecdotal accounts from the Gympie family that pointed to Christina's father being John Copson, a pioneer timber getter. Christina retained her Copson maiden name until she died in 1953. She was associated with John Copson's family in Tin Can Bay where she worked with Tom, Milly and Harry Steele in their boarding house during the second world war. However, there was no evidence to confirm that John Copson was Christina's father. The Gympie Times obituary for him notes that John Copson was born in 1839 and died in 1921, did not marry and had no children. His Will sourced from Qld State Archives, also states that he had no children and his estate was bequeathed to various nieces and nephews, with no mention of Christina. This blog is an attempt to piece together a tenuous family story that has been lost and therefore not passed on to living descendants. It is a search for evidence that will help construct a complex narrative of Aboriginal identity surviving the vicissitudes of colonisation.
