Family history across the seas

Each week there’s a new photo theme on the Sepia Saturday blog. The idea is to post to the theme a close as possible to Saturday but for one reason and another I find myself always running late. This week I thought I’d be ahead of the game but with various other commitments here I am again, mid-week.

My recollections of my first visit to a circus are brief but have lasted through the years. Mum said I wasn’t all that young, but my feeling was that I was probably about five. Apparently Dad got cheaper tickets through the railway because the circus was set up on the park opposite the Show Ground and the Royal Brisbane Hospital: the route he used to walk daily as part of his numbertaker duties. My memory tells me we were seated on the end of a row and I remember the clown coming up to Dad and pulling out a great long string of cheerios (aka cocktail frankfurts etc) from Dad’s pocket. You can imagine that seemed pretty weird to a small girl. I also remember that someone, clown or magician or… pulled a connected string of vividly coloured handkerchiefs from his pocket….a pretty standard circus trick, but eye-popping for a young girl on her first visit to the Big Top.

In later years the Moscow Circus would come to town and would be so much more exuberant and exotic than Bullen’s with which we were more familiar.

Surprisingly since I’ve always loved animals I have no recollection of the monkeys, lions or other animals though they were undoubtedly there. However I did find this great story on Trove of the circus monkey to enliven this post. You have to feel sorry for the poor animal with all those kids crowded round him.

As always the Sepians have been inventive in their response to the theme. Why not pop over and see what they wrote about? I have to say I think Kristin’s poem on Jo Mendi was just perfect for the theme, but I think Deb’s cheeky and unexpected story has to be the winner!