The Accentuate the Positive Geneameme has become part of each year’s calendar, thanks to the encouragement of Jill Ball aka GeniAus. In 2025 she said:
“For the 2025 challenge I have decided to move away from prompts that relate to particular situations and resources to a list focusing on our reactions to particular verbs as we reflect on our family history journey.”
These are my responses:
1. I treasured seeing my grandmother Kunkel’s extensive china dining set used as my daughter’s Christmas table setting. We also treasure our daughter’s superb culinary skills.
2. I shared – the story of the lives and hardships of the Dorfprozelten immigrants at the AFFHO Connections Conference in March 2025.
3. I travelled to Townsville and Magnetic Island, revisited childhood experiences and was mystified by some changes, and caught up with “old” friends in their new location. I racked my memory and did some extensive retrospective travel in the 2025 April A to Z challenge using airport call signs we’ve travelled through over the decades.
4. I learned so much at the AFFHO Connections 2025 Conference in Brisbane. I’ve also learned so much more about German history from Ute Brandenburg and Ursula Krause via the German Genealogy Headquarters presentations.
5. I changed. While lots of genimates have transferred blogs to SubStack, I haven’t bitten the bullet or decided that I will transfer. Nor have I dipped my toes into using AI. Will 2026 be the year? I have signed up with Andrew Redfern’s webinars on Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
6. I received the gift of other people’s knowledge at seminars etc through the year. Also copies of PNG Independence newspapers from my friend Valerie – now able to share with daughters.
The German Genealogy guru, Ursula Krause found that some RAAF and RAF pilots were interred initially in German church graveyards before being transferred to CWGC sites. I researched the story of the crew of one lost aircraft and posted one story on this blog.
7. I conquered confirmed my Kunkel family’s church records with the release of the Dorfprozelten parish records on Matricula – centuries of data. Interesting to see for whom my 2x great grandparents were godparents. I long for the day when I can easily read the old German Kurrent script!
8. I found that my uncle’s parents had gone to Paraguay as part of the New Australia settlement before returning to Queensland. I knew nothing about this story (which I really need to write up).
9. I taught some of my learning and reading about Ethics, Prisoners of War WWII in Europe, and blogging, through my presentations at different societies.
10. I cried at the tragedies, hardships and isolation that many of our early immigrants experienced; the horrors that were inflicted on our Indigenous peoples by so-called-civilised European settlers; and the privation of the POWs on the Long March away from Germany’s east.
11. I was proud pleased to see so many of my fellow genimates at the AFFHO conference after the long social drought post-Covid.
12. I read about 1850s Indigenous settlement through the novel Edenglassie and follow-up academic articles by Dr Ray Kerkove: https://mappingbrisbanehistory.com.au/brisbane-history-essays/brisbane-southside-history/first-australians-and-original-landscape/indigenous-sites/
And, did lots of background reference reading about POWs in Germany during WWII.
Thanks to GeniAus for ensuring we reflect on our achievements through the year, not just the things we’re frustrated about not achieving.
Family history across the seas 