‘But,’ Mum told me, ‘I said to her, what toy could you ever buy that would keep a child so interested?’

I’d arrive at her house in the morning, and she’d have made me sandwiches and a thermos, as she did when I was at school. I’d drive off, park in a quiet spot overlooking the harbour, and get into the back seat with one of the children’s kickboards across my lap by way of a desk. It was a fine way to work: the children happy with their Granny, the thermos and sandwiches a comfort, and that stunning view. I did some good work there.

The children were unpredictable sleepers, and when I got back they’d sometimes be napping in the pram that Mum called The Magic Box. Mum and I would have a cup of tea while we took it in turns to wiggle the pram and keep the baby asleep. Now and then I’d get out the little cassette recorder and ask her to tell me the family stories again.

She was unafraid of the machine, unself-conscious about being taped. She spoke easily, telling those well-worn stories one more time. I got her to tell me about Solomon Wiseman, and then about the generations between him and us. For each generation there were a few vivid stories: the newly arrived Cockney boy who had to drive three rams from one end of Goonoo Goonoo Station to the other—‘without a dog!’ Granny Davis, who always had a gun loaded in the corner of the hut on account of the blacks: ‘not to use it, just to show them she had it’. Auntie Rose, who had shared one pair of boots with her four sisters ‘so they could never all go into town at the same time’.

About her own life she was less comfortable. There were regrets, mistakes, loneliness; deaths and divorces. Her voice lost its confidence, the words grew dull. I had to prompt her with questions, but she didn’t always want to answer. ‘I don’t really remember,’ she’d say, and we’d move on.

I’d never played those tapes back, but a few days after the walk I got them out and began to listen. Mum was older and frailer now: the tapes reminded me how strong she’d once been. In the background a child would grizzle from time to time and I could be heard going shhh, shhhhh. It was good to hear Mum laugh as she told the story about herself as a girl, putting castor oil on her eyelashes to make them grow.

You could hear in her voice the pleasure she took in telling the Wiseman story once more, knowing that this time it was being recorded. Hearing it again, I realised that, although I thought I’d forgotten every detail, at some level I knew it by heart:

Solomon Wiseman was born in London and worked on the docks. He married, and for some offence we don’t know of, he was transported to Sydney, arriving in 1806 on the Alexander. I’ve heard that he was a smuggler, but I don’t know for sure. His wife accompanied him, which suggests money. He was not only freed but given a grant of land at what is now called Wiseman’s Ferry. He started the ferry, made money, built the hotel that’s still there—the two lions at the gate were brought especially for the house from England. His first wife died and he married a local girl and had a number of children, one of whom was called Sarah Catherine, my great-grandmother. Strong rumour was that he killed this first wife by throwing her down some stairs. Her ghost is supposed to haunt the place.