My relatives in the UK, Dorothy and Roy, have been working on a family history for my mother's side of things and doing a very good job of it too. I have been running a kind of errand service between them and my mum, for her computer skills are somewhat lacking. Emails get lost or become unopenable, photos download but can't be retrieved, and so forth. For her it is very frustrating but in essence, my role is purely technical.

A recent photo sent from the UK sent my own memories into a tailspin to the 1960's. The shot shows my grandfather standing beside his taxi outside our new house at Chris Bang Crescent, Vaucluse. It is October 1961, a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis; Australia still in the grip of the Menzian torpor. I am three years old and peering from the passenger window. My grandmother has passed away only a year earlier. It is such a different time to the present and the Australia of this photo is barely recognisable. In the background, the long, cool lines of the Pacific Ocean.