VERNON Knight says he’s played an instrumental role in helping people across Sunraysia preserve their histories in written form.
But now he is taking the chance to learn about his own family’s history, and in particular the tragic story of his great-grandfather, James McIntosh.
As the project co-ordinator of the Mallee Living Histories project, which has seen the publication of five books collated with the stories of people from across the district, Knight said he understands the importance of keeping a record of the past.
“It has reminded me of how important it is to talk to our parents, earlier generations, while we can,” he said.
“I’m now thinking of all of the things I would have loved to have asked my mother but I didn’t, and now that opportunity is gone.
“That’s really the message of Mallee Living Histories too.”
Knight is in the process of putting together a book about his great-grandfather James MacIntosh, a Scottish migrant who was killed in the Solomon Islands when he was 27-years-old while captaining a ship to collect copra.
“For a long time, I believed I needed to research the story of my great-grandfather, if only to pass it on to my kids and grandkids,” Knight said.
“But quite coincidently, a lot of my reading was around the south sea adventurers.”
Knight’s book, with the working title The Seafarers, not only follows great-grandfather’s story, but also delves deeper into the history of sailors in the south seas and issues around slave trade and labour recruitment.
“After I captured as much of James MacIntosh’s story as I could, my conclusion was that I had to go to the Solomon Islands to try and get the rest of it,” he said.
Knight is set to travel to the Solomon Islands in September to help fill in some of the holes in his research about his great-grandfather, who is grandmother and mother never got the chance to meet.
“In some ways I am trying to do this for my mother, who is longer with us, and her siblings too, because they never got to meet their grandfather,” he said.
Once he returns from the Solomon Islands, Knight hopes to finish and publish his book by November.
