My name is Julie Fletcher. I was born in 1963 in Sale, Victoria, Australia. I have been researching my family history for about a year now. During this time I’ve toyed with the idea of starting a blog – primarily to share my findings with family members but also with the aim of perhaps reaching out to distant cousins in the hope that we can exchange information.

So here I am, a year later. I still want to “start a blog”. I still have zero ideas on how to do so.  I’ve searched and searched articles on starting a genealogy blog. I’ve read and re-read the results. I’m still totally clueless.

Do you remember the old joke where Mum sends a note to her child’s school: “Please excuse Johnny from swimming lessons until he learns how to swim”? This was me. I wanted to dive into blogging but I wanted to learn to swim first. This just isn’t a reasonable approach. So here I am taking a big deep breath and jumping in. I’m sure I’ll flounder; I’ll makes mistakes. But I’ll learn from those mistakes and hopefully I’ll make friends along the way.

So to start off – why did I name this blog “The Restall Gene” ? Picking the name of your blog is a little daunting isn’t it? I can admit picking a name was a stumbling block for me. “Julie Fletcher’s Family Tree”, “Fletcher Branches”, “Fletcher Roots” ?? Wowsers we won’t even go to that last one…..

But eventually “The Restall Gene” popped into my mind. Restall is the surname of my maternal great grandparents Albert Restall and Rose Minnie Restall (nee Harding) who along with their children departed Sussex, England for the shores of Australia. One of those children was Alice Restall.

Unfortunately to my great regret I never actually met Alice but the stories about her became legend in my family. Poor old Alice did things, things we rational people would not do. Things that were greeted by “For Christ’s sake Alice!” by her long suffering husband Uncle Mudge. These things that Aunty Alice did were told and retold with great glee by subsequent family members. In time these “things” were attributed to “the Restall Gene”.

A couple of examples – the time she left a note on her front door – “I’ve gone to the shops but the key is in the washing machine”.

Or the time we lived in New Guinea in the 1970s are were sending taped messages via cassette back and forewards – we got a tape from Alice and Mudge – when we played it we heard heard Aunty Alice saying hello…. then a long pause…. then Uncle Mudge saying “well say something else” followed by dear old Alice – “I’m waiting for them to answer”.

So in honour of my Aunty Alice this blog will be called “The Restall Gene”.