Planning the Project

The map on the top of the sidecar of the motorbike that Christian and Karsten took through Africa. The solid red line denotes the route planned. The dashed line denotes the route taken.

I have begun getting into the detail of how to structure the Memory Project, after my mother giving me a list of chapters of my dad’s life. Fortuitously I also found pages and pages of notes I took when I embarked on an early version of this project in school. It means we don’t have to start from nothing, and we already have a lot to work with, including notes from interviews with my late Oma.

I’m using an online app called Miro to map stories and pathways of journeys, such as the one below. It’s important to tie the whole project together with some global context — what was going on at the time of the story?

It feels like arriving Australia is the least interesting part of the whole story — it’s where everything seems safe and normal and not…fraught with war or independence, or rich with stories of other places.

If you look below, you will see the early mapping of the Africa trip, which I need to get input from my parents on. The crazy thing is that in the period between 1959 and 1961 there were wars all through the northern part of Africa. From the mid 1950’s to 70’s many countries were in the midst of gaining independence, so the time my father travelled through and lived in these countries was a really significant time in history.

Initial Map of the Motorbike trip through Africa (route to be confirmed)

The early part of the story is full of war and post war life in Germany. I realised today that WW2 was nearly 80 years ago, 77 years actually. The war in Ukraine is the first war of this scale on European soil, involving one of the so called Superpowers (arguably it’s hard to call Russia a super power now) since the end of WW2….a generational reminder. Few people left alive have memories of WW2. Perhaps that’s why Putin is so cavalier with war, he doesn’t remember. Perhaps it’s a good time for people to learn about what life in war time was like.

Well, there are a few tales to tell on that front too - moving numerous times due to war time, living on a piece of bread a day… all memories of a war time child hood. The photographs of this period are limited, so it won’t be as visually rich as the African part of the story.

Anyway, must run… school pick up time. :)