Last night I posted a photograph of my maternal grandfather, William Que Hee, on Instagram. I posted it after I’d written and dropped a podcast about the dream I had of Goong goong while eating on a cruise ship of all things.

You can get this podcast in iTunes too at https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/my-thoughts-and-stuff/id1207747458

Goong goong William Que Hee I dreamt about my maternal grandfather http://garydlum.co/idrea9fd1 ⬅️I blogged about it #grandfather #dreaming #dreamdiary #brisbane

A post shared by Gary Lum (@garydlum) on Feb 21, 2017 at 1:26am PST

My friend and fellow blogger Daniel saw the photograph and asked if I knew much about my family history. I replied that I knew enough to satisfy my curiosity.

On my mother’s side, I’m fifth generation Australian and except for an Irish great grandmother everyone else is Chinese. On my father’s side, they’re all Chinese. My father was born and grew up in Fiji. His parents sailed there from China to set up a general store. Both sides of the family originally came from the same village somewhere in the southeast of China.

Back to Mum’s side. Her people came out for gold and settled in parts of Queensland. They were wise people. My maternal grandmother was born in Charters Towers. She was sent back to China when she was two to be educated. She returned to Australia aged twelve fully educated. She was a smart no nonsense woman.

My parent’s generation were the first to go through tertiary education. Mum did teacher’s training college and became a domestic science teacher. Her younger brother went on to be a very successful urologist. My Dad graduated in medicine in New Zealand and had a very successful general practice in Brisbane for more than thirty years. Some of his brothers were engineers, both civil and aeronautical. Others were in business and administration.