A magnificent photo showing my mother Louise Elsa Kuchel as a small girl, her mother Marie Kuchel (nee Nicksch), my great grandmother Nicksch (nee Wolf) and my 2xgreat grandmother Wolf (nee Fleischmann). Thank you, Diana Mann.

My 2xgreat grandmother, Maria Anna Fleischmann was born on 22 May 1834 in Schwartzbrunn, northern Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). At the time of her birth, Bohemia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

She left Hamburg, Germany, on 9 September 1876 in the Cesar Godeffroy with two children and arrived at Port Adelaide, South Australia on 7 January 1877, a trip of almost 4 months.

With family, in her time in South Australia, she moved from the popular Barossa Valley to the drier mid-North and Murray Mallee areas, a far cry from the mountainous European area she grew up in.

Her daughter, my great grandmother, Anna Wolf, was born in Morchenstern, near Schwartzbrunn on 15 January 1867 and arrived in South Australia on the Cesar Godeffroy in 1877 with her mother. On 25 January 1883, Anna Wolf married Carl Gustav Nicksch and bore him seven (7) children over the next 16 years.

Her daughter, my grandmother, Anna Maria Nicksch was born on 19 February 1887 at Bower in the mid-North of South Australia. She and two of her brothers were the first students enrolled at the nearby Geranium Plain school, which opened in 1894.

In 1907, the family moved to Buccleuch in the Murray Mallee when the opening of the Pinnaroo railway line opened up that area of South Australia to settlement.

She married Otto Kuchel on 22 February 1909 in Murray Bridge, a regional centre, and they initially farmed at Toora, on the river flats near Murray Bridge.

My mother, known as Elsie Kuchel, was born in Murray Bridge on 15 December 1909. On 1 October 1930, she married my father, Arthur Mann, and they farmed at Moorlands in the Murray Mallee, before shifting to Long Flat, on the reclaimed swamps near and opposite Murray Bridge in 1942. Eleven children were born to them from 1931 to 1953.

These women did not have easy lives and I am proud to be descended from them.