Magnetic North

At the 2001 Census in New Zealand, more than 13,000 people had been born in Scotland, but they form just a wee proportion of those who have migrated here or who have Scottish forebears. New Zealand is about as far as it's possible to get from Scotland but, like Canada and Australia, it has been a country in which many ex-pat Scots have settled over the past 160 years of European colonisation of these isles.

The distinction of being part Scottish

Dunedin New Zealand's fourth-largest city at the bottom of our South Island is reputedly named jointly for Dundee and Edinburgh. It was certainly the home of many early merchants and traders, though today, like the Scots themselves, people of Scottish heritage can be found throughout New Zealand. Many famous Kiwis, including the leader of a popular opposition political party Winston Peters, a now-retired scourge of company directors Max Gunn, and highly respected All Black Todd Blackadder, have the distinction of being part Scottish.

A personal story

I, along with my two sisters, fall into the large number of New Zealanders who have Scottish parents and/or grandparents. Our late father migrated to New Zealand from Newmains, with his widowed mother, brother and four sisters, in 1948 once he had been demobbed from the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve after World War II. Recipient of a DSM won in motor torpedo boat action, Henry Campbell Carty our dad came 12,000 miles to the small settlement of Collingwood at the top of the South Island, where lived a sister of his mother Jean.

A motor mechanic, Harry as he was known to friends and family moved to the nearby seaside city of Nelson chasing employment. The rest of his family did likewise.

There he, his brother Peter, and two brothers-in-law John Nicol and Bill White formed the nucleus of the new Thistle soccer club, following in the football-loving tradition of the Carty lads' late father, Hugh. It was in Nelson he married my mother, who was of German heritage and whose family migrated to New Zealand from Cologne in the 1840s. I am quite sure that it was dad's gentle, Scottish accent that first attracted my mother who was, at the time she met him, doing a tailoring apprenticeship with dad's sister, Mary.

Roots back in Scotland

Today, of course, only one sister, young Jean, remains alive from that very Scottish family that chose to make New Zealand their home nearly 50 years ago. And while none of dad's daughters wear kilts, each of us is proud of that Scottish ancestry. Each has also made her individual pilgrimage to Strathaven, where dad's family was born and where grandad, Hugh Carty, was a water inspector for the local council. Each has also made a point of looking up dad's relatives. My grandmother still has at least one niece and one nephew in Strathaven, both now elderly living "up the stair" in the small council house that they so proudly own.

But as for grandad's side of the family, much less is known. Sadly, grandad died when my father, his elder sister Isabel and only brother Peter were serving their country in the Second World War. Worse, we know little about him.

Making genealogy a hobby

Grandad was clearly a good soccer player clippings from the time, carefully kept by the family over the years, say that he was goalkeeper for Aberdeen for many years and had the chance to play for Blackburn Rovers. But there's not much more to tell. That, of course, is not unusual. Many Kiwis have family with their roots in Scotland and many determine to make genealogy a hobby at some time in their lives. We will, too, one day.

Bringing the homeland to life

It's hard to explain at least in a way that doesn't sound soppy and sentimental but when we were children, the lilt of dad's voice, the different terms gran used to describe various events and places, were completely mystical and entrancing. So, too, were the old 78 records that mum hoarded, so many of them bearing the songs of tenor Kenneth McKellar and his more comedic counterpart Andy Stewart. When both entertainers came to Nelson, mum, dad and we three girls were bundled into one of our hometown's two small theatres to hear them sing all the songs that were so familiar. Even today, I cannot hear My Grannie's Highland Hame, The Scottish Soldier and The Northern Lights of Aberdeen without feeling a bit weepy. They were still are, in fact marvellous songs that made this homeland of my father's just a little bit more real. One day, we each vowed, we would visit. And visit we did, separately and together.

I'm fortunate, in fact, because in my journalism career I was fortunate enough to become a newspaper editor, twice. My first editorship came in 1992 when I was based in Hamilton, in the heart of dairying and horse-rearing country in what we call the region of Waikato. During that editorship, the British Government kindly brought me to the United Kingdom for a fortnight, during which time I was able to visit Scotland's Hamilton so close to where my father's family grew up and Craigellachie, the home of my favourite malt whisky, The Macallan. I still have the fabulous photograph of the distillery's old house on my wall this was one visit to Scotland I will never forget.

Returning home

And will we be back? I know I will. I want to put flesh on Grandfather Carty's bones. I want to see Jennie, now 90, and Andrew, 88, again before they die. I want to meet my second or third cousin, Sadie Louden, again, and join her and her mates in Strathaven over another wine or three. And I want to be able to tell my nieces Alice, nearly 14, Daisy, 10, Madeleine, 7, and Gabrielle, 4 all I find out about the grandfather who died before they, and we, were born, and about his family in Scotland. They will want to visit themselves. My sisters Kaye and Vicki will encourage them to do so Scotland has played such a large part in all our lives, despite our living in these southern Pacific islands at the bottom of the world, that for them not to find out more about their heritage and Scotland as she is today would be impossible.