As a volunteer at Unley Museum, I was approached by the Curator, Karen Paris to contribute to the exhibition Cosmopolitan Unley paying tribute to the lives of recent and past migrants to Unley. It was part of South Australian’s 2018 History Festival but was on display for three months.

I undertook research about my great-great grandparents Louis Friedrich Wurm and Julia Crush, who migrated to Adelaide from Germany and England respectively in the mid-1800s. Following a research trip and great assistance from the Stansbury Museum, I drafted text, sourced images and a clock that had been donated when Louis moved from Unley to Stansbury across St Vincent’s Gulf on the Yorke Peninsula.

I then consulted family members for feedback. The circle of family contacts grew across both the Wurm and Crush sides and I thought it would be a great opportunity to organise a reunion. We met (some of us for the first time) at the Museum and then visited a house built by my great-great grandparents before retiring to the nearby Unley Park Sports Club to share more stories. It was a wonderful chance to get to know each other better and swap information on what various members have unearthed following their own research pursuits.

Olive growing in Unley