At 92, Nambucca's Bernice Colvin has welcomed her first great-great grandchild, Emerald Rose, into the world. The admiration of her tiniest new family member was captured by local photographer Gemma Rolston, celebrating the family's five generations of women.
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The huge age gap between little Emerald and her great-great granny is filled with a fascinating history of how times have changed over the last century.
Bernice hopes to share the stories of her own past with her family through a series of memoirs her daughter Prue Copper from Newee Creek is compiling.
Bernice was born in a tent near Lake Cargelligo, NSW in 1926. Quite the contrast to the hospital birth most experience now. Her mother was of French ancestry, raised with maids, servants and wealth.
"Mum always said that standards had to be kept up, and so they were ... in a tent in the Australian outback," Bernice said.
"The depression did not affect us while we were in the bush, we always had food to eat - rabbits, goannas, kangaroo stew, emu eggs. We once ate galahas....they were a bit tough!
"Our clothes were all hand made by Mum using her hand-pushed treadle machine and any trips into town were done in our 'Sunday best'," Bernice writes in her memoirs.
The love of the bush has always remained strong for Bernice, who was an avid bush walker and has passed her passion onto her daughter Prue, who spends much of her time trekking through bush tracks as far afield as New Zealand and England.
