Unveiling Our New Look – With A Sleek, Faster Red Helicopter!
It’s a very exciting time for Stories My Nana Tells – as our new livery is being released to our fans and subscribers. With a major review of our website well under way, we thought you would like a preview of how things are progressing, up to date. A new business card introduces our sleek, faster red helicopter and our website.
Introducing our business!
On the reverse side, we give a brief story of what we do and why and invite you to become a subscriber. [Read more...]
Welcome To Fans Of GTi Racing Girls
Welcome to Fans of GTi Racing Girls!
Stories My Nana Tells is proud to be a continuing sponsor of GTi Racing Girls team and to share the excitement of Targa racing with them.
What Do We Do?
We entertain, engage and educate children, through storytelling!
That is us, in a nutshell of eight words! But we do a great deal more than entertain, engage and educate children, through storytelling. We are not racing car drivers – but we are close!
As the writer of all the Stories My Nana Tells, I know quite a bit about cars and racing. One of my career highlights was becoming the first woman in Australia to sell cars! My name is Lesley Dewar and I spent about ten years in the car industry in Western Australia – in a variety of jobs. There is still a bit of petrol in the blood and running around the Kwinana Motorplex at 200kmh in the GTi Evo was great fun. One of my sons is an XU-1 expert these days, too and loves his cars!
Keeping the conversation going with your kids …
Whether you are away and calling home, or catching up at the end of a busy working day, kids are not the easiest of people [Read more...]
Interview With Ben (age 10) About Saving Forests
Today, we had an interview with Ben, aged 10, a school boy in New South Wales who is doing a project on rain forests and the need for conservation. Ben sent me his questions by email and we hooked up with Skype, so he could record the interview.
I would like to share his questions and my answers with you – along with some of the photographs I sent to him by email for his project. The questions were all set by Ben and I simply answered them as I saw fit. His mother was present during the interview and was very pleased with the information Ben received.
1) How can we best preserve our rainforests?
It is very important that we understand the depth of their bio-diversity and that habitat is not just trees. Many people overlook little things about habitat: it is the fallen leaf litter and the decaying logs in which the lizards and the beetles live, as much as the beautiful butterflies in the tree tops.
I have been to Cairns in Northern Queensland and to Sabah in Borneo, to visit rainforests and to try and understand how we can ignore their value as part of our environmental health. [Read more...]
Life’s Amazing Family Circle – Part II
Life’s Amazing Family Circle (continued)
Part one of this series of blog posts can be found here: Life’s Amazing Family Circle – Part 1
30 years after 1941, when my Mum and Dad had a typical wartime honeymoon of a single night before my Dad was shipped off into the RAAF on a troop train, my Aunty Rae and my Nana Nancarrow became part of my future life and the well-being of my children – in a way we have just shared – 41 years after the event.
On The Railways
Many of my Dad’s family worked in the railways: West Australian Government Railways (W.A.G.R.) and the Midland Railway of Western Australia (MRWA). This meant job security but many moves for the families as the men went from one railway station appointment to another, the children to one school after another and wives and mothers made the best they could of making new railway friends as they moved about. My Dad often says until the Nancarrow family arrived in the tiny wheatbelt town of Caron , there were not enough local children to warrant a school teacher being stationed there – but it soon changed with the brood Nana and Pop brought with them! Up until a couple of years ago, he would still go to school reunions with people from Caron and his old school teacher (Miss. Wilma Peacock, who married Bill Dawson the StationMaster at Caron and also Mukinbudin) used to come along too.
News report of Ivy Ridley and George Nancarrow being married in Mullewa 17 Sept 1917
Nana and Pop moved all around the mid-West with the WAGR; from Mullewa (where they were married), to Day Dawn, Geraldton, Caron, Mukinbudin, Collie and other small towns. One brother (Teddy) went to work for the MRWA; his final posting was at Walkaway and Dad’s sister Phylis married into the Midland Railway company, too, when she became engaged to and later married Keith Milner. After many years in the railways, Nana and Pop lived their final working years in Middle Swan until my Dad’s brother “Rusty” (otherwise B. E. Nancarrow) bought a house in Homewood Street, Cloverdale, in which he, Nana and Pop could live after Pop’s retirement. My Granddad died from that home in February 1962, as did Uncle Rusty years later in June 1980 and my Nana – in 1988.
Rusty spent a lot of time working away from Perth, including being in the Snowy Mountains tunnelling with my Dad or working in the jungles of New Guinea and Malaysia, mining. In fact, three brothers, Blue (my Dad), Rusty and Jack were all working on the Snowy Mountains Scheme at the same time and for a time, they were each supervising a crew – so there was a Nancarrow in the same tunnel twenty four hours a day. Jack and Rusty were working there first and my Dad got a telegram: “Catch the first plane. Money for shit” and so, he too went to the Snowy to work. There was tremendous competition between the brothers and their crews, and earlier, working two on one shift and the third on another, they helped set a world record for hard rock tunnelling over a six day period. They were hard taskmasters – we are told.
House sharing
Because Rusty was away so much, my Nana advertised for a married couple to come and share the house with them. She wanted the company and it was a relief for the family to have someone close on hand keeping an eye on both Pop and Nana – because by then, their family was spread across the country. Indeed, when the house was purchased, there were cows in the paddocks across the road – a dairy operated where the Belmont Forum was later built, so it really was quite an “out of town” location. The couple who came to share with Nana were George and Kathy Andrews – newly immigrated from Scotland; homeless, jobless and terribly homesick. They came to love her as if she was their own mother. Nana had a huge party to welcome them into her home and everyone who was within “cooee” came to meet George and Kathy. They became part of the family; shared celebrations of births, deaths and marriages and stayed with Nana Nancarrow for some years. While they were there, my Nana suffered a burst stomach ulcer and with her nursing experience, Kathy saved her life. We were all immensely grateful for her skill and for being there when she was needed – and Nana lived on to be 93, still in her own house in Cloverdale, to die on Anzac Day in 1988. She also helped nurse my Pop, who died Feb 1st 1962.
I remember going to visit Nana one day with my own Mum and Dad and I had my three young children with me before they came back to live with me, full time. 
Warren would not get out of the car. He was about six. When I finally coaxed him to tell me what was wrong, he said “No one can be that old and still be alive!” How his view has changed – now my Dad is already 93 and his Nana is 90. Another great-grandson is known to have gently stroked her arm and asked “Is that still skin, Nana, or is it leather now?”
With no children of their own, George and Kathy set out to adopt. They moved from living with Nana and bought their own home in Lockridge, then a new housing area being developed by the State Housing Commission. They were able to adopt two children: Michael and Julie. When Michael was only a few months old, Kathy had major surgery and Michael needed to be cared for until she recovered. It was my Aunty Rae and her husband Terry who took him in – and she says they both cried when they had to return him home to Kathy and George after a couple of months. He was a beautiful baby and they came to care for him a great deal. Nana regarded Michael and Julie as two more grandchildren – though how she kept up with all of them, I really do not know.
Family support
In mid-1971, my three children were returned to me by their father after a separation of several years and after being evicted from private housing (for being a single parent with kids!) I found myself living in Lockridge in a high density block of flats occupied by mostly single mothers with children – and very few of their parents working. After a few months as an Avon lady and selling more product than I could package and deliver, I quickly found a good position at Metro Motors in Morley. I needed someone I could trust to help me care for the children, especially after school and started asking around for a friendly “Aunt” or family who could help.
George and Kathy lived only a minute or two away in their new house; their adoptions were in progress and they were delighted to “take in” my three – to be supervised before and after school, because I was working from 8:30am to 5:00pm every day and every second Saturday morning as well. Since they were Nana’s great- grandchildren, it was all the more special for them, though Kathy would have done it anyway. Annette was only four and a half and had nearly a year to go before she could start school, so Kathy helped take care of her for the whole time while the boys were dropped off there before school and returned home to her house afterwards, until I could collect them after work.
It was a very special moment when Rae was visiting my Dad and me this week and happened to mention George and Kathy – to which I responded “Surely, that’s not the George and Kathy who looked after Annette and the boys when I went back to work?” In fact, it was and we were able to fill in a lot of blanks for each other about those years. The same day, we both phoned Kathy, (sadly George has now passed away,) and she still lives in the same house. I will be going to see her very soon and bring this amazing family circle even closer. I think I should take my Dad, too. What do think about that?
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(c) Lesley Dewar July 2012 to current.
Life’s Amazing Family Circle – Part 1
The Youngest and the Oldest.
Today, my Dad’s youngest sister came to visit – to see her only surviving brother after his short stay in hospital last week. I am not allowed to call her Aunty Rae because she is only seven years old than me; she is 18 years his junior and he really is her “big brother”. We talked about family, places and people we have known or not. Rae had to remind my Dad that she will never remember living in Elvire Street in Midland – because she hadn’t even been born then!
My Dad (William James Nancarrow aka “Blue”) was born on 26 March 1918 at Nurse Lloyd’s Private Hospital in Coolgardie Street, Subiaco and an online search this afternoon at National Library of Australia – Digital Newspapers found a copies of notices posted in the three major newspapers of the day. Rae, his youngest sister, was born in January 1936 and she is the last of my Dad’s eleven brothers and sisters born to Nana (Ivy) and Pop (William George) Nancarrow, who were married on September 17, 1917 in Mullewa. Rae was born at K.E.M.H in Subiaco; my Nana made the journey from Mukinbudin for the confinement and birth.
Boys Doing A Man’s Job
In April, 1936 aged barely 18, Dad was awarded a trophy for his cycling exploits in Mukinbudin – along with his friend Jimmy Stewart and in 1937 after his 19th birthday, he left when Rae was just over one year old to go to work in Caron to work on Reid’s farm for a couple of months. They helped him get a job with the Farrell family on their property at Perenjori; he spent a season there seeding and after a few months, my Dad went to Cue to live with his Grandma and Granddad Ridley. In Cue, he spent time prospecting and dry blowing for gold with Granddad Ridley but he says they didn’t strike it rich! His spare time was taken up with cycling, football (where he was written up in the local paper as “Nancarrow has shown some improvement over his usual game” and cricket (with a career highest score of 78 not out).
In early 1938, he went to Beringarra Station to work for Mr & Mrs Wood, the station managers, as a station hand – and I smile when I think of my 15yo son, Colin, embarking on a similar career on Cherrabun Station in the Kimberley many years later. There is a difference though: my Dad went to work with the sheep side of farming on Beringarra while Colin dismisses them as “ground lice” and his work in the North West was fixing windmills and to help round up cattle that had been running wild for the previous year. I have never been to Beringarra Station and the closest I have been to Cherrabun was to find it on the map as a Greyhound bus sped me through the night from Kununurra to Broome – on the memorable day that St. Kilda and Collingwood drew in the AFL Grand Final.
Sporting Heroes Go To War
After a year on the station – much of it spent by himself camping out in the bush with only his horse, “Jimmy Boy” and his waterbag, with Mr. Wood coming by every couple of weeks with light supplies – Dad moved to Big Bell. Work was very scarce; hundreds of men were still unemployed as the depression was slowly receding and after three weeks of turning up every day outside the mine office along with other men, he was lucky enough to be selected – but not only because he was a skilled metalworker. His sporting ability was a key part of him getting his job – because the mine management was keen to see the Big Bell Football Team strengthened and go up against Cue, Reedys and Mt Magnet. In 1941, my Dad enlisted in the RAAF while still working in Big Bell; married my mother and left to go to Adelaide. It was a short honeymoon: they were married at 5:00pm on Friday in St. George’s Cathedral and Dad left on a troop train from Perth Central Station at 12:00noon the next day. My Nana, Nana Nancarrow, came down from Mukinbudin with Rae – then a little girl of five – to see him off. Nana went back Mukinbudin and my Mum went to stay with her own sister, Marian until she could sail to Adelaide under full wartime conditions, to be my Dad’s wife. Marian is now 99, my Mum is 90 and they are the only surviving children of their own family.
The Past Is The Future Is The Present
Lesley’s Grandmother on her 90th birthday, with Lesley’s Grandchildren, Jade and Baby Robert
Tomorrow – I will tell you how, 30 years later in 1971, my Aunty Rae and my Nana Nancarrow were involved in a critical part of my life and that of my children – something that I only discovered today – 41 years after the event itself. Like Dr Who, we keep bumping into our future as we live each day, but without a sonic screwdriver, we neither recognise it nor change it,.
Over 70 years, I can see Life’s Amazing Family Circle at work. I just love the way that life actually lets us tie up all the loose ends – if we will only listen. Instead of having a tangled web of discordant memories and perceptions – there is a great deal of unseen order in our lives.
The trouble is, we are too impatient to wait for it to reveal itself, or too unbelieving. It’s not karma – but I am becoming more convinced that we can take charge of mapping out of lives for better results – if we just have more faith that all we need will be provided. We need that sonic screwdriver of trust!
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(c) Lesley Dewar July 2012 to current.
How To Get 6,500 Facebook Fans For Free!
Do You Know A Simple Way To Get 6,500 Facebook Fans?
Would you like to get 6,500 Facebook Fans to share your Facebook page with their friends? What do you think that might cost? How about being able to do that for FREE?
Your Facebook Fan page is intended to open a window to your business and make it easy for potential new customers to buy from you.
- Research shows most people need five or six contacts before they feel comfortable enough to buy online.
- Do YOU have the time to keep bringing people back to your Facebook Fan page – to see your latest offer?
- Are you spending a lot of time on Facebook, liking other pages; leaving links to your own page and hoping that you will get return visits from fans.
If you want your Facebook page to be a successful window to your business, you must have a strategic plan to get new fans and return visitors to both your website and your Facebook page
What is the simple strategy?
Here is a very simple strategy to help you and five other businesses on Facebook to build their Facebook fans and Website visitors, every week.
On Your Facebook Page, select FIVE other pages as your Featured Likes for a week.
- agree with each of those page owners to have their page listed as a featured like
- agree you will each share at least two of each other’s links during the week
- help them build their fan base through your Facebook page.
Six Facebook pages (yours and five others) will be getting their posts shared to a widening base of fans and everyone will see their fan base on Facebook grow very quickly.
Who should you choose?
Choose Facebook page businesses that are supportive of your niche market but not in direct competition with you.
For example, Stories My Nana Tells has a niche market for children aged 7 – 12 yo and especially with parents who work either away from home (#FIFO) or long hours that keep them away from home and their growing children.
While it is great to support other business pages from a social point of view – remember you are running a Facebook business page to build YOUR business and direct traffic to YOUR website. Do you think that sounds harsh; too tough?
How do you do it?
Every week during the year, edit your Facebook page to select FIVE Fans as Featured Likes on your page. Do this 52 times during the year – once every week. The key to doing more business through your Facebook page is getting more FIRST time visitors to your Facebook page and to your Website in such a way that they are reminded regularly of your business and what you do. How do you do that? By building good, ongoing interactions with the owners of your Featured Pages. If only 25 fans of 260 Featured pages respond to your post about them, you will have 6,500 new fans in a year.
Don’t forget that the five Facebook pages Featured as Likes on your Facebook page will want your posts sharing their links to help them get more fans and do more business, too. The more links that are shared, the higher their pages will rank in the Facebook news feed and more fans will see their posts. What works for them will work for you, too.
Your Facebook Page
Your Facebook landing page should ensure that new visitors “Like” the page when they first arrive – and then get directed to your Website. Take them to a specific page dedicated to Facebook visitors, with a quick exit link back to your Facebook Fan Page. It is important that they know your website is where you do business!
To quote Mike Haydon of SEO Perth “Always remember, though, that the purpose of social media is to build a relationship with people, then continue the conversation on your Base of Operations (aka your website). The last thing you want is to spend years building up a vibrant community on a site, only for it to go the way of Myspace, leaving you scrambling to hold onto them. No-one thought Myspace would fail. Facebook could well go that way if or when something better comes along.”
It takes a degree of commitment, planning and trust to implement this strategy – it offers great rewards for those who are prepared to think of their Facebook page as an integral page of their own website. Stories My Nana Tells would love you to become a Facebook fan at Stories My Nana Tells Facebook Page
Sharing this post:
Lesley Dewar is a well known blogger and workshop facilitator who writes regularly on Social Media, marketing and customer service in the category of Business Tips and she is the principal author at Stories My Nana Tells Her free eBook can be downloaded directly at Networking To a Plan Sharing this article is permitted providing this footnote is not deleted – all rights reserved. (c) Lesley Dewar 2012
“Nice day, isn’t it?” said the bobtail. “Now, get out of here!”
Her: ”Oh, it’s three o’clock already.”
Him: ”I haven’t noticed it yet. I wouldn’t say it’s hot.”
That’s how it can begin: another interchange of misunderstanding, frustration and if you are not too careful, harsh words that come from the exasperation of living with someone who is deaf, especially if they have hearing aids and refuse to wear them.
My own experience of being deaf is limited indeed: pressure from a descending aircraft; a temporary blockage with the flu or, as recently, an oversupply of wax that was painlessly and quickly removed at the nurses’ station of my local GP.
The first time my ears were syringed to relieve deafness was five years ago and it elicited such a feeling of relief that I was moved to write and post in a old blog on MySpace:
Give a cheer! I can hear!
Yes, it’s true – I can hear!
Just a silly bit of wax
Stopped me in my tracks;
You can ring out the bell
It’s been seven weeks of hell
I can hear, I can hear, I can hear.
How well could I hear? At the time, I posted a picture of a bluetongue lizard I disturbed when I walked into my shadehouse that morning. He was having a drink of water and he growled at me to go away. I had never heard of a bobtail lizard growling before – but I heard him, clear as a bell!
For the previous seven weeks, my left ear had been totally deaf – it had been oiled, washed out and had more eardrops than you can imagine. Three separate Doctor’s visits failed to diagnose the problem. Finally, the nurse syringed it – and I could hear! In stereo – even!
The photo I can no longer find – although it will probably turn up again, archived away in one of the folders I continually create in my undisciplined filing! I did find a lovely picture of Teng Sing Tung sitting on the side of the pond – so that is a bonus. Having just wasted about 25 minutes searching a variety of folders looking for the picture, I am reminded of my three star words for 2012: Commit, Plan and Trust and the very first of those is that I am committed to becoming more efficient every day.
That does require some careful planning. In this post, do you think these are simply random threads of apparently unrelated thought – or is it that I actually had a plan and knew where this post would end?
Trust me – I always begin my posts with the end in mind! Every writer has to know how the story will end, before they begin.
I have attached some interesting information for those of you who would like to know more about Bobtails and other Australian critters. There are also some activities for kids to do, so feel free to share.
You simply need to click the link below, which is published in Adobe PDF format and will open in a new window. If you don’t have the latest Adobe PDF reader, you can download it here, free. (here)
Tell me about a Blue Tongue (Bobtail)
For me, I am now heeding the bobtail’s advice. “It’s a nice day, and I am out of here!”
About sharing this post:
Lesley Dewar is a well known blogger and workshop facilitator who writes regularly on Social Media, marketing and customer service in the category of Business Tips and she is the principal author at Stories My Nana Tells The attached document is attributed to its original author and no claim of authorship is made by Lesley Dewar.
Her free eBook can be downloaded directly at Networking To a Plan Sharing this article is permitted providing this footnote is not deleted – all rights reserved. (c) Lesley Dewar 2012
Photos, Memories and Time.
Cats! A veritable lifetime of cats: Dim Sim, Muggins, Mao Tse Tung, Ten Sing Tung, Splinter, Amber, Lloyd, Kitten and others. Dogs! WACL, the black labrador, Choti the miniature dachshund and two Pepper dogs, (dalmations who were entirely different from one another) whose consecutive lives spanned more than 30 years.
There was Burt, a pink and grey galah who escaped after 27 years of captivity and who now flies free with the local flock at Warren and Lisa’s place.
Did I mention three children and their marriage partners, some stepchildren, lots of grandchildren, my parents and dozens of associated family members? There were cars, jeeps, tractors; a shade house, frogs and frog gardens. Two husbands, too.
Having never done it properly before, at the beginning of 2011 I decided to collate all my printed photos into a set of lovely albums. I bought a matching set of 10 photo albums at Things over the holiday break. These will hold 2,000 photos and postcards and I bought as many albums as I expected to need, so that they will make a beautiful display as well as keeping my precious pictures safe.
While I was at Warren and Lisa’s (cat sitting as usual), I started sorting those I had taken with me (mostly Bali) as best as my memory will allow. T-shirts are a good indication of photos taken at the same event, or the fact that one hotel had a swim up bar and the other did not. A good tip on sorting printed photos is to line them all up on one edge and sort them into groups of pictures of exactly the same size. Photo shops, especially in Bali, cut the pictures so they are just marginally different in size and it is quite easy to get all the photos from one film sorted from the others.
Once I started sorting them, three things became abundantly clear:
- Lots of photos I wanted and remembered were not amongst the ones I had taken with me to sort out while I was cat-sitting at Warren and Lisa’s house, although I could not imagine where they were – since we had recently moved houses. Some of them I really wanted for my stories, too.
- My idea of collating by topic was nowhere near as good as putting them into chronological order.
- I needed more photo albums.
I also needed my old passport!!! Immigration and customs stamps are invaluable when you are sorting old photos.
Over the years, there had been five trips to Bali, with funerals, weddings and visits to the homes of our Bali friends; not to mention my white water rafting and para-sailing while Robbie held the fort and the beachhead. We had regular visits to Sanur, the volcano and the black beach with Jimmy and Mickey from the Bali Bagia, where they would take a day off from work and play “tourist” with us.
My own seven or eight overseas trips – including Hawaii, New Zealand, Las Vegas, Mexico, London and Sabah meant that somewhere I still had loads of photos to find. While there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of pictures on disc, printed photos going back to around 1992 need a good chronology.
I have committed myself this year to also cataloguing many of my father’s photographs of his career in the mining 
industry of Western Australia and tunnelling in the Snowy Mountains because he has hundreds that need his explanations; his memory is excellent and he is a living treasure of history in this, his 94th year.
I have made the first start on his collection and we were lucky enough to espy a whole box of photographs from our earlier years exactly as I remembered them: stored in a bright gold gift bag – last seen in the shed at Stoneville when we had packed up one more time to flee a summer bushfire. This time, they are safely stored in a big plastic box in my little garden shed.
Last week, after spending about three hours with Dad, I chose the first ten photographs to begin creating a series of stories for this Nana to tell. I will keep bringing them out and putting them into their right order. I think I might need a few more albums, too.
I plan to write one story a week and trust that we will get them all done. To take notes while I interview him – even though the story may be written later – seems to be the way to go. Sorting our photos of family and work, my Dad and I, our lives spill out before us on the table – a patchwork quilt of memories. It is a good life. One that we can share with our families for many years to come.
About sharing this post: Lesley Dewar is a well known blogger and workshop facilitator who writes regularly on Social Media, marketing and customer service in the category of Business Tips
Her free eBook can be downloaded directly at Networking To a Plan Sharing this article is permitted providing this footnote is not deleted – all rights reserved. (c) Lesley Dewar 2012
Are You A FIFO Parent? We Can Help Support Your Family!
Are Your Kids Missing You? Are You Finding It Hard
To Be A FIFO Parent?
Some careers have endured family separations for many years: the defence forces, truck drivers, sailors and even office managers and “on the road” salesmen. Today, the FIFO (Fly In Fly Out) Parent is getting a lot of media attention and not all of it is good!
Many FIFO families do not always know what to expect when they first start the FIFO lifestyle. They do not know how to deal with some of the common issues:
- How does the parent working away stay emotionally connected and in tune with their partner & children?
- How effectively do both partners function as a parenting team given the physical absence of one parent?
- How does the parent working away adjust back into functioning family life on their return?
- How does the family at home effectively manage and adapt the needs of their household in the patterns of absence and presence?
Keeping the conversation going…
When you are away and calling home, kids are not the easiest of people with whom to communicate. The usual questions:
- how’s school?
- what did you do today?
- how’s your Mum and/or Dad?
- what are you watching on TV?
don’t always generate scintillating conversation between a child and a parent at home. It is even harder for an absent parent to get a good talk going that gets more than the usual “OK” or “alright” or even “dunno!” as responses.
On the other hand, when you have a new story especially written to engage the imagination of the child and you can share it together, it becomes much easier to talk and explore new ideas.
The topics of Stories My Nana Tells, the pictures and the questions open up all kinds of interesting discussions, which can be revisited over and over again. Links to good websites can be shared and enjoyed – at home and away.
Stories My Nana Tells helps support the FIFO Family!
What does Stories My Nana Tells do?
We entertain, engage and educate children,
through storytelling!
That is us, in a nutshell of eight words! But we do a great deal more than entertain, engage and educate children, through storytelling.
We do understand FIFO families. My name is Lesley Dewar and I am a parent and a grandparent. I am the writer and publisher of Stories My Nana Tells and a business writer, blogger, retired financial planner and a networker.
More than that – my family have been part of the mining industry for the past sixty years.
- Big Bell, a gold mine with a small town – isolated and remote – was my childhood home.
- Snowy Mountains - my father was a tunnel miner. We were a DIDO Family in Cooma and Tumut as well as living onsite in a mining camp for families.
- Geraldton, Bangkok and Kalgoorlie - My hubby, Robbie (Bob) Dewar worked in commercial construction. FIFO and DIDO were a way of life for us.
- North West of WA and Kalgoorlie – one of my sons surveyed for mining companies in the NW and the Big Pit and is now in Toronto in Canada.
Online posts from women whose partners work away – maybe on a three week on – three week off cycle – shows the impact the FIFO has on them and their children. But it is not only those in the FIFO industries that have to cope with these family pressures. There are many engaged in the DIDO (Drive In Drive Out) workforce, where one partner is away from home for five days or more at a time because they work too far away for daily commuting, whose families also need support..
How Do We Support FIFO Families?
Stories My Nana Tells is a family membership site that delivers proven, quality stories every two weeks, to engage 7 to 12yo children in a journey of discovery, fast learning and exploring new things
This is perfect for parents who are away a lot – you can login at the same time as your child and read the new story together over Skype! You can chat on Facebook or swap emails, discussing and answering the questions with each story – there are so many ways to share the stories. It is also great for parents who are home-schooling. Our interview with Ben on our home page is a great example of how successfully you can use Skype and emails with Stories My Nana Tells.
Here’s a look at some of the story topics coming up in the next few weeks:
- He Looks Like Elvis
- he looks just like Elvis. His broad shoulders and slender hips give him balance and style; his garb was all black with an occasional flash of brilliant red, lining his coattails.
- Starlight… Star Bright …. First Star I See Tonight
- Sharing the stars with children is a great joy. To lie flat on your back, fingertips touching and to gaze intently into the heavens is an exhilarating experience to share with them.
- Hooked
- De Mestral hoped that Velcro® would replace the Zipper, which got its name eighty years after its invention. In 1923, F. B. Goodrich ordered 150,000 for his new product – rubber galoshes – and based on the sound it made -
- An Expensive Lunch
- He just throws back his giant head, opens his beak and swallows the little mouse whole. “I wonder if he has got a mouse wheel in his tummy,” I say to Robbie. “There’s going to be lots of running around in there.”
- Where Have All My Spiders Gone?
- The pea gravel is wrapped in silk and anchors something. But, what? I stare upwards. Between two red gums, their leaves and flowers tossing like waves at sea, my spider has cast her net.
Subscribe now and you will receive:
26 stories, one every fortnight, from Stories My Nana Tells for only $AU119 (discounted from the usual $AU132)
Get a twelve month subscription – a new story for your children every two weeks and a Parking Pal Magnet mailed to you when you subscribe – for the special FIFO offer of only $AU119 – a huge saving on the usual combined price of $AU140
Subscribe HERE NOW!
Or, read on…….
Stories My Nana Tells are great for busy FIFO parents.
As the mother of three children and a grandmother as well, I know about trekking around taking them to their different activities, especially on weekends. I have worked on P&C Committees and many Fundraising Events for schools and sporting groups. I raised my family as a single parent for twelve years and it is a joy to see them as adults. Not everything in life went smoothly along the way – it rarely does – but I love my life as a mother and parent. And as a writer!
Conversations with kids, when you are away and calling home, are not the easiest way to communicate. The usual questions:
- how’s school?
- what did you do today?
- how’s your Mum?
- what are you watching on TV?
don’t always generate scintillating conversation between a child and an absent parent. On the other hand, when you have a new story especially written to engage the imagination of the child, it becomes much easier.
The topics of Stories My Nana Tells, the pictures and the questions open up all kinds of interesting discussions, which can be revisited over and over again. Links to good websites can be shared and enjoyed – at home and away.
These stories are a great connection between parent and child, as well as a fun learning experience. We guarantee children will love them. Your registration is a FAMILY account, which means you set up one account that your family can access, because you create your own password, linked to your email address.
This is perfect for parents who are away a lot, or whose work keeps them away from “family time” – you can login at the same time as your child and read the new story together over the telephone or by using Skype!
You may be separated by distance and want the story to come “from you” as a way of generating and strengthening contact and your family relationship. It will help build a common link for telephone calls, visits and discussions.
If you are a FIFO or DIDO parent or you travel a greal deal, it’s simple and easy to share the stories, from anywhere in the world with a child you love. You can unsubscribe at any time or just suspend your subscription for a short period if needs be. Being a subscriber at Stories My Nana Tells is very flexible and family friendly.
Don’t miss this chance to introduce your children or grandchildren to a new learning experience with this very special FIFO offer.
Share your experience with us.
After the delivery of the third story, we will ask you to complete a small survey – so you can share your opinions and ideas with us. We are passionate about making Stories My Nana Tells the very best it can be. Your participation in the survey will be voluntary, of course, but we do hope you will share your thoughts with us in a few weeks’ time. First, let’s get started:
We DO need to confirm your permission to send your stories. We will send you a separate email to the address you used when you completed the subscription request. Please check your inbox and confirm your subscription.
We Can Help You With Your Kid’s Literacy
Stories My Nana Tells is a family friendly subscription service that delivers a high quality story for kids every two weeks – right into your chosen email box – at home or your Fly In Fly Out (FIFO) work site.
Lesley Dewar writes stories for 7-12 yo children that help improve their literacy. Kids love her stories. With simple questions to test comprehension, parents enjoy and love them, too, as entertainment while they are educational, too. Travel, family, pets, science and quirky ideas make Stories My Nana Tells a great read.
Each story is around 2,000 words, thoroughly researched and finished off with between 10 and 24 questions to encourage young readers to interact with the story. We have wonderful photographs and illustrations to make them even more interesting – and we guarantee they will spark the curiosity of your children and grandchildren in nature, the environment and the world around them. If there is a reliable online source, Lesley includes direct links to other information on the internet.
Get started today :
This special Stories My Nana Tells offer of $AU119 is just for FIFO Families and is a wonderful gift for a child or grandchild.
Dinosaur Parking Pal Magnet - one of five designs we are giving away
PLUS you will receive one of these fabulous Parking Pal Magnets. Designed to be placed on the side of your car, it will help keep the little kids in place while you load up the shopping or buckle up the baby.
Children love to “Hi Five” their magnet and stay close and safe.
Together, Stories My Nana Tells and Parking Pal Magnets make a great combined subscription that will last all year and more!
Keep your children safe in the parking lot! Keep your children entertained, educated and inspired with Stories My Nana Tells.
Yes! I want to get the FIFO Families special $AU119.00 offer and the Parking Pal Magnet too.
We DO need to confirm your permission to send your stories, so please check your inbox and confirm your subscription. To help parents monitor internet safety, logging on to the subscriber section of the site requires both a membership number and a password.
Special Offer For Our Overseas Fans!
We are celebrating and you get the presents!
We have a special offer for you!
We are celebrating our wonderful stories, our fabulous subscribers and shouting out to our Fans. We have a great offer for our Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter fans, right across the world!
Whether you are in the USA, the UK or Europe, Asia or Africa – Stories My Nana Tells wants to share and celebrate with you.
- My name is Lesley Dewar and I am a parent and a grandparent. I am the writer and publisher of Stories My Nana Tells and a business writer, blogger, retired financial planner and a networker.
- I am the author of the internationally popular and highly regarded book Networking To A Plan. We appreciate you visiting Stories My Nana Tells site and we have a special offer for you.
One year’s subscription to Stories My Nana Tells for only $AU119 (slashed from the usual $AU132)
Your own Parking Pal Magnet (usually $AU8 plus P&H)
Get a twelve month subscription – a new story for your children every two weeks and a Parking PalSubscribe HERE NOW!
We DO needto confirm your permission to send your stories, before you register your personal Family Login and Password. We will send you a separate email to the address you used when you completed the subscription request. Please check your inbox and confirm your subscription. To help parents monitor internet safety, logging on to the subscriber section of the site requires both a membership number and a password.
If you want to subscribe later, that’s fine! Just click here to return to our page on Facebook Or, read on…….
Stories My Nana Tells are great for busy parents.
As the mother of three children myself, I know about trekking around the suburbs taking them to their different activities, especially on weekends. I have worked on P&C Committees and many Fundraising Events for schools and sporting groups. I raised my family as a single parent for twelve years and it is a joy to see them as adults. Not everything in life went smoothly along the way – it rarely does – but I love my life as a mother and parent.
These stories are a great connection between parent and child, as well as a fun learning experience. We guarantee children will love them. Your registration is a FAMILY account, which means you setup one account that your family can access, because you create your own password, linked to your email address.
This is perfect for parents who are away a lot, or whose work keeps them away from “family time” – you can login at the same time as your child and read the new story together over the telephone or by using Skype! You may be separated by distance and want the story to come “from you” as a way of generating and strengthening contact and your family relationship. It will help build a common link for telephone calls, visits and discussions.
If you are a busy executive or you travel a greal deal, it’s simple and easy to share the stories, from anywhere in the world, with a child you love. You can unsubscribe at any time or just suspend your subscription for a short period if needs be. Being a subscriber at Stories My Nana Tells is very flexible and family friendly.
Don’t miss this chance to introduce your children or grandchildren to a new learning experience with this very special offer.
Is it really special? YES! Because you will be a subscriber for as long as you want at this incredible low price of $AU119.00 for 26 stories each year.
Share your experience with us.
After the delivery of the third story, we will ask you to complete a small survey – so you can share your opinions and ideas with us. We are passionate about making Stories My Nana Tells the very best it can be. Your participation in the survey will be voluntary, of course, but we do hope you will share your thoughts with us in a few weeks’ time. First, let’s get started:
Subscribe HERE NOW!
We Can Help You With Your Kid’s Literacy
Stories My Nana Tells is a family friendly subscription service that delivers a high quality story for kids every two weeks – right into your email box – at home and on Fly In Fly Out (FIFO) work sites. Lesley Dewar writes stories for 7-12 yo children that help improve their literacy. Kids love her stories. With simple questions to test comprehension, parents love them, too.
Children aged 7 to 12 years old enjoy Lesley Dewar’s stories as entertainment while they are educational, too. Travel, family, pets, science and quirky ideas make Stories My Nana Tells a great read.
Each story is around 2,000 words, thoroughly researched and finished off with between 7 and 12 questions to encourage young readers to interact with the story. We have wonderful photographs and illustrations to make them even more interesting – and we guarantee they will spark the curiosity of your children and grandchildren in nature, the environment and the world around them. If there is a reliable online source, Lesley includes direct links to other information on the internet.
Get started today :
This special Stories My Nana Tells offer is a wonderful gift for a child or grandchild.
Dinosaur Parking Pal Magnet - one of five designs we are giving away
PLUS you will receive one of these fabulous Parking Pal Magnets. Designed to be placed on the side of your car, it will help keep the kids in place while you load up the shopping or buckle up the baby.
Children love to “Hi Five” their magnet and stay close and safe.
Together, Stories My Nana Tells and Parking Pal Magnets make a great combined gift that will last all year and more!
Keep your children safe in the parking lot! Keep your children entertained, educated and inspired with Stories My Nana Tells.
Subscribe today! Yes! I want to get the Holiday Season special $AU119.00 offer and the Parking Pal Magnet too.