My geeky birthday present this year was to send off a DNA sample for the National Geographic Genographic project, where they map your genome and tell you what your long term ancestry is. Turns out my great grandad (x 200,000 generations ago) was an African in the second wave of migration out of Africa, followed by a short jaunt over 20,000 years through the Middle East & Central Asia, and then the Cro Magnon invasion of Europe (Hastening the demise of the Neanderthals). Of course, the majority of Western Europeans also share this lineage.

The details in the report are a bit broad, and there’s no real information about the past thousand years or so, but it’s pretty amazing to see how you fit into the big picture of human evolution. You even get a certificate! The full report (PDF 1.7mb) is here: Genographic Report.

I sat down with Emma’s mum on the weekend (Dane & Theo’s Grandma Jenny) and had a look through some her family tree research.

One side of her family line goes back through the Kingsmills of Basingstoke (just up the road from the Lansburys in Romsey) and includes a long line of landed gentry and knights back to the 1200’s. The 4000 acre family estate at Sydmonton Court is now home to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Another family line is the Tanges, who came to Australia from Odense in Denmark in 1853. Emma’s great great grandfather, Anton Tange, became quite a wealthy tea merchant in Sydney, and in 1878 built a stately home for his 11 children in the southern highlands. Emma remembers visiting the derelict house when she was a child, but it has since been restored to its former glory, and was snapped up recently by Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban for $6.5m.

The Tange’s fell on hard times after a mistimed agricultural foray, but Emma’s great uncle Arthur Tange made his mark by being an influential public servant through the second half of the 20th century, working in the establishment of the Department of Foreign Affairs and then as Secretary of Defence in the 1970s. Arthur Tange’s biography has a great first chapter on the Tange family history in Australia.

More stories from this side of the family to come…

Och aye… My grandmother was Freda McQueen of Launceston Tasmania before she married my grandfather Harry Leonard Lansbury in Melbourne.

I’m assuming her line goes back to the Isle of Skye as explained here, but I’ll need to do some more research to find out more.

Here’s the clan tartan, as frequently used in fashion designs by long lost cousin (?) Alexander McQueen.

I chased up my getting my great uncle Norman Forster’s war records scanned after visiting the War Memorial on Anzac Day this year. The poor guy died at the age of 21 on the very first day of the Siege of Tobruk, which ended up lasting another 9 months. He was assigned as a medic with the Australian Army at the time and his records only say he was killed by a bomb blast.

You can download a PDF of the records here.

We decided to do a spontaneous road trip up to Canberra on Saturday afternoon, primarily to take Dane to some museums, and for Emma to get some “city” time. Unfortunately for Emma, we didn’t think through the logistics far beyond booking a motel room to share, which meant she was stuck in a confined space with three snoring (Me), farting (Dane), boob-seeking (Theo) boys for the night.

We also didn’t think much beyond taking Dane into a museum, which was easy compared to trying to get him out amid howls of protest for “one more game” at Questacon (a science museum with loads of interactive exhibits).

It was a worthwhile trip despite all this, with Dane getting to see Kevin’s office (Parliament House), Kevin’s house (The Lodge) and us visiting the War Memorial for the first time to go and see my great uncle Norman Forster’s name on the Roll of Honour. He was my Grandmother’s brother who died in the siege of Tobruk at the age of 21 where he was posted as a medic. She’s never gotten over losing him, but did get some closure by going to Libya and visiting his war grave at the age of 90 a couple of years ago.