Australian turns detective to find her Hong Kong roots and honour her mother’s dying wish
After a lifetime of being asked, ‘Where are you from?’, Alison Choy Flannigan decided to find out; after many false leads, she traced her roots to a New Territories clan, and learned she belongs to its 26th generation
I was born in Sydney, in Australia, in the 1960s, the youngest of four children – I have two brothers and a sister. My parents met in Sydney. My father was born in the Paddington area of the city, in 1918, and my mother, Ivy Lai, was born in Cooktown, in north Queensland, in 1922.
My father operated a small community store, much as his mother had done. He had to work to support the family during the Great Depression. It wasn’t an easy time and he didn’t have the opportunity to go to university, so he always impressed on us kids the importance of getting a university degree. Between us, my siblings and I have three law degrees and an engineering degree.
When I was growing up, I was one of only two children of Asian heritage at primary school. However, more Asian kids had joined Killara High School by the time I had finished Year 12.
People often ask me where I’m from and I have been described as Chinese, Japanese, Singaporean, Filipino, Hawaiian, Latino … If I had A$2 for every time I have been asked while in a taxi, “Where are you from?,” I would be rich indeed.
When I was seven years old, I lost my mum in very tragic circumstances when she and I were on holiday in Los Angeles. I was a witness to the tragedy.
When my mother died, my father didn’t talk much about her, and her family had little contact with us. He once told me that she was a star in the sky looking down upon me.
My brothers and sisters still don’t like to talk about it because it was traumatic. It is also not something I want to talk about here. It’s the one event that has defined my life, but I have not let it define me.
