When I first told my grandmother Audrey)that I was going to emigrate to Australia from England she told me that, when she was a younger woman, many friends and family members in her community followed the same path that I was to undertake. Though sad that she would see me perhaps less often (I lived a few hours’ drive from her as it was), Audrey was very pragmatic that the world had changed so much in the intervening decades. 

She recalled that in these earlier emigrations, those who were leaving to board the ship to Australia would hold a wake before...