The skating party is getting ready to leave. They’ve gathered outside the cottage before heading off, wrapped up against the morning cold.

A recent trip to Tasmania finally gave me the opportunity to find the grave of Meryl Travers-Smith, my mother’s cousin. She was perhaps the last direct link in my family’s connection with China, having lived there up until the start of WWII and then being interned by the Japanese at Weihsien Camp in Shantung Province.

It is 103 years to the day since Sarah Talent left England to travel via the Trans-Siberian railway to China. She was 64 years old and this was to be her first trip outside Europe.

These two paintings are by Peter (Pierre) Travers-Smith, my mother’s uncle and the father of Meryl Travers-Smith whose grave I visited in Hobart last year.