Six generations unite











Members of the Russ Family from all corners of Australia came together in Cairns to trace their bloodlines.



When Edward Russ came out to Australia from England in 1889 he would never have never dreamed that his descendents would congregate in such large numbers to celebrate and rejoice in their family name. That's what the Russ, Lavis, Reed, McLaughlin and Kerr families did on April 7.
More than 160 of them from all over the nation, came to Cairns, tracing their bloodlines and to be enveloped in a sea of love and laughter.


Organised so perfectly with 80 family tree books of each of the original members of the Russ family, hand made with a photograph of the family member colour-coded so the descendents name tags matched, so everyone knew where they were coming from! Cousins discovered relatives they never knew they had.
What began for Cathy Marino as a way of "bringing all my rellies together and passing on to them the history I have found out about our grandparents, aunts and uncles " came to fruition at The RSL on the Cairns Esplanade. She also wanted them to know about the research going on at Concord Hospital on Motor Neurone Disease.


Carolyn Cecere was a special guest at the Russ reunion. The families flew her up from Sydney to be part of this joyous, exceptionally emotional coming together of so many clans and generations.
Carolyn is a research assistant at the Molecular Medicine Laboratory in Concord Hospital where Professor Garth Nicholson and his research team are trying to locate genes causing Motor Neurone Disease. They are studying how known gene mutations cause the disease. There is no known cause for the majority of motor neurone disease cases which are isolated or sporadic. Alternatively 10 per cent to 15 per cent of families with MND has more than one affected person," Carolyn said.


Carolyn explained that participation in the project would benefit future generations rather than provide any immediate benefit to any family member currently affected.
She said participation is voluntary and involves donation of blood sample to be stored indefinitely and included in current and future DNA research into MND.
http://www.cairnsnewspapers.com.au:8...il.asp?aid=552

do any members of this family have or had ALS

Strange but very true...
I grew up in the Cairns area and I knew one of the families involved in this. The Marino family from Gordonvale. Big sugar cane area. I had no parents and I lived with an aunt and uncle and the uncle was a bank manager and he knew everyone in town and the outlying farm areas and we'd always be invited out for big spreads before the firing of the cane. Back in those days it was burned before harvest. I remember learning how to make "real" pasta on huge long tables inside tents out in the fields with all the women working away. Anyway...

"On April 7, a reunion of the Russ family at the RSL on the Cairns Esplanade will bring together a very special group of families keen to talk about their family's true-blue battlers. Edward Russ came out to Australia from England on the ship called Dorunda on 19/2/1889.
The idea came about because Catherine Marino wanted to put faces to the many pictures and stories she had collected about her ancestors from the Gordonvale museum.
Losing a mother at a young age can be devastating and for Cath it was a double blow. She not only lost her mother at a young age but she was also told that a familial form of Motor Neurone Disease had claimed many other lives from her mother's side of the family."

There's more here... http://www.cairnsnewspapers.com.au/l...il.asp?aid=498