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SALLY – SARAH  RACHEL  ANN KALINA  (1940 – 2024) nee HART

Sally lived in the Vaucluse, Watsons Bay area all her life, till the last few years in Rose Bay when she downsized from her large old family home ‘Isaea’. She had happy childhood and lots of friends from around the area, with Parsley Bay and beach for a backyard play ground. This opened up all sorts of connections with the locals and their stories.

Doris was her artistic and gregarious mother, whose social and family circles added much for Sally, along with her local school friends, which made her a perfect member for the Watsons Bay & Vaucluse Social History Group and later its President.

In around 1970 rumours in the family stirred that we may have some convict stock in our blood. Sally’s father, Geoffrey Alan Hart was a well- established solicitor of Pitt Street, Sydney and a great lover of early Australian History, so this was Sal’s greatest influence in becoming a ‘history detective’, so to speak.

Some family members and Sally joined the “Fellowship of First Fleeters” and also discovered a “Third Fleet” connection as well.  An elderly aunt, Geoff Hart’s much older sister, said at the time, “Oh no, that can’t be right”, about our convict past…. she was too close to those times, being born in 1890, Regina Victoria.

Sally along with her husband of 54 years, Peter “Banjo” Kalina also expanded Sal’s knowledge of many extra colourful identities to introduce into the local Social History Group’s mix of stories, gleaned from those that lived them.

The publication, The Way We Were: Stories of Watsons Bay and Vaucluse gives a wonderful snap shot of Wato Bay & Vauky for over 200 years. So, Sally would be proud of this work and all the others that equally work so hard to bring this memory of history from being forgotten, so it can become tomorrow’s history.

Sally sadly passed away on August 17, 2024.

by, Matt Collis……nephew. January, 2025.