Suddenly, 'cousin' Henry is more than just a dead bloke with a huge beard

What does the Centenary of Federation mean to the younger generations? Fiona Purdon discovers she has a connection to one of our nation's founding fathers.

MY first meeting with Australia's Father of Federation, Sir Henry Parkes, was in Year 10 history.

I remember a determined looking man staring straight back at me with solemn but fiery eyes and a biblical beard as he made his presence felt in my history book.

On the same page there were about a dozen such serious looking men, with massive manes, who seemed to be doing their best to scare anyone who dared to look at them.

They were members of some Federation conference or council. Obviously I've forgotten a lot of my Year 10 history or maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention, but no one ever really explained what these men did and what relevance it has for us today.

All these strange, bearded creatures seemed to be from a similar mould (same intense stare and stiff, formal collar-and-coat uniform).

But I did take an interest in the photograph which had the name Sir Henry Parkes underneath it because Dad had said we were somehow related.

It was not until a couple of weeks ago I took the time to find out exactly how I was related to "cous" Parkes.

It is a loose connection but it was always going to be when you are talking about a man who was born almost 200 years ago, 1815 to be exact.

Parkes's grand-daughter married my great-great uncle, or to make it more simple my grandfather's uncle married Parkes's daughter's daughter. Or it was something like that.

When Dad would point out Henry Parkes's former house, near Centennial Park in Sydney's eastern suburbs, I would take in the 19th century house, complete with turrets, but the Parkes name would disappear from my consciousness as soon as we had driven past.

But now the name of Sir Henry Parkes has roared back into vogue.

There are sizeable magazine spreads on Parkes's life, there are Federation ads on television and lifestyle television shows beam live from Tenterfield into our homes on a regular basis.

It was while watching one of these shows that it suddenly clicked – I wanted to know more about Federation and, in particular, Parkes's role.

The Sydney Olympics are over – now the flavour of the moment is this year's Centenary of Federation. The perfect remedy for anyone suffering from a post-Olympic letdown are the parties planned around the nation to celebrate Federation.

If you think about it, our athletes may not have competed under an Australian flag at the Sydney Games if it had not been for passionate and forceful men like Parkes.

British flags decorated the red-bricked arts college hall at Tenterfield where Parkes first called for "a great national government of Australia" before a packed audience, who at the end of the night had no choice but to toast their motherland, Great Britain. We are talking about Australia on October 25, 1889.

Parkes was returning home from Brisbane after preaching the Federation message in Queensland, one of several journeys he made around the country and to England.

Together with Lord Carrington, Parkes was one of the driving forces behind the success of the Federation Conference and Australasian Federal Convention (1890-91).

A united Australia had been a personal passion of 30 years for the former NSW premier who had been bankrupt three times and married three times.

When he died he was survived by the remaining five daughters and a son of the 12 children of his first marriage, and by four sons and a daughter of the second.

His youngest child was born four years before Parkes died.

And although, sadly, Parkes died less than five years before Australia officially became a nation in 1901, he would have died knowing his long-held dream of a united nation was well on the way to becoming a reality.

Reading about the colourful and larger-than-life figure of my "cous" Sir Henry Parkes made me realise it is never too late to learn a bit of history.

And that we owe a lot to Parkes and his colleagues, because who would have liked to have sung God Save The Queen to a rising British flag when Susie O'Neill or the Hockeyroos won Olympic gold medals in front of sell-out crowds at Australia's home-town Olympic Games?