A search for her family’s musical legacy has led singer Delta Goodrem to central Victoria.
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The artist, who will feature in SBS genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? on Tuesday, visited Milloo – 50 kilometres north of Bendigo – to film the episode.
Her maternal great-grandmother, Florence Bray, was born in the town in 1890.
An accomplished performer on the Melbourne stage, Florence is Ms Goodrem’s only known family tie to music.
“Living my life with music in my heart and in my blood, being a songwriter from the second I was born and having a passion for the stage, and not knowing that anyone shared that passion, it's quite incredible,” the Born to Try singer said.
“It's not even like they (my family) even like to play FM radio.”
She said embarking on a career in the industry without anyone else having done so before was like taking a “journey without a map”.
Not knowing that anyone shared that passion, it's quite incredible.
- Delta Goodrem
The episode sees Bendigo bishop Andrew Curnow join Ms Goodrem at St David’s Anglican Church in Milloo.
The pair look over documents about the death of Florence Bray’s father. The girl was just nine years old at the time.
It was not the only hardship the Milloo woman would face over the course of her lifetime.
She was later caught having an affair with the son of a Melbourne brewing magnate and gave birth to a son – Ms Goodrem’s great-grandfather, Tom – out of wedlock. The tryst was documented in Melbourne newspapers because of her lover’s public profile.
Ms Goodrem’s historical links to central Victoria do not end with Florence, though.
The program also interrogated the history of her paternal ancestors, finding great-great-grandfather David Stewart was a farmer in Wedderburn, less than 100 kilometres from where her mother's family grew up.
“I can’t wait to tell my dad and mum, ‘Look, you were destined to be together’,” she said.
He left behind a tea plantation in India during the 1870s to start life in the central Victorian town. But his family was savaged by drought and disease.
His wife, Jessie, and two of his sons all died within less than a month of each other.
Who Do You Think You Are? airs on SBS at 7.30pm on Tuesday. Actresses Rachel Griffiths and Jane Turner, as well as footballer Mal Meninga, also feature in this season of the show.