Family history

With artist Mazie Karen Turner (1954-2014) Richard Kelly Tipping has three children (Kai Tipping, Jasper, Grace Turner) and four grandchildren.

Tipping's father Richard Michael Tipping (1922-1979) was a doctor, practicing as a general practitioner until becoming a dermatologist in the early 1960s. Michael practised for many years in Adelaide, and later in Nambour and Imbil in Queensland. In the Second World War he joined the Air Force aged 18 and served for four years in Malaya and Borneo, flying as signaller and navigator in Beaufort Fighters. He played flute. Born in Adelaide, his father's family had owned a coffee plantation in India (see below).

Tipping's mother Barbara Gertrude Tipping nee Kelly (1921-2001) was born in Adelaide. She worked as a social worker, specialising in mastectomy and multiple sclerosis. She played piano. Her enthusiasm for life was endless. Barbara had previously been engaged to John Walters, whose fighter plane was shot down during the first Japanese aerial attacks in the Pacific near Australia. She worked during the war in Melbourne, and married Michael in 1946.

Tipping's sister Susan Christine Macnamara nee Tipping (1946-2005) worked as a gerontologist, and her research lead to the foundation of the Mens' Shed movement in Victoria. Tipping's brother Nicholas Michael Tipping practiced as both a general nurse and as a specialist psychiatric nurse. His half-sister Melissa Pearce nee Tipping was a senior nurse for many years. Tipping commented in the poem Family Days that" there's not a medical bone in this body / not stuck in a limbo / of unnameable doubt".

Richard Tipping's grandparents each lived in Adelaide. His grandfathers were direct immigrants, from the Isle of Man (Kelly) and from India via England (Tipping); one grandmother was the daughter of Scottish immigrants (Abercrombie); and one was from a family which migrated to South Australia in the 1850s (Parnell).

Manx

James Stanley Kelly (1890-1971) migrated from the Isle of Man, where two of his grandparents were Danish with the surname Christian. Family lore says they were related to the family of Fletcher Christian. James Kelly became a senior manager with the Bank of Adelaide. His daughter Barb remembers him having two large revolvers in the bedroom. As an ace golfer became president of the Kooyonga Golf Club between 1941 and 1954 and is fondly remembered for his services to returned servicemen.

Australian

Gertrude Muriel Kelly nee Hardy / Parnell (c1889-c1973). Her family came to South Australia from England in the 1850s. Family lore says that Gertrude was related to Charles Parnell the Irish statesman. Her father died young after falling from a horse when it was scared by a snake at their property near Gawler. Gertrude's mother remarried, to a cad (last name Hardy) who gambled away everything leaving the family in poverty. Gertrude had taken her step-father's name of Hardy.

English via India

Oswald Samuel Tipping (1875-1947) grew up in Coorg in south-west India, where his father Samuel Tipping was born on the family's coffee plantation. Oswald founded and became general manager of Elders Trustees, Adelaide, and grew the company. He died at 71 of tuberculosis, with his hair still black. Oswald played clarinet.

The Tipping's family background was in Lancashire, and records go back to the 1300s. One of Oswald's brothers worked in Kenya as a park ranger. Richard Tipping's great uncle Percy Glover Tipping sold the plantation in Coorg in around 1926. It can be visited today, as there is now a hotel on the property which still produces coffee. The photograph shows the Tipping's house on the estate in a photograph from the 1920s.

Scottish

Esther Abercrombie (c 1882-1962) was born in Melbourne to a mother from Dundee. She played viola in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra before marrying Oswald Tipping who played viola in the same orchestra. Esther and Oswald lived in a large terrace house in the Adelaide suburb of Gilberton. Unfortunately late in life the steep stairs lead to her death by falling.