Edition 3

Traces

Uncovering the past

Traces1 min read
Welcome To The Third Edition Of Traces !
Hello! I’m most excited to bring you Volume 3 of Traces! Over the last few months, I have thoroughly enjoyed receiving your emails and reading about all of your interesting research projects. It’s great to know that there are passionate history lover
Traces2 min read
Letters To The Editor
Convict ancestors competition winner Kerin Wanstall. Kerin has won a copy of Convict Tattoos, by Simon Barnard ‘My 4x great grandmother Ann Brusfield Gaping/Geappen was transported to Hobart in 1823. She married a convict and had two children; one di
Traces2 min read
Heritage News
Historical air-raid shelters uncovered Air-raid shelters have been uncovered during the construction of the $110-million Howard Smith Wharves, a Brisbane riverfront development. Five shelters were discovered, among which were two pillbox shelters and
Traces3 min read
What’s New Online?
• 33 million searchable records from the 1939 Register of England between 1911 and 1951. • Two million obituary and memorial records from the 10 provinces, from 1997–2017. • More than 6.6 million new records added to the New York City Marriage Licens
Traces2 min read
Windmill Tower
The opposite photograph, taken in 1885, shows Windmill Tower on Wickham Terrace, Spring Hill, Queensland. Built in 1828 to process the wheat and corn crops of the Moreton Bay penal settlement, the windmill was first regarded as ill-conceived, due to
Traces4 min read
Her Story, Our Story
Contemporary Australia is opening its ears to the marginalised and the minorities, and their silent stories that have shaped each of our journeys. The history of the colonial convict female factories is one of these stories. The voices of at least 90
Traces3 min readWicca / Witchcraft
The Search For An Australian Witch Bottle
The object to which I refer is commonly described as a witch bottle. Its purpose was to bring pain and suffering to a witch. And, on top of that objective, it could also identify the witch. Witch bottles have been found in the United States and Brita
Traces5 min read
Australia’s Forgotten Whalers
On 7 October 1826, the Astrolabe sailed into King George Sound, Western Australia, where present-day Albany is located. The captain, Frenchman Jules Dumont d’Urville, was partway through his circumnavigation of the globe. After 108 days at sea, havin
Traces4 min read
A Glimpse Of Theatre Heritage
Theatre Heritage Australia (THA) was awarded a Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) History Grant for the digitisation of the scene books from the JCW collection held by Scenic Studios in Preston. The collection comprises thousands of images of sets,
Traces5 min read
Sym Choon Changing Fortunes In White Australia
Many in Adelaide were thrilled and intrigued in late 1930 when Dorothy Sym Choon, the elder Miss Sym Choon of Rundle Street’s famous China Gift Store, married her fiancé Leslie Poy Hing Young in a lavish ceremony at St Paul’s Anglican Church. Announc
Traces4 min read
The Convict Bed
Elizabeth Pulley had been rowed ashore after nine months aboard the convict flotilla the First Fleet. She disembarked to stumble into a clearing where her soon-to-be husband, Anthony Rope, had been toiling in the January heat of Sydney Cove. Rope pos
Traces2 min read
Rewriting The Convict Experience
A new study by the University of New England’s Professor Martin Gibbs and Associate Professor David Roberts – called Landscapes of Production and Punishment – is exploring this dichotomy, and challenging the traditional view of the convict experience
Traces5 min read
The Irish Famine Orphan Girls
Alone in a strange country, victims of poverty, bereavement and colonial prejudice, these young girls bravely grasped the opportunity for a new beginning. They secured work, married, typically raised large families, often experienced the hardships of
Traces3 min read
A Soldier’s Story Immortalised In A Photo Book
Bob was my father. He died suddenly when I was 22. He seldom spoke about his war experiences. I grew up knowing he had been a bomb aimer with the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War II, but did not know the details. After Bob’s death, his photo al
Traces5 min read
A Tale Of Two Soldiers
Cowra, 5 August 1944, about 2 am: a Japanese bugle call pierces the cold night in outback New South Wales. Next comes the battle cry. Hundreds of prisoners shout ‘banzai!’ in unison, flinging themselves across the eight-foot-high barbed-wire entangle
Traces6 min read
Skeletons In The Closet
According to her 1928 marriage certificate, my grandmother, Theresa Dyer, was born in Clonakilty, County Cork, in 1890 – the same coastal town in which Michael Collins, one of Ireland’s greatest political leaders, was born 15 years earlier. Meanderin
Traces2 min read
Uncovering Ancestral Truths
1. Don’t take it for granted that ancestors were telling the truth! As Sandy Guy explains in ‘Skeletons in the closet’ in this edition, secrets can be successfully kept for many decades. If all of your research roads are dead ends, think outside the
Traces2 min read
A Hidden Gem
With barely 300 houses and a dozen buildings in the town, the community was able to sustain three breweries, but there were also educated and cultural colonists who sorely missed the intellectual pursuits of the mother country. The colony resolved to
Traces3 min readMedical
Deciphering Disease
Genealogists have always used death certificates to determine the date of death and ‘kill off ’ the individual. Frequently today, the researcher is also looking for further information, such as cause of death and perhaps how this relates to hereditar
Traces2 min read
Researching Your Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Family History
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, family history research can be challenging, but rewarding. As in all family history research, the best place to start is by compiling everything you already know about your family and recording all t
Traces1 min readPsychology
Top Tips For Finding Your Ancestors
1. It can be difficult to trace the lives of women in history. You might find it helpful to trace them through the activities of their fathers, husbands and sons.2. Names are another real challenge, as people can be known by many names throughout the
Traces4 min read
Bushrangers And A Great-great-grandma
Lesley, what can you tell us about Lucy’s childhood? My great-great-grandmother Lucy was born to Ann Hurley in 1846. Poor Ann was born to a convict named Bridget Connor who died of alcohol poisoning when Ann was only six, causing Ann to be brought up
Traces5 min readCrime & Violence
Youth Gangs In Postwar Melbourne
The gunshots that rang out across Carlton North and Fitzroy North were from the revolvers of teenage gang members who moved through the suburbs in teams of 50 or more seeking combat. In this era, ‘push’ was the term for a gang, and each push, when mo
Traces2 min read
‘Up To Snuff’ And More Victorian Slang
In the past, the use of slang was frowned upon; many people considered it vulgar. Today, the historical newspapers on Trove provide a fascinating glimpse of the words or sayings that were fashionable during particular periods of time. Let’s take a lo
Traces3 min read
Be Kind To The Negative
If you have been going back through your parents’ or grandparents’ bits and pieces, you may have come across red and black packets marked ‘Kodak’ or white packets with blue writing that reads ‘Harringtons’. On opening, you may be lucky enough to find
Traces3 min read
Elizabeth Farm A House Of Consequence
Begun in 1793, Elizabeth Farm was redesigned, modified and extended over the following decades. Today, 225 years after it was first built, the house sits within a garden that evokes the lives of the Macarthur family, a garden centred on an olive tree

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