The Battle of Fromelles – 19-20 July 1916, Australia’s darkest day

Posted on by June 26, 2017

And all this madness [WWI], all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilisation and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country’s pride – Bertrand Russell For many Australians, Australia’s contribution in the Great War is defined almost entirely by the Anzac … Continue reading

The life of a pioneering woman!

Posted on by June 19, 2017

Often, we read the obituaries of our male ancestors which tell us much about them, however, little is told of how hard the females had to work in those pioneering days. Just picture a block of land that has not been cleared, completely unliveable, and yet our ancestors turned the property into a liveable property, on which they supported themselves and their family. In this blog I would like to tell how hard it was for my great grandmother, during … Continue reading

A matter of time

Posted on by June 12, 2017

Time is ever-present, but our perception of it seems to be elastic, changing with age, anticipation or dread, or memory. How often have you said “I can’t believe that it’s “…x or y… years” since that happened. As I get older, I use significant events that are etched in my memory as a way of putting a timeframe on other things that happened around that time either in my life or on a wider level. I’ve recently started to create a timeline … Continue reading

Think outside the box!

Posted on by May 28, 2017

This is my first blog for GSQ. So I thought I would get my frustrations out in the first blog. I have been researching my family history for over 30 years. It was time consuming at first, sitting for hours in front of microfiche readers, but I knew the information was as near to being correct as was possible, allowing only for human error. However, today with the internet, each day I find mistakes in my ancestors’ information which need not … Continue reading

From Longreach to the Western Front – Kenneth Selby Henderson

Posted on by May 30, 2017

  1914-15  England and France are in conflict against Germany and Austria in northern France and Belgium – the Western Front. The war is deadlocked. The Gallipoli campaign, conceived by Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, is an attempt to break the deadlock by invading Turkey through the Dardanelles to reach Constantinople (Istanbul), establish a supply route to Russian troops fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front. 1915-1916  The Gallipoli campaign fails – poorly executed, the defensive capabilities and determination of … Continue reading