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Two great grandfathers in a park

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Have you ever had serendipitous moment while doing your family history? I had decided to write in this blog post about my maternal great grandfather, Harry Weedon Hardwicke, who I briefly mentioned in my previous blog post.   He was born in Tasmania, the thirteenth child of Elizabeth and Charles Browne Hardwicke. I haven’t been able to find his birth or baptism certificate but we know that he moved to Townsville, Queensland where he met his future wife Louise Christina Amy … Continue reading

Eva McGill’s pottery

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‘Delightful float bowl In black and biscuit, bearing a native design’[1] For some reason I often noticed a particular black and biscuit coloured jug on display at my grandmother’s place. Perhaps it was because I was studying ancient Greek pottery at university at the time and it reminded me of the black figure pots which were made around the 6th century BC.  But the figures on this jug were not Greek gods but Australian animals such as the pelican, swan … Continue reading

Bell’s picnic party

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Bell’s Picnic Party was the title of a small piece in The Worker in May 1908. It expressed the newspaper’s view of a trip my great uncle, Joshua Bell, who was Minister for Lands at the time, was taking along the Queensland coast in May 1908 on the Government steamer Lucinda. Mr. Bell, in the fostering atmosphere Ministerial authority, is developing a great gift of conviviality—at the country’s expense…taking with him a few chosen pals and political tuft hunters…[1]    … Continue reading

‘A decidedly neat speech’

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I am always on the lookout for information about women that provides a fuller picture of their lives to add to the information which is usually available such as where they were born, how many children they had, what their husbands did and when they died. But this is often difficult as previously women were usually invisible with few or no signs that they had lived, and even the wives of ‘important’ men were often only recorded when they were … Continue reading

A Trip to County Galway, Ireland

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Occasionally you hear a story of someone who arrives in a country looking for their ancestors and commences wandering the roads and byways. Suddenly, seemingly by chance, as they have done very little research, they stumble across a record, a house or the burial place of a long lost relative. The other story, and the most common, especially if your relatives came from Ireland, is the one where you do endless research, go up and down genealogical roads, constantly hitting … Continue reading