Category Archives: early Australians

Revelations from the Register

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Shipping was the lifeblood of the colony of Moreton Bay. Through the convict period and the early years of free settlement, everything including people and animals came by sea. The sheltered bay was a highway for local shipping traffic. Quarantine stations, pilot stations, and outlying settlements all required a regular service. Sailing vessels of all sorts and sizes plied the coastal route from Sydney to Brisbane, stopping along the way to deliver goods and collect valuable loads of timber. In … Continue reading

Elizabeth Hardwicke’s letter to her daughter Maria

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I have written before that one of the unexpected rewards of contributing stories to GSQ Blogs is that it has helped me solve a number of genealogical mysteries.  For example, it helped me solve the mystery of the identity of my great-great uncle Francis Needham’s wife in India when a distant relative contacted me after seeing my post and, not only told me that she was an Assamese lady called Mary, but also provided me with a photo. However, I … Continue reading

Family History Revelations

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With the continuation of COVID and its restrictions on movement of people and lockdowns, 2021 has been a difficult year; a year of disrupted and/or cancelled regular, enjoyable activities with no travel to compensate for these losses. To fill in time, I decided to sort through all the family documentation that had been handed down to me over the years and was now laying hidden at the back of a cupboard in an overlarge lidded tub. On opening the tub, … Continue reading

The postmaster, the bolter and the draper

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Can a life be affected if begun in war? Perhaps for William Thomas Phillips, born in Portugal on 6 December 1813, during the Peninsular War, this isn’t a question which needs to be asked. He was only four years old when his parents, James and Lydia Phillips, and older siblings, Henry and Jane, finally returned to peacetime in England in 1817 following the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo. Aged nine when the family arrived in New South Wales, Australia … Continue reading

“OURS WERE THE HEARTS TO DARE”[1]

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I never cease to be amazed at the fortitude and endurance of the pioneer women of our country. Often their story is unsung, as they just went about their daily lives unaware of their spectacular contribution to the future of this nation, but simply doing their best, dealing with the strangeness of this new land and confronting head on the harsh realities of life. They coped with deaths of children, droughts and disasters, and sometimes the destruction of all they … Continue reading