Category Archives: Queensland

Have you wondered?

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By Pauleen Cass. Have you ever wondered what it would have been like if all our Australian and colonial census returns had been preserved? I confess I hadn’t anguished over this during my research, on the premise of what you don’t have, you can’t mourn. However, last year, my mate Alex from Family Tree Frog blog wrote her own notes (here and here) on her life across twelve censuses, drawing on inspiration from English blogger and family historian, Janet Few. … Continue reading

Every Ocean has a Distant Shore: Surgeon-Superintendents on Queensland Immigrant Ships

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By Dr. Jennifer Harrison. In 1986 Tavistock Publications in London and New York published the valuable PhD research of Dr Helen Woolcock, a Queensland occupational therapist, under the title of Rights of Passage: Emigration to Australia in the Nineteenth Century.  The broad imprecise title probably was selected to attract a wide international audience because while the volume does cover emigration and the nineteenth century, it specifically concentrates on how the colony of Queensland set about obtaining a healthy population. The … 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

Scrutinizing Passenger Lists: Missed anything?

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By Dr Jennifer Harrison. How exciting it is to finally identify the ship on which our forebears sailed from Europe to start new lives in Queensland!  Taking the next step by consulting the actual passenger list and sharing the voyage with an ancestor, often proves even more informative. How many, both new dabblers or quite experienced researchers, really consider the listing and scrounge all the information available on each Queensland passenger record.  Many deplore that we do not share the … Continue reading

Treasures in the Trove – October 2015

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The Middle Eastern sun beat down on my head, its powerful warmth seeping through my shoulders, stinging my nose and cheeks.  My eyes were continually adjusting to the glare as I walked row upon row, line upon line, of the graves lying in the British Military Cemetery on Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus.  The imposing entry gates are made of wood and the local limestone that is sometimes a yellow cream or dusty pink hue depending on the time of day and … Continue reading