It’s a startling experience when you discover some five generations of your family have successively worked in occupations centered around one industry. It is one of those ! full-stop moments where you just have to pause and wonder particularly about family commonalities beyond genetics. The surprise is that irrespective of era or gender or even … More White-Williams’: Ivybridge Migrants
Grandmother Jean Lovel Booley and grandfather Bob Williams taken in Ballarat in the late 1920’s. picture courtesy of Leigh Williams of Ballarat For nearly two decades I have wondered how a girl from Ouyen in Victoria’s Mallee district married a boy from some 350 kms away in Ballarat, but the answer is so simple I should probably … More A Home Affair: how grandparents meet
A grassy single plot within the Ballarat Old Cemetery hides the heartbreak of an immigrant family who fled political unrest in England to seek a new start in colonial Australia, the proposed new land of opportunity, health and wealth. No gravestone exists in this country cemetery in Victoria’s west to count the mounting death toll as Suffolk-born Robert Francis Booley (1829-1875) … More A Grave Matter: Booley family plot at Ballarat’s Old Cemetery
UPDATE 18th MAY 2016. This mystery school identified as the BELL SCHOOL #4309 in Oakover Street, Preston (Melbourne, Vic). READ HERE FOR THE UPDATE I can easily find my Dad in this old school photo, but it seems finding the actual Ballarat -based school is another matter entirely! Extensive inquiries and searches have failed to locate the … More Ballarat’s? mystery ‘Bell School’
If the mystery photos in Lizzie Bushby’s Victorian album can be identified they’ll help make sense of the life and times of a young immigrant girl travelling from 19th century Ireland to the remote shores of New Zealand. Lizzie’s album is a time capsule of familiar faces and figures from county Cork’s yesteryears, besides containing photos of family … More Lizzie Bushby’s mystery photo album
The carefully-folded flyer among old Pa’s war effects advertising a 1943 Anzac cricket match just didn’t make sense. Old Pa was a prisoner-of-war then, and surely not in a position to be attending an international cricket match? The flyer promotes an international cricket match, to be played on August 14th and 15th, 1943 though it … More Australia – New Zealand Cricket Test to Remember
Private #511, D Company, 12th Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 1st Division ALL AUSTRALIAN BRIGADE Just two years after being rescued from a horrendous fire in the Mt Lyall mine in Tasmania, my grandfather’s brother John Joseph Hannaford Williams was among the first to sign-up to serve in the World War 1. John was a Ballarat boy, … More AIF Private #511 – John Joseph Hannaford Williams
