Table of contents for Edition 22, 2023 in Traces

The concept of everywhen is the focus of a new book, Everywhen: Australia and the Language of Deep History, which brings together a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars to reflect on time, language and history. At the opening of the symposium, when the authors first gathered, Ngunnawal elder Tyronne Bell passed around a collection of stone artefacts found on his Country – tools that his ancestors had crafted that are powerful connections to his family and to Country, which is now the nation’s capital. Holding them in our hands, we wondered how many thousands of years ago they were made. Rather than counting the years, however, Bell spoke about the immediacy of such a tangible, embodied connection – the pride that he felt in accessing such a past in…

Capitan Jean Benaud was born at La Rochelle, on the west coast of France, in 1818. He arrived in Sydney in March 1840 aboard the French whaler Ville de Bordeaux, which had been whaling since leaving Bordeaux, France, in December 1837. Benaud married twice – the first time in around 1842 to Emily Benaud, who died, aged 32, in 1856. A tombstone in the Taree Estate Pioneer Cemetery also contains an inscription for a daughter born around 1842–43. In 1858, Captain Benaud married Esther Caroline Powell, the daughter of a pilot stationed at the mouth of the Manning River, in New South Wales – he was 40, she was 18. His given name, Jean (pronounced almost like ‘John’) must have confused some, as the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths &…

Outside the Eastern Market at night, ‘lung testers’, ‘electricians’ and ‘street astronomers’ jostled for trade. The electrician literally gave you a ‘shock’, while the astronomer showed you Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons for the price of a glass of gin. These are some of the ways people earned a living on Melbourne’s streets. The hawker Hawkers and street stalls were a common sight from the 1850s, touting everything from oysters to water, potatoes to paintbrushes, and flowers to flathead. With no rent or rates, hawking, or ‘itinerant trading’, was a viable occupation for the unskilled, immigrants, the infirm and the elderly – a way to make a living in the days before the provision of state welfare. Most hawkers and street stall vendors were men. Bootblacks were a common sight…

Surrounded by trees and houses, and backing onto a busy road, Edina is invisible unless you know it’s there. This grand building is known today as the Uniting War Memorial Hospital in Waverley – an important rehabilitation hospital. For many of the past 100 years, however, it was better known as an obstetrics hospital, with 33,000 babies having been born there. So, what’s the story behind the glorious Italianate mansion and the eight-acre estate on which it was located? Ebenezer and Jeanie Vickery built Edina in 1884 on the site of an earlier house they’d erected around 1860. Located on a ridge, it had excellent views up and down the coast, and to the Blue Mountains in the west. Edina is a poetic name for Edinburgh, and reflects Jeanie’s Scottish…

Trove facing closure The National Library of Australia has warned that its free online research portal, Trove, is under threat due to funding cuts. The website, which houses more than six billion digital items, including the digital records of newspapers dating back to the first publications of colonies, is invaluable to researchers, academics and institutions around Australia. Despite this, Trove is facing a $13-million (21 per cent) cut to its operations budget from July 2023, when federal support for Trove ends. The library has warned that without long-term government support, Trove will cease providing the service as of July this year. It has ruled out introducing a pay-per-view scheme. Trove was first put under threat in 2016, when the Turnbull Government’s ‘efficiency dividend’ set out budget cuts of $20 million…

Anzac Day was only just emerging as a new tradition in 1917. Aboard Australian troopship A70, routine orders for 25 April included a ceremony to mark the landing at Gallipoli two years earlier. While most soldiers were recent recruits, a special meal of bully beef and bread awaited Dardanelles veteran Lieutenant Colonel Robert McVea, Officer Commanding Troops. Injured during the 1915 campaign, he had been posted to the Sea Transport Service to organise troopship voyages. Then, at 2.05 pm, just as formalities were set to commence, ‘Boomp!’ The ship shivered, ‘from stem to stern’. All aboard instantly knoew what this meant: the vessel had been torpedoed. The engines stopped and the steamship – P&O’s 11,120-tonne liner Ballarat – glided to a standstill. While the men posted as submarine sentries had…

So many lost jobs can be seen in this 1862 painting by Nicholas Chevalier. It shows a huge crowd gathered outside the post office in Melbourne to collect mail that had arrived by ship from England. The new General Post Office building can be seen under construction in the background. On the far left is a man with a covered, wheeled cart. From his appearance – dressed in a black frockcoat and top hat – he might be a conjurer, or some sort of entertainer. At the centre is a man behind a desk, perhaps writing a letter; a large proportion of the population was illiterate at this time, meaning that letter writers were in strong demand, and a stall outside the post office would have provided good business. In…

Under Section 9 of the Public Records Act 1973, files of a private nature are closed to prevent the violation of personal privacy. After the period set for closure ends, these files can be opened. A broad guide to time periods for closure under Section 9 is: • Records primarily concerning adults may be closed for 75 years.• Records concerning children may be closed for 99 years.• Other files for 30, 40 or 50 years are closed as appropriate. Case files were created to assist the governor in deciding whether mercy should be granted to people convicted of a capital offence (such as murder). The governor may decide to grant a lesser sentence or early release based on the materials provided, which could include inquests, court transcripts, police statements, and…

Then Adelaide’s Observatory House, located at 84–86 Flinders Street, Adelaide, was constructed in 1906 for Otto Boettger, who was known for making scientific instruments and tools Boettger was born in eastern Germany in 1842, not far from Cologne. He spent time as an apprentice for an instrument maker, working in Russia and Hamburg in various roles – including as a foreman and an astronomer’s apprentice. It wasn’t until Boettger emigrated to South Australia in 1877 that his career as a scientific instrument manufacturer and repairer began to take off. Boettger’s original shop was next to the site of Observatory House, which Boettger purchased in about 1879. Business began to boom and by 1890, Boettger was selling his instruments and tools around Australia. By 1899, Boettger had sold his business to…

Most of the children living at the Queen’s Orphan Schools were ‘orphaned’ not by the death of their parents, but by the state. Their childhoods were blighted by a legal system that shipped some 75,000 prisoners from Britain and its empire, to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) on the other side of the world. Convict transportation broke families apart. Many children were left behind when their mothers boarded the convict ships, but some 2000 shared the voyage into exile, only to be separated once they set foot on foreign land. Thousands of children were born in the female factories after their mothers became pregnant while working off their sentences as unpaid domestic labour in the homes of settlers. For six months, these infants were breastfed, then compulsorily weaned so that…

Grandmother’s wedding band My favourite family heirloom has to be my grandmother’s rose gold wedding band, made by a local jeweller in Bendigo, in 1932 – the year my grandparents, David Millar and Edna Moyle, married. Although the band is nothing special, it was the best my grandfather could afford during the Depression. My grandmother wore this ring for 73 years until she died in February 2005. It was passed down to me, and I have worn it ever since. This ring was nearly lost in about 2000, when my grandmother dropped it down the plughole of her old cast-iron bath. I happened to be visiting at the time and had to crawl under the house, which was a near impossibility. I managed to stretch and move myself in ways…

MyHeritage Australia • Queensland, Deaths: 3,430,354 records• Queensland, Marriages, 1829–1922: 777,661 records• Queensland, World War I Soldier Portraits, 1914–1918: 28,245 records• South Australia, Royal Adelaide Hospital Admissions: 79,924 records• Tasmania, Deaths, 1803–1933: 158,333 records. Finland • Karelia, Emigrant Registers, 1847–1921: 338,159 records. Hungary • Jewish Census, 1869: 88,890 records. Israel • Immigration Lists, 1919–1974: 1,785,598 records. Netherlands • State Army Officers and Enlisted Men, 1707–1795: 80,354 records. New Zealand • Dunedin Burials: 187,233 records. Spain • Disciplinary Labour Battalions, 1937–1942: 137,576 records• Navarre, Census, 1816–1935: 147,147 records. Ukraine • World War II Casualties, 1941–1945: 1,639,902 records. United Kingdom • Great Britain Convict Transportation Registers: 123,888 records• Scotland, Stirlingshire, Perthshire, Burials, 1755–2022: 83,107 records. United States • Idaho, Reconstructed Census, 1890: 118,368 records• Kansas, State Census, 1895: 475,699 records• Massachusetts, Whaling…