Table of contents for Edition 28, 2024 in Traces

The Australian wine industry can be traced back to the first fleet, which transported grape vine cuttings to New South Wales in 1788. Vine cuttings were brought into the colony regularly by ship along with other varieties of flora, including trees, plants and seeds. The earliest types of grapevine cuttings were inevitably collected from the ports of call along the route to Australia, including Tenerife, Madeira, Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town. Early settlers also brought vine seeds and cuttings from England, where there was a small wine industry and an increasing number of nurserymen supplying vines for walled gardens in London. The first vines The spartan soils and limited fresh water around Port Jackson, New South Wales, presented an ongoing threat to the survival of the colony, and the…

Criminal records are a wonderful source of information. They provide not only captivating stories, but also firsthand testimonies from our ancestors. These accounts provide an insight into their lives, the way they spoke and how they felt. Increased indexing has made it possible to discover more Scottish criminal records than ever before. These help us trace our genealogy, understand our ancestors and pull back the curtain on their lives. High Court of Justiciary records The High Court of Justiciary (or ‘the High Court’, as it is often referred to) is Scotland’s highest criminal court. For centuries it has heard cases involving serious crimes, as well as cases of repeat offenders. In the spring of 1882, Mary Third was accused of stealing a woollen shirt and a pair of worsted stockings.…

The names of new Australian towns often related to European people or places, which resulted in confusion. A letter sent from Melbourne addressed ‘Sandhurst’ journeyed around the world before it arrived in Sandhurst, Victoria (today’s Bendigo). Its lengthy delay was due to the assumption that it was meant for Sandhurst in England. Having urged that ‘we should really have some established system of nomenclature’, the writer would have been disappointed that the naming of towns in Australia continued in much the same way. Over the years, there were multiple instances of the same name occurring in differing states, which caused considerable postal confusion. After Federation, the newly established postal department tried to rectify some of the issues associated with having too many towns of the same name. In 1902, they…

AI reveals evolutionary secrets of Australian eucalypts Scientists have leveraged advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) to explore the evolutionary history of Australian eucalypt species, shedding light on their transformation over millions of years. Using AI to analyse more than 50,000 digitised leaf images from Eucalyptus, Angophora and Corymbia specimens, researchers from the Botanic Gardens of Sydney and UNSW Sydney discovered insights into how these native trees have evolved over millions of years alongside climate changes. Published in Journal of Ecology, the study marks a significant breakthrough in plant research and preservation. New finding: Mining blast destroyed 47,000 years of heritage New findings reveal that a mining blast caused by Rio Tinto in 2020 destroyed 47,000 years of Aboriginal rock shelters and cultural heritage at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia. Despite…

The 2023 Victorian Community History Awards commended two unique history projects by Dr David Waldron: ‘William Bailey’s Haunted Mansion: A Live Action Roleplaying Game Performance’ in the History Interpretation Award category, and ‘Tales from Rat City: A Local Subaltern History Podcast and Performances Set in the Goldfields of Western Victoria’ in the Collaborative Community History Award category. Since then, Waldron has completed another role-playing game, ‘The Last Dance of Lola Montez’, which, together with ‘William Bailey’s Haunted Mansion’, is drawing the attention of role-playing game fans around the world. Traces: David, congratulations on your recent successes with your various heritage interpretation projects that experiment with new ways to engage people in history. Can you explain what role-playing games are for our readers who might not have heard of this before?…

The vision of foreign warships in Australian ports was a cause for alarm throughout the 19th century. On 30 November 1839, Sydneysiders awoke to find two US Navy vessels, USS Vincennes and USS Peacock, moored in their harbour. While there was no prospect of war with America, this unexpected arrival drove home the town’s vulnerability to bombardment or ship-based assault parties. A quarter of a century later, it was Melbourne’s turn. The British Empire was nominally neutral throughout the American Civil War; however, in November 1861, Britain had nearly gone to war with the northern states after a US Navy frigate stopped the RMS Trent and seized two Confederate envoys. The arrival of Confederate States Ship Shenandoah at Port Phillip Bay in January 1865 therefore risked another diplomatic incident. The…

This dark-brown leather cyclist’s helmet, likely crafted circa 1930–1939, was discovered boxed in the lower storeroom of Simpson’s Gloves factory in 1989. The helmet features a robust construction of leather, lined internally with navy felt for comfort and padding. Notably, it includes an elasticised back for a snug fit, but lacks the safety features we would normally see in a modern helmet. Simpson’s Gloves was a Victorian manufacturer of handbags, leather gloves, coats and helmets that employed mainly women. Its products catered mostly to a wealthy demographic. Simpson’s Gloves moved around over time, starting in Collingwood in Smith Street, then moving to Alexandra Parade, and then finally relocating to Victoria Street in Richmond. The company was sold in 1988.…

The Woodman Point Quarantine Station, located just south of Fremantle, served for many decades as Western Australia’s first defence against deadly diseases brought via ship to Australian shores by immigrants, travelling merchants and sailors. The site became a place of untold suffering, but one that intersected with humanity and hope. Today, the Woodman Point Quarantine Station offers a glimpse of how pandemics were managed in Australia more than a century before COVID-19. Early days of operation The Woodman Point Quarantine Station was established at a time when ships were the only method of global travel and transportation. The requirement for a quarantine station in Western Australia was first acknowledged in the 1800s, when early settlers realised the risk of imported diseases to colonial communities. In 1838, Woodman Point was gazetted.…

Then Located in Caulfield North in Melbourne’s inner south-east, near the intersection of Orrong and Balaclava roads, Labassa has been home to a multitude of colourful characters. The land was first acquired in 1854 by William Lyall, a pastoralist and cattle breeder who specialised in shipping livestock to Tasmania. Lyall was part of Mickle, Bakewell & Lyall – a prosperous firm that specialised in pastoralist pursuits – alongside brother-in-law John Mickle and colleague John Bakewell. In 1859, Mickle, Bakewell & Lyall dissolved, and Lyall transferred the land to Mickle, who subsequently acquired the adjoining allotment. Mickle then conveyed some of the land to Richard Annesley Billing, a prominent Melbourne lawyer and judge. In 1862, construction of a home for Billing commenced on the land. The eight-roomed house was known as…

Prior to the late 19th century, refrigeration options were limited, and preserving perishable foods was a daily struggle. Australians relied heavily on traditional methods, such as salting, smoking and drying, to extend the shelf life of meats and produce. These methods were effective to a certain extent, but often resulted in changes to taste and texture. Households had to carefully manage their food supplies to prevent spoilage and foodborne illnesses. The introduction of the Coolgardie Safe in the 1890s, however, provided a breakthrough in food storage. The Coolgardie Safe An Australian invention, the Coolgardie Safe consisted of a timber- or metal-framed cabinet with open sides covered in hessian fabric. On top of the cabinet, a tank was filled with water, and strips of flannel or felt hung from the tank…

William John Mayne traded from the Albion Waggon * Works, Port Tennant (near Swansea) during the early 1900s. In addition to his wagon-building career, he was involved in some very interesting activities. Born in or around 1858 in Leominster, Herefordshire, to a railway porter and his wife, William John is listed in the 1891 census as a ‘Waggon Builder’ living at Danygraig Terrace on the outskirts of Swansea with his wife, Loiusa Jane, four sons, two daughters, and his father. The first publicised encounter with William John is contained within a newspaper article from the Swansea Evening Express dated 31 March 1903. It relates to a court case where William John had been summonsed for assaulting the headmaster of his children’s school. His defence was that his children had been…

Leaving his home in the Aegean Sea for South Australia in 1916, Angelos Spartalis was one of the many men who left their homeland in a pattern of mass migration that saw the population of Kastellorizo (also spelt Castellorizo) drop from 9000 in 1910 to 2000 in 1917. Little is known of Angelos’s life before he migrated to Australia; however, he is able to be placed within this broader context of chain migration that characterised Kastellorizian emigration during the first half of the 20th century. Measuring less than 10 square kilometres, the island of Kastellorizo (officially named Megisti) contains only one township where the majority of the population resides. This township is built in a crescent around the harbour, reflecting the island’s economic reliance upon the sea. The geographic location…