Table of contents for Edition 32, 2025 in Traces

Hello and welcome to Edition 32 of Traces! Since our last edition, there have some interesting heritage developments. Among them was a momentous decision; the Murujuga Cultural Landscape, in Western Australia, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Murujuga, home to more than one million pieces of Indigenous rock art, some as old as 50,000 years, has finally been recognised as a place of global heritage significance after two decades of campaigning by the Australian Government. It’s a reminder that persistence in preserving the past can be rewarded. Continuing that spirit, Traces again shines a light on some little-known stories from our collective past. In the Insight section on page 8, Shayne Breen explores the rediscovery of Kutalayna, an ancient Tasmanian site, and how it became a symbol of…

Travelling home after attending a seminar in Devonport, I was cruising along the Bass Highway when the exit to Westbury appeared. Although it was out of my way, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to turn off and drive through the little country town of my birth. As it turned out, this split‑second decision would produce an amazing result. Ten minutes later, I was sitting in the kitchen of a little weatherboard cottage, having a cup of tea with my second cousin. Now an old lady and a spinster, she had once taught me how to milk a cow – I had spent many happy days during school holidays helping round up her small herd of Jersey cows, milk them, and then separate out the cream. Those experiences left quite an…

Answer: Match container, 1850–1900 This decorative match holder was made in England between 1850 and 1900. Ornamental turned wood items were popular during this period, with many small trinkets produced from hard woods like African blackwood. This item was made using an ornamental turning lathe, where the tool rotated rather than the work. This meant that decorative details and complicated designs were much easier to incorporate. This piece was purchased from Edward H Pinto by the Birmingham Museums Trust, United Kingdom, in 1965 and is held in the Pinto Collection.…

Topics include, but are not limited to: • Ancestor stories • Historical research and news • Research tips • Character studies • Historical building profiles • Antiques, collections and preservation • Historical recipes. Send your submissions and pitches to eden.cox@executivemedia.com.au Please note that all article submissions and pitches will be reviewed by the editor. The editor reserves the right to reject submissions. Articles are between 1000 and 1200 words. If imagery is available, it must be high resolution (300dpi).…

In the early hours of Thursday 2 May 1852, Augustus Calmut Waugh left his sister Elizabeth’s modest, white-washed brick house on the corner of William and Bourke streets, in Melbourne, and disappeared into the misty dawn. In the heady days of gold fever, precious little was made of the prospector’s disappearance, and no-one, evidently, felt it necessary to advise the police. Mystery surrounding Waugh’s whereabouts appeared to be resolved when Elizabeth advised his daughters that their father had been found dead, having fallen from his horse on the road between Dunsford and Kyneton. It was, perhaps, little surprise; death by horse happened with unbridled regularity. In 1872, 20 years after his disappearance, Waugh apparently materialised again. And he had quite a few things to say: ‘My death was caused by…

Insuring vessels and cargoes against the perils of the sea dates back to antiquity. By the 18th century, assurers such as Lloyd’s of London began to accumulate information on prior losses, plus the condition of vessels and their operators, to set premiums that balanced risk against appropriate compensation. Potential hazards included foundering, damage, fire, piracy, war, theft and spoilage of cargo. Policies were governed by extremely high expectations of good faith on both sides: ‘Probably in no department of the law of contracts is the importance of right dealing more fully recognised than in that which is concerned with marine insurance,’ remarked one legal authority in 1907. Insurance records are a rare but valuable resource for historians. Many remain commercial-in-confidence or are destroyed, but surviving files can provide independent and…

A number of years ago, I was given a very old book by a very old aunt. At the time, I wasn’t really interested in ‘old stuff ’, but as I am a hoarder, I put it in the cupboard for another day. That day arrived eventually when I opened this beautiful book, only to discover that it had been given to my great-grandmother’s sister as a Sunday School Prize in 1879. The now valuable book, Women Worth Emulating, written by Clara Lucas Balfour, tells the life stories of 13 remarkable women, including Florence Nightingale and Harriet Tubman. Through their stories, it encourages young girls to aim high and that ‘anything is possible’. I showed and discussed this book with my family, and we began talking about our own female…

On 10 October 1853, having ‘participated in the cheer’ perhaps too vigorously at a wedding the night before, 77-year-old Hannah Rigby died suddenly from ‘apoplexy’, or a ‘visitation of God’. Brisbane’s The Moreton Bay Courier reported delicately that the deceased was ‘a relict of old times here having resided in Brisbane many years before it became a free settlement’. In other words, Hannah had been a convict at Moreton Bay, one of the harshest penal establishments in the country. In the early days of colonisation, Moreton Bay was chosen as a place for secondary punishment for transported convicts who committed further crimes in the colony. Such brutal establishments were supposed to serve as a deterrent to crime by being ‘an object of real terror’. Hannah Rigby had been sent there…

The earliest known surviving photograph taken in Australia, pictured below, was made in 1845 by settler George Baron Goodman. Goodman, who trained in France with Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotype photographic method, bought a license that allowed him to use the daguerreotype process to take photographs in the British colonies. Shortly after arriving, Goodman became the first commercial photographer in Australia, taking photos of Sydney’s leading citizens. Among them is the oldest-surviving Australian portrait, depicting the ex-convict surgeon Dr William Bland, who was transported for murdering someone in a duel in 1813. After being pardoned, Bland opened a private medical practice in the colony and also became a member of parliament.…

There is usually very little written about women. Most women were just seen as an appendage to their husbands and, regardless of their social status, were without any rights of their own. Mothers were often not even named on their children’s baptism records, and are regularly just referred to as Mrs (husband’s name) – even in newspaper articles as recently as 50 years ago. As for their lives, I usually try to research the social history of the time and place during the person’s lifetime. If you know what’s happening in a specific area of the country where they lived, then you have a little more understanding of what it would have been like to live in their shoes. I think it’s important to remember the context of life at…