Table of contents for Edition 8, 2019 in Traces

Australia has always been filled with music. For millennia, First Nations people have lived in communities shaped by the sharing of song and dance. In 1788, new music began to fill the air in the country of the Eora, Darug and Dharawal, and of the clans north of Sydney. Within a few decades, a stroll through Sydney Town was accompanied by a soundtrack of Aboriginal song, regimental bands, tavern music spilling out of every public house, bagpipes, rehearsals for the latest amateur concerts, the piano practice of young girls, psalms from churches, and mechanical hits stored on barrel organs. Discovering Sydney’s musical past In a story never before told, the ‘Songs of Home’ exhibition reveals a vibrant musical culture within New South Wales during early settlement. The exhibition explores the…

The Anglo-American writer and avowed anti-theist Christopher Hitchens once lamented that there was no fraudulence one couldn’t get away with, provided one could get the word ‘Reverend’ put in front of their name. Hitchens was referring mainly to the unctuous and decidedly for-profit salesmen of the American evangelical churches, but the criticism probably has a certain universal currency. Whether or not the Reverend William Maitland Woods – Senior Church of England Chaplain to the Australian Imperial Forces in Gallipoli, Sinai and Palestine throughout World War I – got away with fraud is debated to this day. He has been called a thief, a liar and the most brazen looter in Australian military history. What we can say with certainty is that at the end of his long tour of duty,…

Well into the 20th century, European collectors and naturalists engaged Indigenous people to participate in expeditions that sought to collect and understand the local fauna and flora. Indigenous men and boys were the most frequent participants, but women and female children also became major contributors, exchanging knowledge for tobacco, alcohol, food, clothes, sweets and other items. Thousands of animals were traded, but Aboriginal people’s participation was barely acknowledged. Penny Olsen and Lynette Russell have examined the contribution of Australia’s Indigenous people to the advancement of Western zoology in their book, Australia’s First Naturalists. Traces caught up with Olsen and Russell to find out more about this fascinating topic. Why is Indigenous faunal knowledge important? Lynette Russell (LR): Indigenous faunal knowledge grew out of tens of thousands of years of thriving in…

This is a story about a Chinese-Australian man who emigrated by ship as a 15-year-old with the support of missionaries. In the 1900s, many Chinese people left an impoverished China and migrated over 4000 nautical miles to Australia, desperate for work and a better life. Just the thought of making that trip alone makes me blanch. Back then, Chinese families scrimped and pooled resources to buy ships’ passage for just one family member to go abroad to work and send some of their earnings home. Over the years, about 50,000 men migrated from China to the British Crown Colony of Queensland. Upon landing in Brisbane, Jan See Chin’s first jobs were in the bush: herding a farmer’s flock of sheep and, later, cultivating fruits and vegetables for a market gardener.…

MyHeritage Australia • Electoral Rolls, 1893–1949: more than 16 million new indexed records Canada • Quebec, Marriage Returns, 1926–1997: more than seven million new indexed records United States • Baltimore, Maryland Passenger Lists, 1891–1943: more than one million new indexed records• Honolulu, Hawaii Passenger Lists, 1900–1953: more than one million new indexed records Visit www.myheritage.com FamilySearch Australia • Cemetery Inscriptions, 1802–2005: more than 1900 indexed records added to an existing collection• South Australia, Immigrants Ship Papers, 1849–1940: more than 21,000 indexed records added to an existing collection Canada • Nova Scotia, Births, 1864–1877: more than 35,000 indexed records added to an existing collection• Nova Scotia, Marriages, 1864–1918: more than 120,000 indexed records added to an existing collection England • Herefordshire Bishop’s Transcripts, 1583–1898: more than 202,000 indexed records added to…

In Brisbane at this time, most buildings were made from timber and had shingle roofs; sawmills, foundries and tanning workshops produced waste and fumes; and infant mortality was 50 per cent by the age of five due to diseases such as typhoid and cholera. There were also plagues being brought into the colony on emigrant ships such as the Flying Cloud. The Brisbane Health Officer, Dr William Hobbs, boarded the ship and found a child ‘in a dying state’. He questioned the ship’s surgeon, Dr George Sandiford, about the health of passengers and was told that there was no significant illness on board. Hobbs then allowed passengers to proceed to Brisbane. Within a few days, local doctors were reporting cases of typhoid. At the inquiry, the Board went methodically through…

In the Auditor-General’s annual report to the Queensland Parliament in 1942, it was noted that the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum was missing 40 gallons of rum. There was no evidence to suggest that the rum had leaked out due to a problem with the cask or that it had accidentally fallen over. It led the newspaper Worker to speculate on the only possible conclusion; someone had ‘tapped the admiral’ to drink ‘Nelson’s blood’. The slang phrases ‘tapped the admiral’ and ‘Nelson’s blood’ are thought to stem from the Napoleonic Wars. In 1805, during the Battle of Trafalgar, Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson was shot by a French sniper. The wound was fatal and he later died aboard his ship, Victory. Rather than burying him at sea, a decision was made to return his…

If you’re just starting out, DNA can tell you where to look and what to expect. A DNA test provides an ethnicity estimate that can provide insight into the possible origin of your ancestors over the last few hundred years. It also highlights DNA matches, allowing you to connect with living family members who might be able to share information about common ancestors with you. Why should people interested in their family tree take a DNA test? If you’ve been uncovering your family history for a while and have hit a brick wall, AncestryDNA’s tool ThruLines – that shows you potential shared ancestors with others who have taken a DNA test – can help you to break through those brick walls, relieving years of frustration almost instantly. How do DNA…

A violent encounter at a street canteen on Grahamstown’s High Street at the Cape Colony in February 1830 irrevocably changed the lives of the three Khoisan (Indigenous) women involved. One was left for dead; another spent several months in jail; and a third, Mina Magerman, became the only Khoisan woman known to have been transported as a convict to the Australian colonies. In addition to shipping convicts to Australia from England, Ireland and Scotland, the British used transportation as a punishment to subdue and control their colonial populations, including Indigenous people. Australian Aboriginal people and Māori men from New Zealand ended up serving time as convicts. The Cape Colony changed hands between the Dutch and the British several times. It had, however, been firmly under British rule for several decades…

New exhibit questions William Bligh’s character The Australian National Maritime Museum has opened a groundbreaking new exhibition offering a radical new take on one of Australian history’s most divisive characters, William Bligh. ‘Bligh – Hero or Villain?’ tells two very different sides of the same story – Bligh as hero, and Bligh as villain – asking the visitor to decide by casting their vote at the end of the exhibition. Bligh’s life was extraordinary – he caused controversy on land and sea as an officer of the Royal Navy, a survivor of a mutiny at sea, and a Governor of New South Wales who was overthrown in a military coup. ‘It’s particularly unusual for a major museum to portray history in such a manner: to question it and present two…

THEN Dwarfed by its next-door neighbour, the new Parliament House, Adelaide’s Old Parliament House can be found on the corner of North Terrace and Station Road in the Adelaide CBD. While less stately than its replacement, Old Parliament House is nevertheless a historically and architecturally significant part of Adelaide, being one of the city’s few remaining government buildings built before 1860. A Council Chamber was built on the site in 1843 using a small budget of L200. A very simple brick building, the Chamber consisted of a single room measuring 10 metres by 6.1 metres, which accommodated 50 spectators, as well as reporters. The Council Chamber didn’t measure up to more stately civic buildings nearby, like Government House, so the council held a design competition for a larger, more impressive…

Made by Watt’s Sheffield (United Kingdom) circa 1900, this collar press was used in the laundry of a Victorian psychiatric hospital. The device consists of two pieces of wood fastened together and screwed down with two metal clamps. The collar was placed flat between the two pieces of wood, and clamps applied pressure onto the wide metal strip, which acted as a spring. The wooden base is fitted with rubber rests. Presses like these were an absolute necessity for Victorian men, whose detachable cuff s and collars required daily cleaning and pressing. If you have an interesting ‘thingamajig’ to share, email us at traces@executivemedia.com.au!…

For decades, controversy raged about Point Hicks, formerly known as Cape Everard. Was it the site of Lieutenant James Cook’s first sighting of Australia’s east coast in April 1770, or not? Sailing in the Endeavour from New Zealand, Cook, steering westward, came upon a rocky cape first sighted by his second-in-command, Zachary Hicks. Cook called the promontory Point Hicks, but the name eventually fell from use, as on later voyages, ships’ captains could not find the point at the position Cook recorded – which is, in fact, in the open sea. The site was renamed Cape Everard in 1852, but for ensuing decades the historical intrigue surrounding Cape Everard/Point Hicks was hotly debated by admirals, hydrographers, Britain’s Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Australian Historical Society. In 1970, then Victorian…