Table of contents for Edition 9, 2019 in Traces

Welcome to edition 9 of Traces, the final edition of the year. This summer will be extra special for my family and I, as we have just added a new twig to the family tree! While I have been on maternity leave getting to know my new daughter, the wonderful Traces team has crafted this edition for you, and it’s jam-packed with interesting history to take you through the Christmas and new year period. This year, Canberra sadly lost two culturally significant Aboriginal scar trees that were felled by mistake, while in Victoria several 800-year-old sacred Djab Wurrung birthing trees are under threat due to construction of the Western Highway. While many ancient historical sites have been destroyed recently, here at Traces, we were excited to be celebrating the long-overdue…

In Traces Volume 4 2018, I wrote about the difficulty of researching the life stories of women who may lose their identities, often through name changes with marriage. Their stories can be lost in time. I wrote of my ancestor, Elizabeth Morris, who was born in 1851 in Parramatta, the child of Sarah (Whalan) Morris and Captain John Morris, who was a master mariner of the Parramatta River steamers. After a long career as a work mistress working in inner-city Sydney schools, Elizabeth Morris’s story had come to an abrupt ending in 1897, when she applied for leave from her job, travelled interstate to Perth, and then resigned, stating that she had decided to remain in Perth. In spite of our best efforts to find any trace of her in…

They ask us loudly why we are downhearted, What secret sorrow lines each careworn brow I answer, ‘Sirs, our glory has departed; We have no catchword now’. Once, in the days that knew not ‘Mrs Kelly,’ ‘Twas sweet to ask one’s unsuspecting Pa, The while our sides shook like a calves’-foot jelly, If he had seen the Shah. Scarce was that query stifled when another Filled every honest boy with lively doubt, As strangers stopped to ask him if his mother Knew that her son was out. I have known solemn merchants in the City Betrayed to anger by some cheeky brat Rudely enquiring, in a famous ditty, Where they procured that hat. Coming to later times, when Mr Bailey Evinced his quaint propensity to roam, Our prayers were uttered…

From the goldfields to the top echelons of Melbourne’s criminal elite, Cranky Bella was an expert in her underhanded craft. Ellen Anstead was born in Ballarat in 1854 among the tents and shaft mines that littered the area. When the surface gold ran out, the town plunged into a post–gold rush depression, and Anstead’s family disbanded. At just seven years old, she was handed over to a local family to begin a career as a servant girl. Anstead found service to be cruel and overbearing. She had a string of abusive relationships with men between 1870 and 1880, after which she found her way to Melbourne to make a life for herself, and by herself. Melbourne in the 1880s was an exciting place to be, with theatres, saloons and backroom…

Melbourne’s first newspaper, The Melbourne Advertiser, was printed on this press in 1838. Publisher John Pascoe Fawkner obtained the press just before the 10th edition was in production. Prior to this, each edition of the newspaper had been handwritten, as Fawkner – a keen entrepreneur, pioneer and co-founder of Melbourne – was anxious to take advantage of the young colony and the opportunities this presented. Each newspaper’s pages were filled with shipping news and reports from Sydney, and even included advertisements for Port Phillip’s businesses, most of which were owned by Pascoe himself. As Pascoe was busy working away on his 10th edition – by hand – a wooden hand-printed press arrived from Launceston, along with a collection of types. This press was believed to have been made in England…

Further to a reader’s comments in ‘Letters to the editor’ in Edition 8 regarding the Edition 7 article about the Batchelder brothers, readers of your excellent magazine might enjoy reading An American on the Goldfields: The Bendigo Photographs of Benjamin Pierce Batchelder by Mike Butcher. This remarkable book has an abundance of high-quality sepia images of Bendigo’s early days, captured by a Batchelder employee, together with a fascinating account of the history of the Batchelder brothers. Ross O I have been a huge fan of Traces magazine since its first edition, and I just wanted to thank you for putting together such a wonderful and informative publication. As well as the great stories, as a professional historian I especially love the ‘What’s new online?’ section to help keep me up…

Workers employed on back-country squatting runs lived harsh lives of isolation. It was no wonder that they often exhibited odd behaviour or drank excessively. In 1853, a 35-year-old shoemaker named James Talbot and a carpenter named William Barry went on a bender. The two men shared a hut on the squatting run of N R Bernard, their employer, south of Yass, New South Wales. By the end of their bender, Barry lay drunk and unconscious on the hut’s floor. A drunken quarrel had occurred some time during the bender. As Barry lay there, Talbot stabbed him twice in the heart. Talbot then drunkenly attempted to cut the dead man’s head off but failed. So he waited until the body was cold before he disembowelled Barry and cut out his kidneys.…

On the night of 19 July 1916, almost 2000 Australian troops of the 5th Australian Division were killed when they attacked the German trenches near Fromelles, in France. The Australian soldiers pushed the Germans back, but the Germans then regained their position, leaving hundreds of Australians dead behind German lines. The majority of Australia’s 1322 missing from that one night of battle were left in the fields for more than two-and-a-half years before their bodies could be recovered. The unaccounted for were most likely buried somewhere behind their lines. There were 5533 Australian casualties from the battle. As a measure of the human tragedy, 26 pairs of brothers were killed that evening, and a father and son. I can only imagine being back home and receiving that particular dreaded letter.…

While scores of townships developed around rich goldfields, others were known as ‘10-mile towns’, which appeared at regular intervals to supply prospectors with food and accommodation as they walked, rode horses or drove bullock teams to the goldfields. Many towns prospered during the 1850s and 1860s, when Victoria dominated the world’s gold output; but countless faded into obscurity when the gold ran out. Today, Victoria is abundant with ghost towns that offer tantalising glimpses into the state’s history. Driving a scenic web of rural back roads, you never know what you’ll find in this historic part of Victoria. In this neck of the woods, you’ll discover ghost towns such as Havelock, what was once home to thousands of people, and is now a series of verdant paddocks without so much…

National Trust property B5401, No 14 Doveton Street, was first known as Allotment 10, Section 5 (10/5), in the Parish of Castlemaine – a standard quarter-acre block, sold by Crown Grant in 1856 for £60, to Richard Living. The City of Castlemaine Architectural and Historical Survey of 1979 (AHS) correctly records Living’s purchase in item 74. Then, imaginary information starts to seep in: Living is reported as keeping his wife company in 1860, and doing so in his own house. This was not the case. The Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages Registry confirms his death in their record #3574, 15 June 1857. Aged 30, he died of brain fever. His father is recorded as Edwin Living, tallow merchant, and his mother, Eliza. He came from Norfolk England to Victoria in…

I’m a historian, but I’m not my family’s historian. That honour falls to my mum, who for the past 20 or so years has been delving into the lives of my ancestors. Mum started doing the family history after I began studying Australian history at university. The death of my grandmother prompted me to ask Mum to find out what she could from the older generations of our family – the aunts and cousins, and family friends who she knew, but I didn’t. Over the years, as Mum and I have chatted about my research into Chinese Australian history, and her research into the lives of my ancestors – whose heritage was Scottish, English, Northern Irish and German – I’ve been pleased, and sometimes a bit surprised, to realise the…

Being the family historian, I was duty-bound to find her – and there she was, her name glaring back at me from the computer screen. Elizabeth Blay: my great-great-grand-mother. Elizabeth’s husband, David, branched to the left with his parents proudly adorning the space above him on the tree. Their seven children were listed below. Above her, a father’s name I found in a marriage announcement. Her mother remains nameless. Elizabeth came into the world on 5 June 1840 and was baptised at St James, Melbourne, on 4 July 1841. Although her own story is interesting, in this instance, Elizabeth’s role is the conduit between her father’s murky, secret past and her eldest son’s reputable future. Elizabeth’s father, William Blay, arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in July 1814. His mother, Sarah,…