Georgiana McRae’s Journal

Georgiana Huntly Gordon was an illegitimate child of Jane Graham and George Gordon, who was the Marquis of Huntly, and later 5th Duke of Gordon, in Scotland. She was born on 15th March 1804, and had an aristocratic upbringing. Well educated at a convent in London, she...

Patrick Costello’s Pioneering Experiences

“IN THE DAYS WHEN THE WORLD WAS WIDE” (A Narrative of the Pioneering Experiences of Patrick Costello 1841-1856) After leaving Captain Hepburn, I went to Melbourne. The streets of the Metropolis were laid out, but not made, and they presented a very...

John Davies Mereweather

CHURCH OF ENGLAND MINISTER John Davies Mereweather was born in 1816, the son and only child of John Mereweather, gentleman, of St. James’, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England and his second wife Anna Maria Davies. John Mereweather already had a son and two...

Eliza Fawkner

A Founding Mother of Melbourne Whilst researching the migration of people across Bass Strait, Barbara Hamilton-Arnold realised how little we know about our founding “Mothers”. Firstly, Mrs. Catherine Batman, wife of John Batman’s brother, Henry,...

Captain Ardlie and his Camels

When Capt. John Martin Ardlie HEICS signed the Loyal Address to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1867 he gave his date of arrival in the colony as August 1841. However he may not have reached Melbourne until early the following month as it was on 7 September 1841 that the...

Samuel & Maria McMillan

Samuel McMillan had been stockman, drover, shepherd, coachman, bush-mailman, horse breaker, hotel proprietor and farmer and had many tales to tell. He went with his parents to a station at “Devil’s River”, now Delatite River, near Mansfield, when he...