William & Margaret Blay

 From Plenty to Poverty  William and Margaret Blay are my great, great, great grandparents. This story is based on the facts gleaned from years of research.  Both William and Margaret were children of convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land on the...

Barfold Gorge

n the 1840s my great great grandfather, his wife and five young children lived near the Barfold Gorge, in northwest Victoria. Even today, 175 years later, very few people have seen this dramatic landscape [Fig. 1]. When John Ross McNaughton died on 18 July 1885, the...

Edward Gifford Price

GIPPSLAND’S ITINERANT MINISTER Edward Gifford Pryce was born on 26 August 1814 at Liverpool, Lancashire, England, the son of Edward Pryce, merchant, and his wife Eleanor, nee Gifford. He was educated for the ministry at Trinity College, Dublin (B.A.1837). On 21...

William Willis Sexton at St James’

Though there are a number of references to William Willis being an early sexton at St. James’ Church in Melbourne he was not the first person to occupy this position. There was at least one other person there before him. Thomas Croft was the officiating sexton...

Short Stories about Pioneer Ancestors

STUART HAMILTON on his GG Grandfather, JAMES HAMILTON At the age of 12, James came to Australia from Glasgow with his parents and seven siblings aboard The Victory. The voyage took 110 days arriving at the entrance to the Port Phillip heads at dusk where it...