Traces

This magazine is for people passionate about Australia and New Zealand's genealogy, history and heritage. Whether you want to explore convict history, find your Anzac, identify photographs or trace your family tree, our trusted expert advice will help you discover your past.

Welcome to the 14th edition of Traces!

Letters to the editor • What you thought of Traces edition 13

Traces

Heritage News

What’s that thingamajig?

MACQUARIE ARMS HOTEL, WINDSOR • Known as the oldest pub on the Australian mainland, Macquarie Arms has also been a private home – and is rumoured to be haunted!

Something of a scandad: a Hobart Towan love triangle • Despite marrying well and transcending her lowly beginnings to become one of the colony’s most successful women, Maria Riseley was never allowed to forget her convict past.

MILKING CALAMITY • Epidemic investigations can provide historians with rich and often untapped insights into local history. Dr Peter Hobbins, of Artefact Heritage Services, provides a fascinating typhoid case study.

Research tips

REFLECTIONS ON MODERN HISTORY Release of the 1990 NSW Cabinet Papers • The annual release of NSW Cabinet Papers from 30 years ago is a key part of NSW State Archives’ public engagement program.

Detectors at Chidlow • At Chidlow, a small town in the hills 47 kilometres east of Perth, a team of volunteer archaeologists and detectorists are carefully searching for artefacts at one of Australia’s largest abandoned World War II army camps.

Aboriginal Exemption The untold story of cruel choices • The Stolen Generations were not the only people impacted by discriminatory policies that caused suffering and intergenerational trauma by stripping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of their cultures and identities. Few Australians know about another equally pervasive and insidious state-based policy that inflicted loss and hardships across the generations. This policy was called ‘Aboriginal Exemption’.

Defiant voices • Australians were slow to uncover the human stories of transported convicts. As a result, our knowledge about convict women as people was almost non-existent until recently.

A LEGACY OF CARE • Generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have been instrumental in driving lasting change in this country. This edition, Amanda Wong celebrates four iconic matriarchs who have shaped Australian history and their communities with their resilience.

Melbourne’s most notorious gangster • The story of Squizzy Taylor is set against an Art Deco backdrop, and is full of heists, theft, murder and violence; but what makes it most fascinating is that it is an Australian story.

Alfred Thomas Jackson • Ally Millington shares with Traces her ancestor Alfred Thomas Jackson, an apprentice turned convict.

Cometh the hour • James ‘Shirty’ Germyn was never a paradigm of virtue; yet for all his faults, he left a legacy of self-sacrifice on the battlefields of World War I.

At war away from home • The search for records of your ancestors’ involvement in the military is generally fairly straightforward; but what if you come up empty? It could be that your ancestor’s military service is detailed in the records created by another country.

Context and imagination in historical research • When evidence is limited, speculation can provoke many new possibilities to help you navigate away from a dead end.

What’s new online? • The latest updates and additions to historical collections available online.

History in full bloom Woolmers Estate • In the heart of Longford, Tasmania, you can find one of the most significant 19th-century farming properties in Australia. Woolmers Estate and its sprawling grounds encompass meticulously cared for...