Category Archives: Australian Colony

Australia, Australian Colony, Australian history, Culture

THE SEARCH FOR MY ANCESTORS

It is now almost eighteen months since my son, Roger, and I completed our trip up through northwestern New South Wales to find where our colonial Wilson and Jones Ancestors lived and worked. James Joseph Wilson arrived in Sydney in 1827 and Michael Jones in 1829. Both were convicts. Their free settler wives, Jane and Elizabeth Harris, came from a small village in Wiltshire.

It was the trip of a lifetime, a trip that I’m probably too old to do again.

Of course, we were a couple of rank amateurs as far as making videos went. And viewing the results no television station will be running after us. However, despite our amateur efforts we are more than happy with the results. We achieved what we set out to do. We set out to trace our family history, not only for ourselves, but for Australians with similar family background.

The experiences of our family and like-families were, and are, an important part of Australia’s history. Indeed, they were the starting point of the Australian nation. Without them, there would be no Australian nation. It’s a part of Australia’s history that an elite class is now desperate to erase.

I hope the six episodes of our discoveries will spur other Australians to go and find themselves and Australia in a similar expedition. You won’t regret it.

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Australian Colony, Australian history, Catholicism, Convicts, Culture, My books, Western Civilization

The impetus for my family history series

MEMOIRS, AUTOBIOGRAPHIES, and personal reflections had never much enticed me until I picked up a book that was lying around at my parents’ house. My mother was an incorrigible reader and always had a book on the coffee table beside her lounge chair. The book was Over the Top with Jim by Murdoch journalist Hugh Lunn. I turned it over and read on the back cover: ‘hilarious,’ ‘don’t read it on public transport,’ ‘a classic in childhood memoir.’ I asked Mum what she thought of it. She gave a shrug and said it was all right. No great vote there, I thought. I was going to put it down but absently flicked through the first chapter. The memoir was about growing up in a less than devout Catholic family. I borrowed the book and began reading. Soon I was hooked. It was true that Lunn’s book was funny – hilarious in parts – but that was not what held my attention. I was on the same track as Lunn’s experiences. More than that: I was riding beside him looking around at a familiar social environment as he told his story. It was an experience in reading that I had rarely had. As amusing as his often facetious account of his childhood was, it was his unwitting social history of the ‘long fifties’ (1945-1962) that gripped me.

Lunn grew up in the suburb of Annerley, just outside of Brisbane city centre. Other than a different suburb in a different capital city and a few years difference in age (he is five years older), my story would be roughly the same. We both grew up in Catholic families which meant our social environment and social prescriptions were fixed at least until the end of school. I think Lunn’s book has been appealing because any Catholic kid of the fifties would at once recognise his experiences and be amused regardless of whether he had kept the faith or abandoned it or was determined to rubbish it to the grave. Kids who weren’t Catholic would recognise what many of us got up to during that time, but would also be intrigued by a glimpse into the mysterious ways of the Catholic Church and its institutions, many of them thinking Lunn had abundantly confirmed their suspicions about its weirdness.

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Australian Colony, Australian history, Culture, Politics

Jacinta nampijinpa price – celebrate, don’t hate

1 Comment

On Australia Day, celebrate don’t hate.

With Nyunggai Warren Mundine and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the Aboriginal community have at last some enlightened leadership. Instead of spouting the postmodernist/identity rhetoric that only achieves enmity, Warren and Jacinta are facing the concrete issues of their people while building bridges with the rest of Australia most of whom want to see Aboriginals flourish in the land Australia has become since 1788. They offer an antidote to the poison of radical European philosophy that pretends to describe the circumstances of Aboriginals and prescribe the steps for their salvation. Below is Jacinta’s Price’s moving account of her terrible suffering while growing up and of her accusations against the hypocrites who abandoned her in their self-indulgence. What she suffered is unimaginable for most of us. Despite the suffering, she saw the good in people and in her country. She saw the road to the inheritance her country built and offers to its people. She wants to take her community along this road.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price Australia Day January 26, 2019

” Not once! Not one time have I seen The Greens or labor speak out, not once have I seen you Indigenous cohorts speak out! Not once! You have never spoken out about stopping the violence, stopping the alcoholism, stopping the child abuse and sexual assault, no, you just want to talk about how “White man” has some how oppressed you. Oppressed you? Excuse you! Most of you leading the pack are well educated, had opportunities some of us only dare dreamed about, you manipulate the mobs, especially the ones less educated or fortunate for your own selfish white hating reasons! Shame on you! Shame shame shame!

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Australia, Australian Colony, Australian history, Convicts

Australia did not exist before the 26th of January 1788

The historical detail for the reasons I claim Australia did not exist before the 26th of January 1788 is in chapter 2 (the relevant section below) of my book Prison Hulk to Redemption. The philosophical arguments about what it means to be a people are in my essay Edmund Burke on what it means to be a people. Both should be in read in combination to appreciate the full argument.

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Chapter 2

 A brief account of the early years of the Colony

On the 28th of April 1770, the then Lieutenant James Cook steered his ship, Endeavour, into a broad open bay and dropped anchor at its southern shore. He named it Stingray Bay because of the abundance in its waters of stingrays on which his crew gorged. He later crossed out Stingray Bay in the ship’s logs and entered Botany Bay in tribute to Botanist Joseph Banks, the ship’s eager scientist. Banks had put together an impressive collection of specimens of unknown plants and animals after trekking around the land bordering the bay’s shores.

Cook and Endeavour were on their way back to England after carrying out the official task of observing the transit of Venus from the island of Tahiti. There were also unofficial tasks one of which was to investigate the existence of the South Land whose ancient mythology promised great riches of all kinds. From Roman times, it had been called Terra Australis Incognita – Unknown South Land. The search for the mysterious land of the south had occupied the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Spanish, and lately the English in the person of William Dampier (1688 and 1689).  Dampier added little to the findings of the Dutch seamen.

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Australian Colony, Australian history, Convicts, My books

Reader comment Prison Hulk to Redemption

Comment: Barry Fitzgerald (Denham Court NSW)
I bought your book because I like the title Prison Hulk to Redemption, but did not read the review in the Annals. It is one of the few history books that I have read and do not recall being taught Australian history at school.

I have written about my ancestors since they arrived in Australia in the early nineteenth century, but in far less detail than in your book.

Before we left Sydney in 1936 to live on a property on the Darling Downs in Queensland, I can recall very few instances instances when fun was made of me because of my Catholic school uniform. However I can recall my aunts and uncles referring to problems they were having because they were Catholics. But after reading your book I am inclined to believe it was more to do with the economy and the belief that the English were a superior class to the Irish.

[The chapter] ‘Bit and Pieces’ is superb and reminded me of my childhood at Jimbour. Our exploits and adventures were not as daring.

Thank you for the opportunity to learn more about early Australia.

Australian Colony, Convicts, Family background, My books

Photos added to Albums

At last I have got around to posting photos of some of my ancestors of the 1800s. I wish I had more but I realise I have to be happy with the number preserved in the family – particularly the studio portrait of James Joseph Wilson taken in the last years of his life. One can hardly believe that the distinguished gentleman of the portrait was a convict thrice convicted of larceny and dispatched to the NSW Colony for life.

The photos of John McGroder and his sister Kate, children of the illiterate convict couple Bryan and Elizabeth McGroder, are just as astonishing for the picture of culture and distinction they project. How does one explain the development? Whatever the social influences of the society John and Kate lived in, and the chances Bryan and Elizabeth had to start anew, the home influence must have played a crucial role. It is a credit to Bryan and Elizabeth McGroder that they turned out so well. The story of Bryan McGroder’s life in the Colony showed he possessed an innate decency.

Australian Colony, Australian history, Convicts, My books

Weaving together history, culture and religion

The following review is from good friend Garrett Ward Sheldon, The John Morton Beaty Professor of Political and Social Sciences, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise, USA.

Finished your family history and enjoyed it very  much. Can’t wait to read the sequel!  The way you weave together history, culture and religion is excellent.  I really got a sense of the roughness of early Australia; and yet the quick civilizing of the British and Irish influences.  Also the development of democracy is very good. Your description of Irish Catholicism on page 54 is most enlightening.  What does the expression “reaching for a bucket ” (p. 59) mean?  Your description of the convict women [on the First Fleet] (p. 245) is priceless.  The Case of the Stolen Opposum (p. 252) is hilarious.  The story of the Catholic educational system (p. 310) is very like the USA in the twentieth century.
Garrett Ward Sheldon

Australian Colony, Australian history, Family background, My books

A fascinating introduction to Australia as nation

I have made contact through ancestry.com with several members of my extended family. Mike Chapman who lives in Canada is a fifth cousin through my mother’s line. After reading my family history book he posted the following five star review on the kobo website:

A Personal History of Australia
I found Gerard Wilson’s book a fascinating introduction to the development of Australia as a nation and the people responsible for its success. His research into his personal ancestry provides the reader with an insight into the lives of ordinary men and women who first settled the Australian continent. Many of them were petty criminals, (thieves, pickpockets, prostitutes) in British cities that were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to ‘transportation’ by the courts. Some were even sentenced to death (for theft in those days) but had their sentence commuted to transportation. Others were the officers and crew in the “First Fleet” of 11 ships that undertook the hazardous voyage in 1788 to Australia and of the convict ships that followed. It is remarkable that so many men and women banished from their homeland because of criminal convictions became hard-working, successful farmers and well respected citizens in the new land.
Mike Chapman, Canada

Australian Colony, Australian history, Convicts, Family background, My books

Australia’s institutional inheritance from Britain

I sent a copy of Prison Hulk to Redemption: Part One of a Family History 1788-1900 to the Hon. Robert Clark Liberal Member for Box Hill and Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations in the Victorian State Parliament because of his interest in Edmund Burke. My book is a Burkean examination of cultural continuity and identity. The shadow minister had written a favourable review of Jesse Norman’s excellent book on Edmund Burke – Edmund Burke: Philosopher, Politician and Prophet. He replied with this comment:

‘I’ve enjoyed reading the concluding chapter of the book and your Burkean assessment of Australia’s institutional inheritance from Britain.  I particularly enjoyed your assessment and critique of those Australian historians and commentators who seem to have a desire to belittle the British aspects of our heritage, whether that be from a teenager lack of confidence or (which may be a more complex version of the same phenomenon) from a socialist desire to tear down existing institutions.’