I am 5th Generation Australian on both sides of my family.
On my mother's side, my ancestry in Australia dates back to Mary Wade, an 11-year-old girl who first arrived in Sydney in 1790. She had been convicted, at the Old Bailey in London, of stealing another girl's clothes. For that, she was sentenced to death. Fortunately, the new convict colony of New South Wales was in need of women to guarantee its survival. Mary was transported aboard a shipload of women, (the Floating Brothel 'Lady Juliana') which was part of the Second Fleet. When she arrived in Sydney the two-year-old colony was very short of food so she was shipped on to Norfolk Island where she spent the next few years. It was there, as a 16 year old, she gave birth to her first child. She is reputed to have born 22 children during her life, although only 7 survived to have families of their own. She endured floods, bushfires, and all the other hardships of a convict woman in a penal colony. When she died in her eighties, she was reputed to be the progenitor of over 300 descendents.
Mary's daughter, Mary Brooker, married another English ex-convict, Henry Angel, who was transported to Australia for highway robbery. Henry was good with horses and worked as a convict on the road over the Blue Mountains. Because of his practical skills, he was chosen by Hamilton Hume to accompany the Hume and Hovell expedition who first explored the inland route from Sydney down to Port Phillip Bay in Victoria. Henry and Mary took their family to settle in the Riverina where, because of his adventures, he knew there was good farming land. Their descendents proliferated and settled throughout the Riverina and many are still there today.
My mother, Rita Florence Hurst, was born and raised in Wagga Wagga among lots of descendents of Henry Angel and Mary Brooker. Her grandfather, John Hurst, whose family came from England to Australia as free settlers, married Keturah Angel, who was Henry and Mary's daughter. Rita's father, Robert Hurst, worked with William Farrar and was responsible for all the experimental farm work associated with the development of 'Federation' wheat, a wheat variety that helped overcome the problem of rust, a significant problem effecting wheat grown in the area. Rita's cousin, John Hurst Edmondson, also gained fame as the first Australian to be awarded the Victoria Cross in World War II.
Rita Hurst was born the 6th of 7 children in Wagga Wagga, NSW. She was only 7 when her older brother, Royden Victor Hurst, died at sea after being wounded at Gallipoli. Rita’s mother and father had disagreed about her 20-year-old brother going off to the war and her mother never quite got over it. Never the less, Rita was intelligent and athletic and enjoyed a carefree life as she pursued her education and learned to play the piano. She worked in an office as a typist after she left school with her Intermediate Certificate and Diplomas in Music. At age 23, she married my father, seemingly without the approval of her parents.
My father's family, the Robinsons, first came to Australia in the person of John Robinson. John was born in Norfolk, England, and arrived in Australia, aged 32, as a Private in the New South Wales Corps with the Third Fleet in 1791. Five years later, he married a newly arrived convict girl, Elizabeth Harris. Their son, John Robinson, aged 35, married a possibly 12-year-old girl. They had a large family and moved to the Eden region on the NSW South Coast. Over the last two centuries, the extended family have proliferated throughout the Eden/Monaro Region and elsewhere.
My father, Wallace Robinson, was born in 1904 and grew up on a small mixed farm in the Snowy Mountains, near Delegate and the Victorian Border. When he was about 11, the family moved to Jincumbilly, near Bombala in the same region. There was a small school there and Wallace completed his primary education in 1917 with a Merit Certificate (
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