© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY
Read more about the article Success: the convict ship that wasn’t
A 1915 San Francisco newspaper advertisement for the Success

Success: the convict ship that wasn’t

Falsely touted as a former convict transport, the Success was a giant marketing fraud. But as a fake it was a commercial success in Britain and the USA, earning good money for its owners. Fakery aside, the career of the Success was certainly remarkable. Recently I saw an article posted on-line that discussed the convict ships that brought the first unwilling European residents to what became Australia. A photograph that accompanied the article confused me, since it showed a row of prison-cell-style doors below decks on the ship which somehow didn't match my understanding of how…

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The Adventures of James Tucker, Convict

When the book The Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh was first published in England in 1929, it was assumed the tale was a straightforward autobiography by a convict in the British colony of New South Wales. Its descriptions of life in the colony, and especially the miseries of convict existence, were so vivid and plausible that it wasn't hard to believe it might be a first-person account. But though the book was based on a manuscript that was certainly produced by a New South Wales convict, the truth was more complicated that it had seemed at first.…

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Read more about the article In the tracks of Tom Pritchell, bush horseman
Homestead believed to be Cooplacurripa Station in the mid-1800s.

In the tracks of Tom Pritchell, bush horseman

My mother was adopted, so our family tree is a bit complicated. On her side, the biological family branch was at a dead end for a long time, until a late-life DNA test by my mother unearthed some results. On the adoptive side, though, it's an interesting set of branches that I've recently started to follow. My main interest has been to establish the facts - if I can - about the Aboriginal heritage of my adoptive grandfather, Jack Pritchell. This has been talked about in our family for many years, but I've never been able…

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