The Market Gardener Who Saved A Boy - William Herbert Clark 1916 - 1974

William Herbert Clark

On the 10th of October 1927 William Herbert Clark, or Bill as he would be called by family,  arrives at the Western Australian Port of Fremantle on the SS Baradine, he is traveling with his parents John Henry Clark and Margaret Davis Clark (nee Boyd) and his 6 other siblings. Their journey started 40 days earlier,1st September 1927,  in Deptford, London England, where William was born on the 30th of July 1916.

It would seem that Bill's family would immigrate to Australia on an assisted immigration scheme, they were to settle in Northcliffe, in the south west of Western Australia on the 16th of April 1929 as part of group 143. Bill would remain on the family farm until they walked off the land some time  between 1931 and 1936.
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God Speed & Safe Return : William Henry Bathurst !899 - 1987

William Henry Bathurst 1899

William Henry Bathurst was the third child of miner William Henry Bathurst (1873)  and  Mary Bathurst (nee Fancke) born on the 23rd of April 1899 on the Victorian goldfields in Ballarat.

With stories in the Ballarat newspapers of large amounts of gold being found in Kalgoorlie  and Kalgoorlie being the said to be "the richest square mile on earth"(Ballarat Star 14 Jul 1899)  William's parents decide to take him at the age of 10 weeks  and his two sisters Harriett aged 4  and Myrtle aged 2 and try their luck on a new goldfield in the west, they all depart Melbourne Victoria on the 30th June 1899 on the Australian United Steam Navigation Company ship the "SS Paroo".  Their trip is along the south coast of Australia with stops at Adelaide and Albany and they disembark in Fremantle.

So what will you be leaving for the future family historians and genealogist ?

This was the question that reignited my passion for finding out more about my family and it's ancestors, it was a question that was asked by Maria Northcote, the host and writer of the podcast and website Genies down Under . 

James Maguire 

It has made me realise how lucky I have been with my family, I had the opportunity to meet a great great grand mother, lose my last great grand parent at the age of 18 and spend time with all but one of my grand parents. I have also been fortunate enough to have a family who has taken and kept photos, school books, certificates and other family heirlooms, of which  I have been trusted with by others to have guardianship of or the time to copy or photograph them. 

It also got  me thinking, what  stories, memories and material objects will my generation and the generation of my children be leaving, as now  we are in a world of photos, music , video recording mainly exist in the digital world and letters have been replaced by  emails, text messages, snap chat and Facebook. Not to mention that news  is now something that is watched more than read and if not, it needs to fit in to a sound bite or 144 characters and newspapers now tend to have more advertising than news or moved to an on line global format.

This is not to say that I am anti internet or anti digital. It just means that we need to think more about what, where and how we are going to leave our trace and help to continue to pass on the stories of our ancestors and write our own. You may ask "so what have you done to try to make sure that you leave something for the future family historian to find and work with? "