Won’t you think of the children?
A reference list for the children of James, Fanny and Jane Dyson
Boom time.
During the early 1840’s, Western Australia experienced it’s first economic boom. This was both contributed to and was fed by a sudden expansion in the settler population. Between 1837 and 1843 the European population in the colony increased by over 50% — The settler population doubled. While that may sound impressive, consider this: The total number of settlers in 1837 was only 2,025 men women and children. There might have been an additional sixty or seventy soldiers, but that was it for a land area…
Alias Hoffington
I believe I have successfully reconstructed the baroque, Byzantine story of the first Mrs Dyson. I’m now prepared to state my theory and die on this hill if that be my fate.
Rename Canning Bridge
The unspeakable horror of Canning Bridge
Choose your own Adventure
This is the tale of two convicts in Van Diemen’s Land. Their story does not have an end yet: happy, sad or otherwise. Can you help?
A Trial on Trial
A man killed his wife. When the powerful find themselves on trial, discussions happen about the justice system that don’t happen when the powerless are similarly ensnared.
Pavement Archaeology
On the pavements of around where I live in a southern suburb of Perth in Western Australia, are many concrete slabs of various shapes, sizes, and marked with various esoteric designs. Show me anything with two or more variations on a basic pattern of anything and I’m going to want to understand why, or more probably make a collection of it
Dyson’s hat
Kings Meadows Convict Station discovery finds artefacts, convict hat
A Tale of Three Cities
Albany, Fremantle and Perth: The three oldest cities in Western Australia: At each other’s throats.
The Sons of Australia Benefit Society
Was your ancestor a member of the Sons of Australia Benefit Society (1837-1897)?