I want to hear all about the amazing things people have found out. The weird, the wonderful, the strange, the coincidental, the totally bizarre.
To start off here is my little tale
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About 4 years ago, 3 years before I began my family history journey, my Husband and I moved 3000kms across Australia from Victoria to a tiny little town in outback Western Australia. When I say in my profile "the middle of nowhere" I
really mean it, we are 900kms from Perth (the capital city of WA) and 250kms from the nearest town with
more than 800 people, Kalgoorlie. There isn't much here except Gold mines, dust and flies. We are both in the Tourism Industry and we came here to run a Museum and B&B located in the original buildings of a mine company which existed here from 1897-1963. Our main focus is mining but we are also the guardians of much of the social history of the area.
Anyway last year when I started my family tree research I got in contact with lady in Victoria who is related to me through our mutual gg grandmother. After a flurry of emails and exchange of information she mentioned to me that she had lost track of 3 of our gg grandmothers brothers who had left Victoria in the late 1890's - early 1900's and gone to WA and that perhaps since I was already on this side of the country I might have more success in tracking them down.
I started my quest unsure what/if I would find anything. This progressed to amazement when, through the electoral rolls I found 1 of the brothers in Kalgoorlie only 250kms from where I now live 100 years later. This was an outstanding discovery in itself but what was to come had me dissolving into fits of stunned laughter and my Husband shaking his head in disbelief. Further exploration of the electoral rolls showed the 2 other brothers in another little mining town (which no longer exists) only 40kms away from our town! The next election showed they had moved, one had gone North and the other, lo and behold had came to the very little old town we now live in ourselves. This startling discovery sent me into our own records held at our museum and there it was in black and white print, in
our own records, in
our own Museum. One of the brothers worked in the very mine that our Museum is based around. He probably came to collect his paycheck from the office window that I now dust.
Totally unknown to myself 4 years ago I came all the way across Australia to work in a Museum that contains part of my very own family History.
So .... 3000kms and 100 years later and here I am, walking in the footsteps of my ancestors.
