I have gone back over my earlier handwritten notes from looking for your Thomas when I was trying to help you re Henry CARLEN.
Re looking for any of your CARLEN family in Australia. I did find a CARLIN (note the spelling and the native place)
John CARLIN 29 from Derby (parents Thomas and Elizabeth) and his wife Mary E, 26, with a brother named as Wm Hatfield of Cooks R (likely to be Cooks River, a district in the inner western suburbs of Sydney NSW) with their three children (John 7, Thomas 5 and Florence 1) were listed on a passenger list. Ancestry has transcribed the surname as CARLEN. The passenger list is for the Duchess of Argyle, arriving Sydney 7 Feb 1883. John, his wife, and their two eldest could both read and write. The baby (Florence) sadly died on the Voyage.
Here’s the link to the FREE TO SEARCH website with passenger list IMAGES for you to check the passengers including those on the Duchess of Argyle:
http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/state-archives/guides-and-finding-aids/nrs-lists/nrs-5316 (it’s the NSW State Government’s State RECORDS Office.)
I can see a John and Mary E CARLIN as parents to NSW born babies in the Newcastle district, from around 1884 to around 1888.
I can see a Thomas CARLIN in the Newcastle district of NSW on the NSW BDM indexes also. Perhaps you need to obtain the information from an official transcription of the 1906 NSW marriage cert for a Thomas CARLIN and Ethel M M Stephenson to help confirm or eliminate that Thomas CARLIN from your enquiries re CARLEN and Australia.. Here’s the link to (free to search) NSW BDM online indexes:
http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/bdm_fh.html Please read the following link also as it gives you good information about obtaining official transcriptions:
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,300394.0.html Cheers, JM
