Like many children growing up in Australia in the 1960s I wasn't really interested in history at school. Yes, I knew about Captain Cook and the discovery of Australia. I had heard about this far away place called Europe. I never really understood what it was all about though. I never wondered about how I came to live in this country. I never thought about my ancestors. That all changed when, one day in 2004, I began to think about my heritage and discovered thousands of Australians doing the same thing.
For me, the motivation to begin researching my family history happened whilst sorting through old family photographs. I realized that I had very few photographs of my father’s family. What began as a search for photographs led me to discover a heritage that I realized I knew very little about and a fascination for history. So travel with me from Germany, Ireland, England and Scotland to Australia, while I share stories of my children's ancestors with you. Robyn Ward |