29/06/2019 - Feeling chuffed

I am feeling very pleased today because a family history association plans to use my work "as an example of how to research family history not only by looking at BDMs but also at the social history of the time".

The Family History Association of North Queensland (see website here) is to use my book "Townsville or hell!" as part of a story-telling workshop. The workshop is for beginners in genealogy research and for people attending the Association's Writing Family History courses. These workshops will focus on the need to research the social, political and economic period that a family lived in so as to bring more "colour" to a story.

The Association also plans to include a brief story about this research in its magazine, Relatively Speaking.

Townsville or hell! is a facsimile edition of the emigration diary written by my GG grandfather (Charles Fleming) aboard the sailing ship Eastern Monarch on its 1883 voyage from Glasgow to Townsville. The Association tells me that the National Heritage Trust in Townsville has a wooden chest that arrived in Australia on that voyage with its owner, David Marnoch.

You can read a transcript of Charles Fleming's diary by clicking here and can order a copy of Townsville or hell! by clicking here.