The Elder Expedition reached Fraser Range Station in October 1891 and regrouped there before continuing its journey up to the Murchison. Laurence Sinclair was also at Fraser Range where he was constructing a dam. The expedition described Sinclair’s work and also called on his help […]
When Thomas Sinclair brought his family to Western Australia on the Tartar in 1863 he kept a diary of the voyage. The original is in the Esperance Museum, Western Australia. It is a fascinating document because it vividly describes what it must have been like for a […]
This is a short essay written for the Diploma of Family History course at the University of Tasmania. Much of the information appears elsewhere on this blog, but this brings the emigration story together. © 2026 Michael Robinson. Non-commercial use permitted with attribution. Last updated […]
The arrival of the barque Scindian at Fremantle on 1 June 1850 signalled the start of Western Australia’s period as a penal settlement. Then known as the Swan River Colony, the State had been founded as a colony of free settlers, but a faltering economy […]
On a fine day in the autumn of 1861 a group of farmers put on military uniforms and took to the parade ground at Lyneham in the Devon countryside. After weeks of rain the weather was finally suitable for harvesting but these farmers gave up […]
The Rosers arrived in 1842 on the Simon Taylor, a ship that brought labourers and tradespeople to the Swan River Colony, a small enclave of settlers on the west coast of Australia. The settlement was just over a decade old and badly in need of a […]
Jessie was the eldest child of Thomas and Mary Sinclair, born in Dunrossness, on the 2nd April 1852. She spent her childhood in Dunrossness, where she went to the local school. The 1861 census recorded her as a ‘scholar’ living with her family at ‘Husbrake’. […]
The usual story about the discovery of the Norseman goldfield is that it was accidentally discovered by a horse named Norseman. For example, Rica Erickson said: Station hands left work, sometimes without giving notice, to go prospecting, Larry Sinclair among them. By luck, in 1894 […]
Janice Young named her book In Search of Elizabeth after Elizabeth Roser, daughter of William and Diana, whom she believed had disappeared from the family home. This is how she explained it: Among the first of William’s tasks, was to build a cottage to shelter […]
My wife’s great great grandfather was Thomas Sinclair, a Shetland Islander who was, at the time of his death in 1868, an assistant warder with the Convicts Department. I have discussed him elsewhere on this site. As the old records show, he was buried in […]
© 2026 — Michael Robinson, Bedford, Western Australia.