Preparation for the trip

 My ancestors emigrated to the colony of New South Wales between 1788 and 1855.  They came as convicts, assisted immigrants and free immigrants; and they came from southern England and Ireland.

My friend June and I were catching up over lunch, and I said 'I'd love to go back and visit the places my ancestors came from'.  She said 'I'll come with you'.  And that's how our adventure started.  We are flying out on 9th April, and coming home on 30 April.  Already, 21 days doesn't feel like enough time to fit everything in.

I made a list (on Google sheets) of the ancestors who immigrated, when they came, and where   they came from, and that became the basis for our itinerary.  It also reminded me of how much I don't know and still need to research.

I put the places onto a map I created in Google Maps, so we could visualise where we wanted to go.  That gave us the regions that we wanted to visit.  I added in some (but not many) tourist attractions and local family history centres.

June took charge of organising travel and accommodation.  She used the places on the map to plan where we would stay.  We chose to stay in each place for a few days and use it as a hub to make trips to surrounding areas.  Because of that, we decided to hire cars in each area rather than use public transport (except for London).

Then I created a Google document (not linked here) that became our itinerary.  Each day's entry shows our accommodation and transport, and the places we plan to visit.  I added in some local history, and some more detail about the ancestors who came from that area.

My current project is to add maps to each day of the itinerary.

Parallel with all that planning, I've been doing more research into the ancestors and their families so that I am well prepared.  Ideally, I will have prepared biographies for each of those immigrants and their parents.

I'd love to meet some of my distant cousins, but I don't know any of them yet.  My plan is to look closely at my DNA matches, but I'm running out of time.

And I've been accumulating suitable clothing  (Ireland temperatures for April  range from 4 degrees celsius to 13 degrees celsius) - thermal underwear, woollen socks, and a rain poncho.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Roman baths and Regency romance

Image
We caught the train  to Bath this morning (after a small struggle to find the car park and enough £1 coins for the meter).  We visited an excellent bookshop. We started with the Roman Baths, which our lovely host, Susanne, had encouraged us to visit. They were too crowded with visitors for June's taste, but I loved the video re-enactments of Roman life and the idea that the thermal spring is still pumping out hot water today. Then we visited Bath Abbey, which like all historic buildings has been built, unbuilt, rebuilt. Henry VIII has a lot to answer for.  It has stunning ceilings and stained glass and, as a result of the last rebuilding to fix sagging floors, now also has underground heating utilising the thermal spring. June and I played dress ups in the Discovery Centre. We walked up to the Royal Crescent  which is a full circle of Georgian terrace houses around a small park.  Susanne claims it is the first roundabout. Several scenes from Bridgerton were film...
Read more

Cliffs and castles

Image
The weather today was gloriously warm and I abandoned my thermal underwear for the first time.  A man selling pottery said this week was the first time they had seen the sun for 10 months.  We drove from Galway to Killarney, and this time we decided to visit only two places and not rush.  Our first stop was The Cliffs of Moher, which are a very popular tourist attraction judging by the number of coaches and cars. We walked along the cliff top path, tut tutting at the foolhardy tourists who climbed over the fence to get selfies on the edge of a very steep drop.  June made me climb up very steep narrow staircases to the top of the watch tower.  There was an excellent exhibition that included a 4D experience (with wind and water) that allowed us to get a closer look at the many species of birds nesting in the Cliffs- including Puffins.  I succumbed to the lure of a penny whistle in the music shop. Then we realised the fuel tank was nearly empty, so our next st...
Read more

Planning the trip

 Planning We have just over three weeks to go until we fly out.  June and I are meeting for lunch on Friday to review our plans.  She is a meticulous planner, and has some excellent questions about phone coverage and VPNs that I don't know the answer to.  I'd assumed my airalo eSIM would provide phone calls as well as data, but it doesn't, so we will need to communicate via WhatsApp and email.  So how do we call our B&B hosts if we're running late? I've just discovered an app called Timeshifter that helps manage jet lag on long flights.  It prescribes, for a few days before we fly out and during the flight, when to expose yourself to bright light and when to avoid bright light; and when to nap and when to sleep.  I'm going to try it out.  I've added a sleep mask to the packing list. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/travel/roam/2024/03/15/jet-lag-app-timeshifter Society of Australian Genealogists ran a webinar on family history touring which had...
Read more