More than 2 centuries of departures and new beginnings, from a Hebridean island and the Cornish mining country to farms, railways, aviation and family homes across Australia and the Pacific.
A person’s first mention links to their Ancestry profile. Place names link to Wikipedia where a suitable entry exists.
A family in motion
Coll. Cornwall. Westmorland. Australia.
On Coll, the McKinnons watched neighbours leave an island that could no longer support them all. In Cornwall, the Faulls worked underground before seeking a life beyond the mines. The Fawcetts left Westmorland for colonial New South Wales, while the Waddys and Drakes made their mark in a young South Australia.
This page follows the two sides separately so each journey is easier to follow. The McKinnon and Fawcett story comes first. The Faull, Waddy and Drake story follows. They meet when Angus Malcolm McKinnon and Christina Vercoe Faull marry in Perth in 1971, and the story continues with their family.
The original family journeys, plotted from the most precise departure point and first Australian arrival or settlement the records currently support.
Lines connect documented endpoints rather than reconstructing exact sea tracks. Dashed lines end at an indexed colony or the family’s first documented Australian home where a port is not yet known. Geography from Natural Earth, public domain.[18]
McKinnon and FawcettFaull, Waddy, McCarthy and DrakePartly documented route
McKinnon
Isle of Coll, then LiverpooltoHobart and Impression Bay, Tasmania
Fawcett
Warcop, WestmorlandtoSydney, their first documented Australian home
Faull
Crowan, CornwalltoSouth Australia aboard the Caucasian
Waddy
LondontoPort Adelaide aboard the Competitor
McCarthy
Ireland, town not yet knowntoPort Adelaide aboard the Inconstant
Drake
Rockland St Peter, then SouthamptontoMelbourne, followed by Norwood
The people
Explore the family tree
Once the broad journeys are clear, the tree shows how the people connect. Drag with a mouse to move around it, use the controls to zoom, and select a person to follow their part in the story. On a phone or tablet, swipe normally to continue down the page.[1]
Dashed line: probable relationship
Part 1
The McKinnon and Fawcett family
The McKinnon story begins on Coll and crosses the world aboard the Persian. In Australia it meets the Fawcett family, then follows Angus Norman and Elsie to their children Deirdre and Angus Malcolm McKinnon.
Before 1857
The Isle of Coll
An island at the edge of change
The parish record first finds Malcolm McKinnon and Flora Fraser (born about 1781) at Grishipoll through the baptisms of their children. Mary McKinnon (born 1809) was baptised first, followed by John McKinnon (born 1811), Ann McKinnon (born 1817), Flora McKinnon (born 1819) and Donald McKinnon (born 1822). Flora Fraser was about 28 when Mary was born and about 41 when Donald arrived. Malcolm's birth has not been found.
In 1832, a parish collection recorded a Malcolm Mckinnon of Greseboll paying £1. The spelling and settlement make him likely to be the same Malcolm, still living in the place where his children had been baptised, although the entry gives no age or family details.[2]
An earlier list from 1776 records Hugh McKinnon, Ann Campbell and a young son called Malcolm at Totronald. That boy could be the later father at Grishipoll, but no surviving record joins the two households. The possible relationship is shown with a dashed line in the family tree.[2]
By 1849 Donald was living at Arinagour and had married Flora Fletcher (born 1829), a young woman from Salen on nearby Mull, daughter of Angus Fletcher and Effy Fraser. Donald was 27 and Flora was 20. The marriage register gives Donald's occupation as boatman.[2]
Donald’s older sister Mary McKinnon (born 1809) was building a household of her own at Grimisary with Alexander McDougal. The 1851 census calls Alexander a crofter employing a man and a female servant. Mary was there with their little sons John, age 2, and Malcolm, age 1. It is a brief but vivid sign that the family had put down roots before the voyage pulled them apart from Coll.[2]
The 2 older daughters both called Janet also appear to have made their own marriages on Coll. A Janet of Arinagour married Donald McDonald in 1838, and another married Archibald McDonald in 1841. The dates and settlement fit the 2 Janet daughters baptised to Malcolm and Flora in 1813 and 1815, although the marriage entries do not name their parents. In 1841, the older Janet was at Arivorich with Alexander, age 2, and Mary, age 3 months, while her husband was at sea. A later baptism names a son Neil. The younger Janet's 2 daughters, Isabella and Mary, were living with their blacksmith father at Totronald in 1851, then with a woman recorded as his wife, Catherine.[2]
Life followed the land and the seasons. Coll families worked small strips of oats and hardy bear barley, spread seaweed as manure and relied on cattle, sheep, fishing and the potato crop to carry them through the year. At Arinagour, rows of stone cottages built from 1811 placed a room on either side of the front door. A single window faced the street. There was no back door, no running water and only 1 open fire. Oil lamps, candles and burning peat lit the winter evenings.[3]
The island was filling up. Its population grew from about 938 people in 1776 to 1,409 in 1841, while the crofts stayed small and the margin between a good harvest and hunger narrowed. The old runrig fields had been divided into individual crofts from 1811, but families kept subdividing them to shelter landless relatives. Sheep farms displaced more people onto the remaining ground. Then the kelp trade collapsed, the herring shoals failed and the potato blight struck. 2 supports of island life, the potato and the wages earned burning kelp, gave way within a generation.[3]
On Coll, the Highland Clearances arrived through that tightening circle of land, rent and hunger. Hugh Maclean, the island's proprietor, had already removed the population of neighbouring Rum in 1828. He spent heavily feeding Coll during the crisis, yet in 1841 roughly half the islanders were sent away and their small crofts were gathered into larger farms. He described emigration as rescue. To the families leaving ancestral ground, it was still a clearance.
An 1851 census records Flora McKinnon, age 70, as head of an Arinagour household. Her son Donald, age 30, lived there with his wife Flora, daughter Janet, age 9, and Euphemia, 1 month old. Alexander Fletcher was recorded as a visitor.[2] The census records the people but not the address. Arinagour had no house numbers, so the recorder simply moved from one home to the next.
Maclean had imagined moving an entire Highland community to Australia. In 1837 he asked the British Government to finance 3,000 Scots on a new estate in New South Wales, where each family would receive land after working for him. Officials rejected the plan. His efforts and the cost of supporting Coll helped bankrupt him, and he sold the estate in 1856.
A year later, the family joined 81 Collachs bound for Australia aboard the Persian. Their departure ended generations of island life and began a journey to the other side of the world.
Arinagour in 1903, photographed less than 50 years after the McKinnons left. Erskine Beveridge, public domain.[3]Cottars' houses at Scarinish on neighbouring Tiree, 1903. The photograph shows the stone walls and heavy thatch used against Hebridean weather. Erskine Beveridge, public domain.[3]
Inside one of Arinagour's “1812 houses” during renovation in 2007. The original 2-room plan, small front window and open fire are still visible. Photograph and annotations shared by Coll historian Ewen McGee.Shore Street, Arinagour, around 1900. The cottages were built from 1811 and were still crowded by modern standards. Historic image and annotations shared by Ewen McGee.
Donald McKinnon, boatman of Arinagour, marries Flora Fletcher of Salen on 4 December 1849. Record and annotations shared by Ewen McGee.The McKinnon household at Arinagour in the 1851 census. Record and annotations shared by Ewen McGee.
1857-1858
The voyage of the Persian
Liverpool to quarantine at Impression Bay
Malcolm was not listed among the passengers when the family left Coll. His death has not been found. If he was the boy recorded at Totronald in 1776, he would have been at least 80 in 1857. Age alone could explain why he stayed, although he may already have died. Flora made the voyage with 3 of their adult children and their families.[4]
In late July 1857, the new 1,068-ton Persian left Liverpool with more than 300 immigrants aboard. She was a full-rigged sailing ship, built at Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1856 and registered as British ship number 35090. White Star's agents had chartered her for this voyage. Beneath the emigrants she carried a commercial cargo, chiefly salt and coal. The Coll party filled 12 family groups. Donald and Flora travelled as group 954 with their young children Effy and Alexander. Donald's mother, Flora Fraser, was listed with group 953, while his sister Mary and her husband Alexander McDougall followed as group 955.[4]
After passengers' complaints reached the Tasmanian Government and House of Assembly, the Immigration Agent spent 9 days at Impression Bay in December 1857 taking statements and examining the conditions aboard the Persian. His report and the immigrants' statements were tabled in Parliament. The inquiry found 277 people berthed in a passenger space about 105 feet long and 33½ feet wide, with 7 feet overhead. There was no proper ventilating apparatus, and the passengers had 716½ square feet less room than the law required. The provisions were plentiful, but the galley could not cope: pea soup burned, rice remained raw in the middle of its bags and baking was hurried or underdone.[4]
The inquiry also catches Donald M'Kinnon in his own words. He said that 2 young children had received only arrowroot and powders. In another passage, the Immigration Agent recorded that Donald's relatives had hired a man named Stevens to attend an ill man, and Donald confirmed that he had paid the charge. The papers do not name the children or the sick man, but they show Donald trying to secure care amid the fever and confusion.[4]
22 days after sailing, Ann MacKinnon of another Coll family became the first recorded fever death. The infection spread. Flora Fraser, probably age 76, died at sea on 22 September. When the Persian anchored near Hobart at midnight on 31 October, the Immigration Agent recorded 14 deaths during the voyage and 29 people then sick with fever. The ship was sent away from the town to quarantine at Impression Bay.
The losses continued. Flora's son John died soon after arrival, age 40. The Colonial Surgeon's report said he had already endured 12 days of severe typhus when he was landed. Donald and Flora's infant John lived for only 3 days in quarantine. Those who survived remained at Impression Bay until January 1858. By the time they were free to cross to Victoria, they had spent nearly 6 months aboard ship and confined in quarantine.[4]
The family did not necessarily change its name on reaching Australia. The same branch appears as McKinnon in its 1849 marriage and 1851 census records, MacKinnon in the ship compilation, M'Kinnon in the 1857 immigration statements, and McKinnon again in early Australian indexes. Coll historian Ewen McGee found the same shifting practice on the island. The spelling seems to have followed the clerk who wrote the record, rather than one moment when the family dropped an a.[4]
The Persian sailed on. After unloading at Hobart she cleared for Callao, Peru. She returned to Melbourne from Liverpool in June 1860 with 21 passengers and a hold crowded with ironwork, machinery, beer, butter, salt and building supplies. In July 1862 she arrived again, this time carrying 4 locomotives, their tenders and more than 1,000 iron pipes. She then sailed in ballast for Callao before returning to Britain and carrying passengers and cargo from London to Port Chalmers in 1863. Surviving newspapers therefore prove at least 3 Australian arrivals: Hobart in 1857 and Melbourne in 1860 and 1862, plus the later New Zealand voyage. A central shipping register was eventually marked “lost per advice”, but the handwritten date and the place of her loss have not yet been recovered with confidence.
Premaydena, formerly Impression Bay, where the Persian passengers were quarantined.This is not the Persian. The 1,174-ton Windsor Castle, also built in 1857, shows the 3-masted, full-rigged form of a comparable emigrant-era sailing ship. State Library of Queensland, public domain.[4]
The convict and probation station at Impression Bay was pressed into service as the Persian quarantine ground.Impression Bay, later Premaydena, where the passengers spent their first weeks in Australia.The local memorial records Scottish immigrants who died after the Persian reached Tasmania.Among the surviving headstones at Impression Bay.
The family aboard
3 households from 1 family
Flora Fraser crossed with 3 of her adult children, their spouses and 7 grandchildren. The passenger compilation spells their surname MacKinnon. Its ages appear to have been rounded or copied inaccurately, so the chart distinguishes them from ages suggested by parish and census records.
Parents on CollMalcolm McKinnon at least age 80 if living, not listed and Flora Fraser recorded age 60, probably about 76
Flora sailed in group 953. Malcolm may already have died.
Persian group 953John MacKinnon recorded age 40, probably about 46 and Mary McLean recorded age 27
With their daughters Margaret age 3 and Mary age 1
Persian group 954 · direct lineDonald MacKinnon age 35 and Flora Fletcher age 26
With Effy age 6 and Alexander age 2 Infant John was born in quarantine
Persian group 955Mary MacKinnon recorded age 45, probably about 48 and Alexander McDougall recorded age 49
With John age 10, Malcolm age 8 and James age 4
The ship also carried a separate MacKinnon sibling network in groups 956–959 and another Donald MacKinnon household in group 961. No record examined so far connects either cluster to this branch.
3 adjoining entries hold the immediate family together: Flora McKinnon (953), her son Donald with Flora, Effy and Alexander (954), and Donald's sister Mary with the McDougalls (955). Highland & Island Emigration Society compilation.[4]The land record locating Donald McKinnon's property at Yabba South.
1858-1912
A start in Victoria
Beveridge, Yabba South and the north-east
Victoria offered land, though very little came easily. After a first stop at Beveridge, Donald and Flora moved into the farming country around Yabba South, Katandra, Dookie and Benalla. During the 1870s they selected 3 allotments totalling about 319 acres. Donald worked the land long enough to receive the Crown grant in 1888.
The household grew to include Mary, Alexander, Angus, Malcolm, John, Simon, Euphemia, Florence, Ellen and Catherine. Family stories place Malcolm and John behind bullock teams, clearing ground and carrying timber and wool around Lothbeg and Cosgrove. In January 1912, a McKinnon at Cosgrove yoked 2 teams containing 14 bullocks between them and brought 304 bags of wheat from W. Grattan's Gowangardie estate. Each bag averaged 187 pounds. By the time the load reached Cosgrove it had travelled 14 miles, and the local paper declared the feat a wheat-carting record.[5]
Donald McKinnon, the Persian emigrant, died at Tatong in 1892 (age 70) and was buried at Katandra beside the country where the family had taken root. His son Angus Richard McKinnon (born 1863) married Rachael McDonald (born 1870) at Benalla in 1901. Around 1912, Angus and Rachael moved north to Burrandana and the plains south of Wagga.
A probable Angus and Alexander McKinnon story, preserved with its uncertainty. The Argus, 1 January 1903.[5]
Donald’s sister Mary McKinnon (born 1809) came on the Persian with her husband Alexander McDougall and their 3 sons. Their eldest, John, later selected 320 acres at Katandra in 1873, helped clear the timber and became a long-standing horse breeder. In 1938 he was still on that original holding, remembered locally as Katandra’s “grand old man”.[4]
John’s younger brother Malcolm McDougall (born 1849) followed a harder country life. He became a drover and former station overseer. In September 1901, near Murchison, his horse fell while he was mounting. Malcolm was badly injured and died. His notice named his wife Annie, their Khull’s Range home near Katandra, and his burial there.[4]
The youngest brother, James McDougall (born 1853), made a different life at Omeo. When he died in 1889, his estate included the Golden Age Hotel. His widow Christina was appointed its caretaker for the rest of that year and then received the hotel licence. By the next licensing court she appeared as Christina Treacy, and a later notice remembered the Treacy family as formerly of Omeo. Their daughter Christina Isabella McDougall married C. V. Towner at Ballarat in 1913.[4]
John McDougall, Mary McKinnon’s son, photographed in 1938 after 65 years on his Katandra selection. Goulburn Valley Stock and Property Journal, 12 October 1938.[4]14 bullocks, 14 miles and 304 bags of wheat. Benalla Standard, 30 January 1912.[5]
1874 onward
The Sutherland connection
Mary McKinnon and a new family at Katandra
Mary McKinnon (born 1853) had been born on Mull and crossed the world as a small child. At age 19 she married John Sutherland (born about 1832), age 41, in Benalla Presbyterian Church. Their wedding on 13 March 1874 opened another branch of the family around Katandra and Nagambie.
Mary became known as a generous host with a forceful personality. The family album catches what the official records miss: children gathered around a weatherboard house, Sunday clothes, stiff poses and later reunions as the Sutherland family spread through northern Victoria.
John Sutherland and Mary Sutherland, born McKinnon.
Mary Sutherland, born McKinnon, daughter of Donald and Flora.A Sutherland family gathering preserved in the Katandra album.The extended Sutherland family.The memorial placed at the former Sutherland property.The McKinnon property at Yabba South.
The former family house at Burrandana, photographed during the 2009 research journey.
c.1912-1939
Burrandana
A small farm south of Wagga
At Burrandana, Angus Richard McKinnon and Rachel started again on a holding of about 37 acres. Their 6 surviving children grew up there, with Angus Norman McKinnon (born 1912) the youngest. The farm was small, and after Angus Richard died in 1934 (age 70), the eldest son Donald helped Rachel keep the household together and support his 3 sisters and younger brother.
The holding did not remain small. In 1943 the New South Wales Government Gazette recorded another 147 acres and 2 roods being added at Burrandana. The registered holders were Angus Norman and his brother Donald, acting as executors of their father's will. 9 years after Angus senior's death, his sons were still carrying the farm forward.[5]
Old newspaper notices quietly redraw the family map. John McKinnon, the elder Angus's unmarried bullock-team brother, had also come north. When John died at Burrandana in 1932 (age 69), the funeral notice named Angus and his family there, and their sister Catherine “Kate” Turnbull with her husband Alexander Turnbull and their family in Forsyth Street, Wagga. The service carried John to the Presbyterian ground at Wagga Cemetery. 2 years later, Rachel and her children followed the elder Angus's coffin from St Andrew's Presbyterian Church to the same cemetery.
Kate died in 1937 after a long illness (age 76). St Andrew's filled with relatives and friends, and the congregation sang one of her favourite hymns, “There is a Land of Pure Delight”. The minister remembered her many quiet kindnesses, especially the comforts she had made for servicemen during the Great War. The cortege drew people from Shepparton, Dookie, Burrandana and towns across the Riverina. Her sons James and Nigel, daughters Frances, Iona, Marion, Flora Fearne, Hilda Smith and Mary Alltrip, their husbands, and a Sutherland nephew carried the coffin. McKinnon and Sutherland nephews walked as pallbearers, and 4 grandsons carried the flowers.[5]
Later recordings remember the old track, the nearby hall and the daily work of the property. Photographs preserve the house and family graves, giving the Burrandana years a clear physical setting.
John McKinnon's funeral notice, Daily Advertiser, 25 February 1932.[5]Angus McKinnon's funeral notice, Daily Advertiser, 13 August 1934.[5]Catherine “Kate” Turnbull's funeral brought the extended family together in Wagga. Daily Advertiser, 11 October 1937.[5]Another 147 acres at Burrandana were added to the holding of Angus Norman and Donald McKinnon in 1943. New South Wales Government Gazette, 28 May 1943.[5]
An address preserved on old mail links the McKinnons directly to Burrandana.The grave of Angus and Rachel McKinnon in Wagga.
1807 onward
The Fawcett line
From Westmorland to Singleton and Wagga
The Fawcett road begins in Westmorland with James Fawcett (born 1781) and Agnes Alderson (born 1785). Their son Richard Fawcett (born 1819) was born at Warcop, then crossed to New South Wales and found his place in the noisy, fast-growing world of colonial Sydney. He became an auctioneer and grazier, but horses made his name.
James and Agnes married at Muker in Yorkshire on 14 October 1807. The parish records call her Nancy, a familiar form of Agnes, and use Nancy again when Richard was christened at Warcop in 1819. By 1851, James was age 70 and described as a retired land proprietor. Agnes was age 67. Their adult daughters Agnes and Margaret still shared the Sandford household, along with a young servant named Ann Parker. The move to Australia had taken Richard far from a family that remained rooted in the Westmorland countryside.[6]
When Richard Fawcett's stud went under the hammer at Thornby Lodge, Newtown, in 1854, many of Sydney's leading sporting men came to watch. He had spent years supporting the colonial turf, and the sale dispersed horses whose bloodlines were already well known. The champion brothers Sampson and Sportsman became the prizes of the day at 400 and 490 guineas. Behind the spectacle lay a private sorrow: serious illness had forced Richard to sell. He died 3 years later, on 5 May 1857. The death notice gave his age as 39, while the probate notice called him a gentleman late of Tarban Creek and named Euphemia as executrix.[6]
His son Richard James Fawcett (born 1843) first worked on stations, then chose classrooms over racecourses. Across 30 years in public education he taught in the Maitland, Wagga, Blayney and Dungog districts. Former pupils remembered a career that travelled with the school system through country New South Wales. In retirement at Gosford he exchanged the school bell for a garden and a fishing line.
Richard James married Susannah Maria Williams (born 1850), whose family carried another colonial beginning. Family records trace Susannah through her parents, Frederick Williams (born 1821) and Elizabeth Paton Hughes (born 1829), to Elizabeth's parents, Samuel Griffith Hughes (born 1789) and Anne Fitzpatrick (born about 1797). Samuel arrived in New South Wales as a convict on the Glory in 1818, after waiting in the Bellerophon prison hulk. Anne had come from Ireland. They married at St John's in Parramatta in 1824. The family was already tied to the colony a generation before Susannah met Richard James.[6]
The next Richard took a different path. Richard Sandford Fawcett (born 1870) worked as a wool classer around Coreinbob and Allonby. In his youth he represented the Queensland colts in interstate cricket, then became one of the Wagga district's best all-round cricketers. He and W. Archer of Tarcutta founded Wagga's old Rugby Union Football Club. The proceeds from its competition went to Wagga Hospital, and when Humula won the cup outright, the players presented it to Richard. He kept it for the rest of his life.
Richard married Florence Clara Shoemark (born about 1875), who had grown up at Coreinbob and attended Ladysmith Public School. Florence worked for the Red Cross and Wagga Base Hospital and was closely involved with the Presbyterian Church. Their home became the setting for a family secret that lasted for years.[6]
Elsie Myrtle Fawcett (born 1915) grew up believing Richard and Florence were her parents. They were really her grandparents. Ivy Myrtle Fawcett (born 1897), presented to her as an older sister, was her mother. Ivy was age 17 when Elsie was born in January 1915, and probably age 16 when the child was conceived.[6]
Ivy later married Keith Walter Dixon Tuchin (born 1897), a railway signalman and First World War veteran. At Pozières, shrapnel struck the edge of the small New Testament in his breast pocket, drove partway into it and rebounded. The little book took the blow that might otherwise have reached a vital organ. Keith was still badly wounded and the doctors expected him to remain lame. His father Walter kept the damaged Testament as the physical record of how close the fragment had come.
15 years later, on a family holiday near Borambola, Keith faced danger again. A boat struck a snag and swept Keith, his 8-year-old son Walter and 16-year-old Elsie into the Murrumbidgee. Keith lifted both children onto the overturned boat but could not save himself. Richard Fawcett entered the river downstream and brought them ashore. Keith's body was found 2 days later. The river had taken him, but not before he had given both children their chance to live.[6]
Elsie married Angus Norman McKinnon (born 1912) at Wagga in 1939. With that marriage, the Fawcett road met the McKinnon one.[6]
The book in Keith Tuchin's breast pocket, Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 15 March 1917.[6]The river rescue, Scrutineer and Berrima District Press, 9 March 1932.[6]Richard Fawcett's champion stud went under the hammer at Newtown in 1854. Bell's Life in Sydney, 29 April 1854.[6]Richard James Fawcett's obituary followed his life from Botany and station work to 30 years in public education. Gosford Times, 4 July 1918.[6]Richard Sandford Fawcett's obituary remembers his wool classing, cricket and part in Wagga's old Rugby Union club. Daily Advertiser, 19 September 1939.[6]Florence Clara Fawcett's obituary records her work for the Red Cross and Wagga Base Hospital. Daily Advertiser, 17 October 1941.[6]Susannah Maria Fawcett, born Williams.Susannah with Mabel standing and Daisy seated.
1939-1964
Malcolm's early years
Farms, a lakeside store and an engineering education
Angus Norman McKinnon (born 1912) left school early and worked on farms, making time for cricket and tennis when he could. He married Elsie Myrtle Fawcett (born 1915) in 1939. Their daughter Deirdre Rachael McKinnon (born 1941) arrived first, followed by Angus Malcolm McKinnon (born 1942) at Wagga the next year. The family moved with the work, first to Ashfords, then McPherson's, then a store at Lake Albert.
In 1954 the road turned south to Campaspe Park near Goornong and then Wipplegong near Axedale. Malcolm went to Bendigo Junior Technical College and the Bendigo School of Mines. He became president of the students' representative council and earned a Diploma of Electrical Engineering. Those years prepared him for work that would take him across Australia and the Pacific.
McPherson's, one of the properties where Malcolm spent his early years.
Ashfords, where the family lived in the 1940s.McPherson's, where the family farmed from about 1948.
Part 2
The Faull, Waddy and Drake family
The second line begins among the mines of Cornwall and the schools and chapels of England. It reaches South Australia through the Faulls, Waddys and Drakes, then continues west to Gordon and Charmian Faull and their daughter Christina.
1734-1929
The Faull and Rodda lines
From Cornish copper mines to the motor age
The direct Faull line can be followed through the Crowan parish registers to Christopher Faull (born 1734) and Tabitha Williams, who married in 1756. Their son John Faull (born about 1770) married Margaret Jenken (born about 1770) at Crowan on 20 October 1794. The same register records their son Christopher Faull (born 1799) arriving on 5 November 1799 and being baptised on 23 December. That original page corrects the 8 November date in the inherited family tree and clearly names his mother as Margaret.[8]
Christopher married Jenifer Berryman (born 1798) at Crowan on 25 September 1823. They both made their marks in the register rather than signing their names. Jenifer had been born in Crowan on 17 February 1798 to George Berryman (born about 1764) and Eleanor Poolly, whose marriage there in 1788 carries this branch of the family back another generation.
Jenifer appears as Jennifer and Jane in later records. She was buried at Crowan on 14 September 1840 (age 44). Five months later, Christopher married the widow Ann Toy (born about 1801). Their 1841 census household at Boletho brought Christopher's children and Ann's Toy children under one roof. Christopher remained at Crowan and was buried there in January 1855 (age 56). The next likely Faull father beyond Christopher, born 1734, is Thomas Foale (born 1705), but that final step remains possible rather than proved.[8]
The 1799 entry records Christopher's birth on 5 November, baptism on 23 December and parents John and Margaret. Crowan parish register.[8]Christopher Faull and Jenifer Berryman married at Crowan in 1823. Both made their mark in the register. Crowan parish register.[8]
Christopher's son Samuel Faull (born about 1834) was already a copper miner at age 15. A shift might begin with a long walk, continue down hundreds of yards of ladders and end after 8 hours in heat, darkness and water. The miner bought his own candles and tools. Above ground, mining families drew water from a pump, grew potatoes, kept a few hens or a pig when they could and cooked over the only fire in a cramped cottage.[7]
Samuel married Elizabeth Ann Rodda (born in the 1830s) at Crowan on 11 October 1856. Elizabeth's father, James Rodda, worked underground too. Within a year Samuel and Elizabeth had left Cornwall aboard the Caucasian, carrying those mining names into South Australia and then Victoria.[8]
By 1863 they were at Donkey Hill near Campbell's Creek, where their son Samuel Faull (born 1863) was born. His birth record described his father as a Cornish-born miner who signed with a mark. 2 years later a Samuel Faull applied for 3 acres near Strathloddon. The record may concern the elder Samuel or another man of the same name.
The mine remained a dangerous inheritance. Samuel and Elizabeth's son William Faull (born about 1868) was killed at age 18 or 19 in 1887 when rock fell from the roof of the South Clunes United Company mine. He had been working in a tribute party, a small working group paid from the gold it won. The report said William lived with his widowed mother in North Clunes, bringing the danger of the workings directly into the family home.[8]
The younger Samuel married Elizabeth Jane Rodda (born 1858). Their son Samuel James Gordon Rodda Faull (born 1891), known as Gordon, carried the Faull and Rodda names through Lauriston and Boulder to Bunbury at the dawn of the motor age. Over 11 years he turned a motor-engineering workshop into G. R. Faull and Co., expanded its General Motors agencies and built an illuminated Wellington Street showroom that a 1924 newspaper said had no equal outside Perth. By 1929 the business was described as the largest motor agency beyond the capital. It had sold nearly 1,000 Chevrolets as well as hundreds of other cars. Gordon then handed its departments to experienced motor salesman M. H. Maddern and withdrew from active management.
Elizabeth lived long enough to see that western move take hold. She died at her Northcote home on 5 February 1941 (age 82), already the widow of Samuel. Her death notice named the three sons who remained connected to the family story: Gordon, Will and Lyell, all then in Western Australia.[9]
Elizabeth Jane Faull's death notice records her Northcote home, her family and age 82. The Age, 6 February 1941.[9]
Gordon married Alice Cecilia Cummins (born 1894) in Perth in 1916. Alice had been born in Collingwood to James Richard Cummins (born about 1867) and Christina Sophia Vettler (born 1870). The official birth index resolves both of their names and corrects the older family tree's Vittler spelling. Gordon and Alice's son, Gordon Cummins Faull (born 1917), arrived the following year.
Alice's official birth index names both parents and records her 1894 birth at Collingwood. Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria, registration 28232/1894.[9]
James worked in the newspaper composing room. He was a young hand compositor at the Melbourne Argus when linotype machines arrived in 1896 and cost him his job. He went to the Kalgoorlie Miner that same year, learned to operate the machines that had displaced him, helped found the Printers' Union in 1897 and became the long-serving father of the Miner chapel. In the early goldfields years he also supplied copy for the paper's racing columns.
After 20 years in Kalgoorlie, James transferred to the West Australian in Perth and retired just before the Second World War. He died in 1942 (age 74). His official death index names his parents as James Cummins and Catherine, whose family surname and earlier lives remain unresolved.[9]
James lost one printing job to the linotype, then learned to operate it and built a career across the goldfields and Perth. Westralian Worker, 23 January 1942.[9]
Christina's birth index opens another Victorian chapter. She was born at Echuca to John Vettler (born about 1836) and Agnes Turner Paterson (born about 1840). Their marriage notice fills in the missing origins: John was formerly of Bonn on the Rhine in Prussia, while Agnes was the fourth daughter of William Paterson, a Glasgow warehouseman. They married at 11 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy, on 30 May 1863. Agnes died in 1878 (age 38), leaving Christina without her mother at about age 8.
John brought years of Rhine winemaking experience to Victoria. In 1861 he exhibited St Kilda-made wine at the opening fete of the local public gardens and won an extra prize. Days later he wrote to The Argus explaining how smoke from damp straw, litter or green wood could protect vines from frost, a method he said he had used successfully for many years on the Rhine.
By 1867 John was a shareholder and manager of the 30-acre Echuca Vineyard Company. He wrote to the newspapers urging German farming families to settle around the Murray and Goulburn rivers, where he wanted to see vineyards and farms replace sheep and bullocks.
The results gave him something to boast about. In 1871 he reported a vintage of 14,276 gallons of grape must, including an extraordinary average of 2,248 gallons per acre from 2½ acres of Mataro vines. His Grenache and Hermitage wines received a Medal for Progress at the Vienna Exhibition in 1873.
Nearly 20 years later, John was still arguing for Australian wine. When a representative of Moët and Chandon dismissed Australia as champagne country, John answered in print. He called himself a vigneron with 37 years of Australian experience and said he hoped to live to see Australian champagne shipped to France. John died at Elsternwick in 1898 (age 62).[9]
John's parents also ended their lives in Victoria. Anna Maria Schwan (born about 1811) died in 1877 (age 66). Her death index names her parents as Johann Schwan and Sibele Morenhoven, resolving the Swhan spelling recorded on her son's death index. Her husband, Johan Vettler (born about 1813), died at Balwyn in 1899 (age 86). The family tree now reaches another generation, although the details of their earlier lives in Germany remain to be found.
John Vettler challenged a representative of Moët and Chandon and predicted that Australian champagne would one day be shipped to France. The Age, 27 January 1892.[9]
In August 1919 the family was living in Tuart Street, Bunbury, when Gordon became ill with pneumonic influenza and was taken to the isolation hospital. Alice and their 2½-year-old son were taken there too.
Alice's condition became critical. She gave birth to their daughter Lila Alice Faull (born 1919) in the hospital on 1 September, then died at 1:30 the following morning (age 24). Her mother travelled from Perth to be with her. Gordon recovered, their young son passed the danger point and Lila survived. The newspaper said Alice had made many friends during her short time in Bunbury and that her death was met with universal regret. Gordon later married Marjorie Eleanor and they made their home at Mount Lawley. The younger Gordon would later meet Charmian Waddy during the Second World War.[9]
The Bunbury paper told how pneumonic influenza entered the Faull home and how Alice died after Lila's birth. South Western Times, 2 September 1919.[9]
The Camborne mining district around 1890. J. C. Burrow, public domain.[7]Miners underground at Dolcoath, near Camborne, around 1893. J. C. Burrow, CC0.[7]
After 11 years, G. R. Faull handed over active management of what the paper called the largest motor agency outside Perth. South Western Times, 5 November 1929.[9]
1733-1933
The Waddy line
52 years in the postal service
Long before the telegraph reached South Australia, Richard Waddy (born 1733) was a schoolmaster at Nun Monkton in Yorkshire. His son, Rev Richard Waddy (born 1769), entered the Wesleyan ministry in 1793 and spent 60 years travelling, preaching and serving its circuits. He also wrote A Vindication of the Methodists in 1804.
Rev Richard's son Dr Edward Waddy (born 1815) left London aboard the 400-ton barque Competitor on 21 May 1846. Edward was its only named cabin passenger. Robert Dare, Mr Stewart and Mr Chapman travelled in steerage. The ship reached Port Adelaide on 24 September, 126 days later. Edward married Jane Russell (born about 1829) the following year and became the first doctor at the Kapunda copper mines. He later served for 21 years as clerk of the Strathalbyn Local Court. Their eldest child took the Waddy name into the new colony's postal service.[10]
The passenger index names Edward Waddy in the cabin of the Competitor. State Library of South Australia ship index.[10]The Adelaide shipping report records the ship, its 4 named passengers and the date it reached the colony. South Australian, 25 September 1846.[10]
Richard William Mackie Waddy (born 1848) was age 12 when he entered the postal service at Strathalbyn in 1860. 3 years later he transferred to Adelaide, studied at Union College after work and caught the attention of Sir Charles Todd, the man building South Australia's telegraph network.
Alice Mary Simpson Vercoe (born 1850) had her birth registered at East Stonehouse, Devon. The 1851 census records 10-month-old Alice with her parents, 29-year-old William and 21-year-old Mary, before the Hydaspes brought them from Plymouth to Port Adelaide that November. Her father, Rev William Vercoe (born about 1823), served as the ship's schoolmaster. In South Australia he became clerk and treasurer of the Para Wirra District Council, a Baptist minister at Chain of Ponds and was authorised to issue marriage licences.[10]
William died at Kersbrook in 1857 (age 34), leaving Alice's mother, Mary Simpson Milroy (born about 1829), a widow. Mary married John McMillan (born about 1825) 3 years later. Their marriage notice reaches one generation farther back to Mary's father, John Milroy, a farmer at Stranraer in Scotland. Alice married Richard at Flinders Street Baptist Church in 1870. Their notice calls her the eldest daughter of the late William Vercoe, joining the child on the passenger list to the minister at Kersbrook. Their son Ernest would later marry Eva May Drake.[10]
William Vercoe died at Kersbrook in 1857 (age 34). South Australian Register, 28 August 1857.[10]Mary's second marriage names her father as John Milroy, a farmer at Stranraer. South Australian Register, 4 July 1860.[10]Alice's marriage notice identifies her as the eldest daughter of the late William Vercoe of Kersbrook. Evening Journal, 6 December 1870.[10]
Richard rose with the wires. He became chief correspondence clerk, then secretary and Todd's chief officer. When Todd retired in 1905, Richard took over as South Australia's Deputy Postmaster-General. At Richard's own retirement, chambers of commerce, the Stock Exchange and leading businesspeople petitioned to keep him for another year. They failed. After 52 years, he finally left the post.
He had spent 24 of those years as a Baptist Sunday-school superintendent and also served as president of the Baptist Union and a justice of the peace. Richard died at his Penzance Street home in Glenelg in November 1933 (age 85). Alice, a Baptist minister's daughter, had died only 13 days earlier. 4 sons and a daughter survived them. Their long partnership ended almost as closely as it had been lived.
Richard Waddy's illustrated obituary, The Advertiser, 4 November 1933.[10]
1877-1950s
Eva May Drake Waddy
A public voice from the Esplanade
Eva May Drake (born 1877) married Richard and Alice's son Ernest Winthrop Waddy (born 1875) in 1898, but domestic life did not quieten her. She played piano, sang, painted watercolours and swam in the sea each day. Family memory follows her across the Nullarbor with her eldest daughter Thelma. The newspapers reveal the same restless, independent woman.
Eva was the only daughter of Robert Drake (born about 1847) and Hannah Rich Taylor. Family memory recalled that Robert came from England at age 10. The records now show that he was slightly younger. In 1851 he was living at Rockland St Peter in Norfolk with his parents and 3 siblings. His father, Thomas Drake (born 1819), was a master shoemaker. Thomas had married Mary Standley (born about 1822) at Shoreditch in 1839.
Three years after the census, all 6 members of the household sailed from Southampton aboard the Medway. They arrived at Melbourne on 22 February 1854, with Robert listed as age 7. The voyage brought them to Victoria, but the next surviving records place the family in South Australia. Robert's 1876 marriage notice calls him the third son of the late Thomas Drake of Norwood. A South Australian land application names Mary as Thomas's widow and identifies Charles and Robert as their sons. Thomas died in 1856. Mary remained at Sydenham Road, Norwood, until her death on 10 July 1866. Her death notice says age 40, but the 1851 census and passenger register both indicate that she was about 44.[12]
Thomas's 1819 baptism takes the family back another generation in the same Norfolk village. His parents were Thomas Drake (born about 1766), another shoemaker, and Mary Lincoln (born about 1776). Both had been married before when they wed at Rockland St Peter in 1809. More than 40 years later, the 1851 census found them still there, Thomas age 85 and Mary age 75.[12]
By the end of the century Robert had a shop in Murray Street, Gawler, and the family later worked orchards at Hectorville. Eva grew up in a household that shifted with the seasons between Adelaide, the hills and the coast, sometimes taking its own cow along to keep the milk supply going.
Mary Drake's death notice places Thomas's widow at Sydenham Road, Norwood, in 1866. South Australian Register, 14 July 1866.[12]Robert and Hannah's marriage notice names Robert as the third son of the late Thomas Drake of Norwood. Evening Journal, 27 January 1876.[12]Robert died at Brighton on 25 July 1920 (age 71). The Express and Telegraph, 26 July 1920.[12]
Hannah's mother, Bridget McCarthy, had made a harder journey. Family research identifies her as one of the young Irish women who reached Adelaide aboard the Inconstant on 7 June 1849. The ship carried 209 female migrants, including 186 workhouse orphans sent under the Earl Grey scheme during the Great Famine. Many entered service as maids, seamstresses, teachers and nannies. Bridget married James Francis Taylor (born 1828), who died while Hannah was still a child. One family memoir remembered his first name as Henry, but the later Taylor investigation and family grave identify him as James Francis.[11]
From the Esplanade at Glenelg, Eva wrote to editors about daylight saving, simpler schooling, sensible diets, wildlife and South Australia's coat of arms. In 1933 she recalled putting her young children down for a summer sleep, then taking them into the cool air of the late afternoon and evening. The altered clock, she argued, caused no hardship and gave young people an extra hour for sport. South Australia's winter was so short that she wanted daylight saving for 8 months, and she invoked the 30,000 members of the Housewives' Association as a public ready to support it. She later pressed for supervised camping grounds and cabins for the new generation of motor tourists. Her case was practical: healthier holidays, more travel and more trade for country towns.
She also wrote books. The Wonderland Australia, Those Shades of Earliest South Australia, Australia and Radiant Health and the religious booklet Armageddon all found their way into library catalogues. The family archive remembers another devotional booklet, Gems from His Book. Her letters and books made her a persistent public voice on health, education, travel and religion.
Ernest and Eva's marriage notice names her as Robert Drake's only daughter. Evening Journal, 28 May 1898.[10]Eva Waddy argues for 8 months of daylight saving, The Advertiser, 7 March 1933.[10]Eva's plan for safe camping reserves, The Advertiser, 1 April 1936.[10]
1920s-1951
The Waddy children
Community work, aviation and medicine
Ernest and Eva's children inherited their parents' appetite for the world. One Sunday in 1926, Thelma Alicia Vercoe Waddy (born 1899) heard broken glass next door in Melbourne Street, North Adelaide, and saw a man climb from the neighbour's window. Her 14-year-old brother John Archibald Waddy (born 1912) put down the book he was reading, ran outside without hat or boots and saw the stranger's bleeding hand. He followed by bicycle through the park and along the Soldiers' Memorial Drive. When the man boarded a tram, John called to the driver not to move. The fugitive jumped off, crossed the rotunda, scaled a fence and ran through the railway station. John kept after him until older boys and a motorcyclist joined the chase. Even after the man knocked the motorcyclist down, the pursuers caught and held him behind Government House for police. A court reporter remembered John as a “sturdy, smiling-faced boy”. He later became a doctor.
Alton Francis Drake Waddy (born 1904) worked around Streaky Bay, travelled to the United States and returned to lecture on modern America. He compiled an illustrated newspaper souvenir about the upper Murray before moving west. On 18 January 1930 he married Alma, the only daughter of John Thomson of East Fremantle, at Fremantle Methodist Church. Their newspaper photograph gives the family story a rare face from that generation.[10]
Brian Cadwallader Waddy (born 1916) joined the 1935 South Australian intake at Point Cook. The first 3 weeks were all drill. Then came daily flying, afternoon lectures and a Moth course that ran from loops to flick half-rolls. Moving into the 3½-ton Wapiti felt strange after the little trainer, and hours were spent perfecting military landings. In 1936 he left for Richmond as a pilot officer with 3 fellow South Australians. War carried him to the rank of Wing Commander and a mention in dispatches. He married Dorothy Jean Pinch (born 1916) in Western Australia in 1942. Then he changed course. In 1951 he passed his final medical examinations at the University of Adelaide and became a doctor.
John and Thelma Waddy in the housebreaker case, The Advertiser, 7 April 1926.[10]Alton Waddy and Alma Thomson on their 1930 wedding day, Sunday Times, 9 February 1930.[10]Brian Waddy describes flight training, The Advertiser, 10 January 1936.[10]Brian Cadwallader Waddy among the final medical examination passes, The News, 6 December 1951.[10]
1907-1916
A Waddy cousin at The King's School
The boarding house that still carries the name
Percival Stacy Waddy (born 1875) returned to his old school at Parramatta as Headmaster in 1907. He established its junior school, created the house system and reshaped the curriculum for boys from rural families. He was also an Oxford cricketer, an Anglican priest and, after leaving the school during the First World War, an army chaplain who served in France and Palestine.
The school still remembers him in Macarthur Waddy, one of its senior boarding houses. Percival belonged to a cousin branch rather than Charmian's direct line. Malcolm's large Waddy chart places both branches in the same extended family.[10]
1940-1953
War service and a new life in Perth
Charmian and Gordon
Gordon Cummins Faull (born 1917) entered wartime service in Western Australia in July 1940. He began as a sergeant at Naval Base, was commissioned as a field-artillery lieutenant in January 1941 and joined the Second AIF that August. Charmian Dousland Waddy (born 1921) left school for voluntary-aid work, then enlisted at Wayville in January 1942. They met while she was working at a South Australian military hospital.[13]
Charmian became one of the original 4 Australian Army Medical Women's Service members assigned to the Adelaide to Perth troop trains. Over 15 months she made 60 journeys back and forth, about 1,600 miles each way. One compartment was a regimental aid post and another was the women's sleeping quarters. There was a bed but no shower. Sick parade followed meals, and the cases ranged from influenza, laryngitis and malaria to suspected appendicitis, chickenpox and the stubborn sores known as Barcoo rot. When no doctor travelled aboard, trained nurses waited at Tarcoola and Cook. The work ran day and night through dust storms, mirages and long Nullarbor sunsets. A 1944 profile called her Corporal Faull. The official nominal roll records her as a private when discharged in July 1944.[13]
On 12 April 1943 she walked into St Peter's Church at Glenelg to marry AIF Lieutenant Gordon Faull. Both were in uniformed service, and the war shaped even the wedding party.
For the ceremony Charmian brought out an embossed-organdie gown with a circular skirt, fitted waist and matching bolero. A lace veil, orange blossom and a posy of roses completed it. Private Elizabeth Richardson wore her AAMWS uniform as bridesmaid, while Charmian's brother, Wing Commander Brian Waddy, stood beside the groom. Afterwards the small party returned to the Waddy home on the Esplanade. In the middle of a world war, the Waddy and Faull branches had joined.
Gordon rose to captain in the 11th Australian Movement Control Group. After his discharge in December 1945, he and Charmian flew to Perth with their baby son Richard Waddy Faull (born 1945). They stayed with Gordon's family at Mount Lawley while looking for a home, then raised Richard, Christina Vercoe Faull (born 1947), Catherine Rodda Faull (born 1951) and Elizabeth Charmian Faull (born 1957) in Western Australia.
The Army remained part of Gordon's life. He returned to the Citizen Military Forces in 1951 as a captain in Royal Australian Engineers Movement Control and became a provisional major in December 1952. A newspaper photograph the following February caught him at Leighton, learning to plan an attack on a cloth model during a 10-day course. Like the other citizen officers, he trained for 3 hours each evening after his civilian work. The caption gave his peacetime occupation in one word: accountant.[13]
The wartime wedding, The News, 12 April 1943.[10]Charmian's 60 transcontinental journeys, Australian Women's Weekly, 29 April 1944.[13]Major Gordon Faull, second from right, at a Citizen Military Forces course in 1953. The West Australian, 14 February 1953.[13]
1960s-2020s
The Faull children in the west
Goldfields, central Australia and another kind of exploration
Richard did not move in a straight line towards a career. A Commonwealth Scholarship took him to the University of Western Australia, but science could not hold him. He left, jumped trains and hitchhiked around Australia, returned to try again, then set out once more. Summer work on country wheat bins paid for some of the wandering. He studied most of a geology course, drove a taxi and prospecting drew him into the outback before he finally completed an economics degree.
One Christmas he came home from the goldfields with a long beard and a red shirt he had swapped with an Aboriginal man. The rocks and minerals he had collected since childhood now belonged to a much larger landscape. Commonwealth Gazette notices place him in the federal service as a clerk with Civil Aviation in Western Australia in 1966 and with the Department of the Army in 1972. Accounting eventually gave him a place inside the mining industry, but the country itself kept calling.[14]
The Western Australian Government Gazette later recorded prospecting licences in his full name across the Coolgardie and Kunanalling districts. Richard remembered pegging many licences and even owning a share in a gold mine, although he freely admitted that prospecting itself never made him rich. His company work reached much farther. In 1997 he and geologist John Heugh formed the company that became Central Petroleum, gathering an immense spread of exploration country across central Australia. Its acreage included much of the Pedirka and Amadeus basins in the Northern Territory and South Australia, the Lander Trough and part of the Georgina Basin. Together they had assembled exploration rights covering about 70 million acres.
Richard's Civil Aviation appointment in Western Australia, Commonwealth Gazette, 28 April 1966.[14]Richard listed under the Department of the Army in Western Australia, Commonwealth Gazette, 10 February 1972.[14]
Catherine's adventures have left a lighter paper trail. Family memory places her in outback Western Australia and possibly the Northern Territory, but no reliable newspaper, government or family-archive record has yet supplied the places and dates.
Elizabeth found a different route through science. In 1986 she was licensed under Western Australia's Anatomy Act to work in anatomy at the Western Australian Institute of Technology. By 1999 the ACT nurses register placed Elizabeth Charmian Kelly at Calvary Hospital in Canberra, where she remained listed through 2005. Years later she crossed into another field entirely, studying the animal-shaped incense burners of medieval Khurasan at SOAS in London. In 2025 she presented that work at Oxford.
Part 3
Malcolm and Christina
The two family stories meet in Western Australia. Angus Malcolm McKinnon and Christina Vercoe Faull married in Perth in 1971, then built their life around engineering projects, 3 children and moves across the Pilbara, Fiji and Sydney.
1966 onward
Engineering across Australia and the Pacific
Weipa, the Pilbara, Fiji and Sydney
In 1966 Malcolm became site electrical engineer at Weipa. Back in Perth he worked on the designs for Dampier and Tom Price, then returned north in 1969 as site electrical project engineer. At Tom Price he met Christina Vercoe Faull (born 1947), secretary to the site engineering manager. They married in Perth on 2 January 1971. Their first child, Angus Richard McKinnon (born 1971), was born at Tom Price that December, in a mining town thousands of kilometres from the Cornish workings Samuel Faull had left behind.
Malcolm became Baulderstone's Western Australian electrical manager and worked on the Paraburdoo project. Kilpatrick Green then sent him to the Tennant Creek smelter and brought him back to Perth as assistant manager. A Balfour Beatty assignment moved Malcolm, Christina and their young children to Suva. Katrina Rachael McKinnon (born 1974) was part of those travelling years. Duncan Malcolm McKinnon (born 1981) arrived shortly before the family moved to Sydney in 1982.
At Kilpatrick Green Malcolm formed KGSE, an engineering group of 40 to 60 engineers and programmers working on industrial controls. Business development carried him to Japan and other markets. After 17 years with the company, he left in 1990 and formed Computer Systems Engineering with Paul Rooleht. He bought Computer Way the following year. Angus later developed Wholesale Direct, an early online wholesale business. A surviving 1994 trade-mark listing also records Malcolm's HSC BBS idea, a computerised information service linking schools, teachers and students.
In 1999 Computer Way joined Tony Tregurtha's Halesworth Partners to form Halescom, a name drawn from the two businesses. Halescom built and operated the technology, payment and fulfilment systems behind online retailers. From its St Leonards office it grew to about 80 staff and won clients including LookSmart, IDG, Gateway, Sold.com and Buy.com.
In October 2000, CBD Online announced that it would buy Halescom. The public agreement valued the initial all-share acquisition at $11.2 million, with further shares available if Halescom met later profit targets. Malcolm remembered the family's part of the sale as $3 million in cash and a substantial parcel of CBD Online shares, with the cash covering most of the personal loans that had financed the expansion. The acquisition was completed on 10 January 2001 and Tony became chief executive of the combined business. Malcolm moved on to consulting work, helped establish CTLE in 2005 and retired in 2009. His working life had crossed mine sites, smelters, computer control rooms and the first years of online commerce.[15]
Suva's government buildings overlooking Albert Park in 1942. The city changed before the family lived there, but this view preserves the tropical capital into which the Balfour Beatty assignment fitted. Tudor Collins, Auckland Museum, CC BY 4.0.[15]East Lindfield in 1965, before Sydney became home to the family in 1982. NSW historical aerial imagery.[15]
1966 onward
The family grows again
From Bendigo and Perth to a new generation
Deirdre married Clifford George Lees (born 1944) in Bendigo on 19 November 1966. Their children, Kristopher David Lees (born 1968) and Nadine Rachael Lees (born 1971), grew up as the next McKinnon generation in Victoria. Nadine later married Nick Egan in 1999.
In Perth, Christina's brother Richard married Gisela Lemcke (born 1953) in 1980. Their children are Matthew Lemcke Faull (born 1981), Catherine Gisela Faull (born 1982) and Sarah Elizabeth Faull (born 1986). Christina's sister Catherine married Robert Neil Simpson (born 1951) in 1978, and their daughters are Alicia Catherine Simpson (born 1986) and Hannah Jackson Simpson (born 1987). Their youngest sister, Elizabeth, married Allan Thomas Kelly (born 1954). Their sons are Thomas Gordon Faull Kelly (born 1989) and James Richard Waddy Kelly (born 1992).
Katrina married Jules Trudeau (born 1974). Jules was born in Melbourne and grew up in his father’s homeland of Montreal before returning to Australia. Their children, Maxime Malcolm Trudeau (born 2007) and Adele Audrey Christina Trudeau (born 2009), carry names from both sides of the family into another generation.[16]
1978-2009
Finding the story again
Recordings, road trips and family memory
The last journey in this story runs backwards. In 1978 and 1979, Malcolm travelled through Tatong, Mansfield, Katandra, Burrandana and Wagga with a tape recorder. Relatives opened doors and cupboards. Out came unlabelled photographs, a pocket watch, table linen, family Bible entries and directions to houses that no longer appeared on maps.
Angus retraced much of that route in 2009, photographing farms, cemeteries and the remains of family homes. Malcolm wrote to researchers and descendants in Australia, Scotland and Tasmania. At Premaydena he helped restore the Persian passengers to the story of the old quarantine cemetery.
The papers, photographs and recordings now preserve two distinct family journeys and the life they formed together. They also leave some questions open, including Malcolm McKinnon's parents on Coll, Elsie Fawcett's father and the Drake family's route from Melbourne to South Australia.[17]
Significant additions to the people, stories, photographs, records and ways of exploring this family history. The newest changes appear first.
The remembered name Mote
Added the full story of the family memory about Elsie's unidentified father, the search that led from Mote to Walter and Catherine Mott's 6 sons, and why Herbert is a visible but unproved working hypothesis. Charles and the other brothers remain open alternatives, and the current DNA evidence is explained without treating absence as disproof. Read the story.
A probable story of two McKinnon brothers
Added a 1903 newspaper report about Angus and Alexander M’Kinnon and a threshing-machine accident near Benalla. The story and its original Trove clipping are preserved with a clear explanation of why the identification is probable rather than proven. Read the story.
Jules Trudeau’s early journey corrected and expanded
Corrected Jules’s birth year to 1974 from his own biography and added his journey from Melbourne to a Montreal childhood and later return to Australia. The earlier 1973 date was unsupported.
People and places now lead somewhere
Linked the first mention of each identified person to their free public Ancestry profile and linked place names to suitable Wikipedia entries, making it easier to move between the family narrative, detailed records and local context.
The migration map was rebuilt
Replaced the old approximate map with geographically accurate routes for the McKinnon, Fawcett, Faull, Waddy, McCarthy and Drake families. Documented ports and destinations are distinguished from partly known journeys.
The evidence trail
Sources
Family tree workbooks, the 1776 Coll inhabitants list and correspondence with Coll historian Ewen McGee. The link from Hugh McKinnon and Ann Campbell to the later Grishipoll family remains possible but unproved. ↩
Coll parish baptism and marriage extracts, including the indexed 1838 and 1841 Janet McKinnon marriages at Arinagour; the 1832 Coll parish collection, Ewen McGee's annotated copies of the original records, the 1851 Coll census transcription, and Flora Fletcher's 1829 Salen baptism index. The Arinagour household is locally preserved with the project evidence. The 1832 Malcolm Mckinnon entry is a likely, not unique, identification. ↩
Family correspondence about Eva Waddy and the Taylor family; State Library of South Australia, the 1849 voyage of the Inconstant; and the Great Irish Famine Memorial ship list. The detailed Taylor research identifies Hannah's father as James Francis Taylor and her mother as Bridget McCarthy; Charmian's earlier memoir gave the father's first name as Henry. ↩
Family tree workbooks and correspondence establish Christina's line through Charmian Waddy and Eva May Drake to Robert Drake. The indexed 1839 marriage record names Thomas Drake and Mary Standley. The indexed 1851 census records their household at Rockland St Peter, Norfolk. Victoria's assisted-passenger register, VPRS 14, records the same family arriving aboard the Medway on 22 February 1854; see the Public Record Office Victoria collection guide. Rockland St Peter parish transcripts based on Norfolk Record Office registers record the older Thomas Drake and Mary Lincoln marrying in 1809 and their son Thomas's baptism in 1819. Ancestry's 1851 census index records the older couple at Rockland St Peter, age 85 and 75. The FamilySearch shared tree calls Mary Lincoln by the maiden name Cockell, but no record proving that earlier identity has been found. Eva's 1898 marriage notice identifies her as Robert's only daughter, and a 1900 Gawler court report places his shop in Murray Street. Robert and Hannah's 1876 marriage notice identifies Robert as a son of Thomas Drake of Norwood. A transcription of South Australian General Registry Office Application 10050 names Thomas's widow Mary, born Standley, and their sons Charles and Robert. The Genealogy SA indexes record Thomas's death in 1856 and Eva's birth on 26 April 1877. Newspaper notices record Mary's death in 1866 and Robert's death in 1920 at age 71. Mary's death notice gives age 40, but the census and passenger register consistently place her birth around 1822. The route from Melbourne to South Australia remains unresolved. ↩
Angus Malcolm McKinnon's family history and recorded recollections supply the project sequence and his account of the sale. CBD Online's Australian Securities Exchange announcements record the October 2000 acquisition agreement, its value and Halescom's clients, and confirm that the sale was completed on 10 January 2001. A further company announcement records Tony Tregurtha's appointment as chief executive after the acquisition. The Australian Business Register entry for Halescom Ltd records Computer Way as a trading name, while the surviving HSC BBS trade-mark record preserves Malcolm's earlier information-service venture. Historic image sources: Tudor Collins's 1942 Suva photograph, Auckland Museum, CC BY 4.0; and NSW historical aerial imagery. The State Library of Western Australia's Dampier and Pilbara collections were reviewed but not reproduced because their online copies are restricted to personal use. ↩
The McKinnon family GEDCOM exported from Ancestry in 2013, the 1411 McKinnon Tree workbook and the Faull family workbook record these marriages and children. Jules Trudeau’s own biography records his Melbourne birth in 1974, Montreal childhood and return to Australia. Birth years are shown instead of full birth dates for living relatives. ↩
Angus Malcolm McKinnon's histories, workbooks, correspondence, certificates, passenger lists, cemetery records, photographs and recordings, supported by the linked public records. ↩
Natural Earth 1:110 million public-domain geography, rendered locally with D3 and TopoJSON. Route endpoints come from the records cited throughout this page. The McKinnon, Waddy and Drake routes include documented ports. Fawcett ends at the family’s first documented Sydney home, the Faull passenger index identifies South Australia but not the ports, and Bridget McCarthy’s Irish town remains unknown. The lines connect endpoints and are not proposed sailing tracks. ↩
The newspaper pages and family photographs shown throughout the story are preserved on this site. The links here lead to the original catalogue records and scans when those services remain available.
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