LOCAL HISTORY

Genealogy expert maps Home Hill’s family history

Marina Trajkovich

MOST families are unaware of the intricacies of their own history, but for ex-Home Hill local Joanne Gibson, it’s fitting together the missing pieces of the puzzle that makes genealogy so exciting.

In her free time, the 59-year-old is going through the records of over 400 families from Home Hill in an effort to map the region’s history, creating an accessible family tree as part of a long term personal project.

Joanne is currently studying genealogy online through the University of Toronto and living in Brisbane while digging through the records of Home Hill’s first families.

She says that the project started a couple of months ago when her mother handed her a box of old records, letters and photographs that had been collected to piece together her own family history.

She says she became enthralled learning about her predecessors and connecting the dots of previous generations and hopes to eventually share that knowledge of Home Hill with other locals.

“I used a lot of that information. It’s like a puzzle and requires so much organisation. I just became fascinated,” says Joanne.

“My mothers family were early settlers in the Burdekin around 1913. Both families came very early to the Burdekin.

“The first Gibson that came to Australia was from London, and he was a mariner who came out in about 1840 to Sydney. He was the first signal master at the South Head Signal Station on Sydney Harbour.

“One of his daughters married a man called Robert Johnstone, who I then learnt the freshwater crocodile was named after. [Crocodylus johnstoni.] I just became so fascinated by all of this stuff,” she says.

Joanne says she’s slowly chipping through early Home Hill records, from residents maps of the Inkerman Mill, to old primary school admission records, in the hopes of piecing together a representation of the town’s early days.

“I think a lot of people are probably not aware of the history, and I would like to track down some of the original families and be able to say, what were the original farms, who did these people marry. To tell the story of the beginning of Home Hill,” says Joanne.

Joanne says she uses subscription websites like ancestry.com and the platform Find My Past to dig up and verify old records.

She’s approached the Burdekin Shire Council for a map of the Home Hill cemetery to learn more about who is buried there and who can be traced back to Home Hill’s origins.

“I’m not exactly sure where all the information is going to go yet, really, but it is going to increase my abilities in researching and finding information.

“It is a very long term project because there is so much to go through. One family could take you months of work. It’s just a case of putting in names and plodding along,” she says.

Joanne is also inviting locals to get in touch and has already dug up the records of families who have contacted her on Facebook, in one instance tracking down the gravestone of a lost grandfather buried in Devon, England.

“It is the puzzle aspect when I’m looking for records, particularly the further back you go, the fewer records there are. When you actually find that bit of proof and find out who that person was, it’s an exciting moment,” says Joanne.

CONNECT NOW:

To get in touch with Joanne about your family history, find her on Facebook via https://bit.ly/3pufrlx

Joanne Gibson

How Mt Kelly was named

Beatty Kelly is a reader and local from Airville who regularly contributes local history stories for Burdekin Local News. If you have a story or an article you’d like to share about the local area, people or local history, send us a message and your piece for consideration to editor@burdekinlocal.com.au

James and Minnie Kelly’s Laurelvale home

June Bartlett and Robyn Hathaway prepare healthy lunches Beatty Kelly

MOST locals know of Mt Kelly in the Airville area, but how many know how it got its name. My mum’s father, James Kelly, a little Irishman from Portadown, County Armagh, left his homeland and all of his family to come to Australia - the land of promise.

I don’t know the year, but he eventually landed in Bowen. There he worked as a blacksmith and did fencing.

He and a mate heard of the land opening up in the Burdekin in the area now called Airville, so they set off to acquire some land.

James selected the area near a creek and called it Laurelvale. It also included the land near the hill. His mate called his area Applecross, also on a creek.

James married Wilhelmina Payard, whose family had been at Bowen and who were neighbours again in the new territory. James and Minnie had thirteen children, three of whom had died young while George died at 31 from the Spanish flu.

They grew crops and grazed cattle around the hill area, which became known as Kelly’s Hill. It was wild scrubby country with lots of rock, even when I went there in the 1950s.

James’ son Tom took it over. Tom had married a teacher called Fanny Knot. They had no children.

My brother Keith Elliott acquired it. He had been a stockman most of his working years. His son Graham Elliott tells me there was even a prospector looking for gold up there, without success, obviously.

Keith later sold the territory to an investor who created the five-acre blocks for housing around the hill.

Somewhere, sometimes it was declared a mountain, and Mt Kelly became a township that provided new pupils for the old Airville school. When the school commenced in 1890, it was called Airdale. The first pupils were Parker’s, Kelly’s, Ross’, Boyd, Kann, Holmes, Towers, Pilcher’s and Aitcheson’s.

At one stage, the teacher was Hannah Kelly, a cousin.

James eventually got his parents and siblings out to the area for his older brother William and his wife, who remained in Ireland. However, many of that family came, mostly settling in other states.

There are still Kelly names in the local phone book. However, not all come from that little Irishman James Kelly – but I can say that I do.