Newcastle Family History Society Podcasts

Society member Sandra Boyd, takes us back to the early 1850s—to a landscape of swamp, scrub, and isolation along the banks of the Hunter River, where her family, the Bakers and others helped shape what would become the suburb of Mayfield.

Benita Parker of the West Wallsend District Heritage Group continues the story of Mary Johnston in this series exploring the lives of West Wallsend’s pioneering women. Set against a time of expanding families, new opportunities, and sweeping change, this episode follows the journey of a miner’s wife who becomes the matriarch of a bustling household as a small settlement grows into a thriving town.

Join Benita Parker from the West Wallsend District Heritage Group as she brings to life the stories of West Wallsend’s pioneering women through vivid first-person storytelling. In this episode, Benita recounts the opening chapter of the extraordinary life of Mary Johnston.

Society member, Sandra Boyd,  looks into the early lives of her ancestors, the Baker family and the world they stepped into as new arrivals in the colony of NSW.

Stephen Ticehurst explores the lives of two men named Wallis who lived in Newcastle in the early nineteenth century, revealing the contrasting human faces of the British Empire’s colonial project in the region.

In this final episode of Bushrangers in the Hunter Valley. we follow the story of the notorious Jewboy Gang and their enigmatic leader, Edward Davis, turning then to the enduring legend of Frederick Ward, aka Captain Thunderbolt and his partner, the remarkable Worimi bushranger, Mary Ann Bugg.

In this sixth and final podcast Jane Ison looks at the little-known Wesleyan Methodist Burial Ground once situated in Newcastle West.

In this episode of Notable Novocastrians, Mel Woodford explores the life of the actress, Essie Jenyns, who captured the public imagination and became an important part of Newcastle’s social history.