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Preserving Walla Walla’s Heritage
History magazine, Royal Australian Historical Society September 2025 Abstract This article explores the layered cultural heritage of Walla Walla, a distinctive township in southern New South Wales founded in 1869 by German and Wendish (Sorbian) immigrants. From its Straßendorf-style town layout and imposing Zion Lutheran Church to the educational legacy of St Paul’s College, Walla Walla’s built environment reflects a rich migration history shaped by faith, language and commun

Dr Roslyn Russell
A Maritime History Discovery in a Historic Homestead at Braidwood
Federation of Australian Historical Societies (FAHS) Newsletter No. 53 June 2022 Abstract This article recounts a significant maritime history discovery within the historic homestead of ‘Bedervale’ at Braidwood, where a rare navigational text reveals connections between domestic collections and global seafaring networks. Through close examination of material evidence, the piece traces the life and career of Captain John Coghill and the enduring presence of his maritime past w

Dr Roslyn Russell
Australians document an East India Company Cemetery in Macau
Federation of Australian Historical Societies (FAHS) Newsletter No. 56 October 2024 Abstract This article documents an Australian-led heritage initiative to record and preserve the East India Company Cemetery in Macau, a site that bears witness to the global networks of trade, empire, and migration in the nineteenth century. Established in the early 1800s when Macau served as a crucial base for British commercial operations in China, the cemetery contains graves of merchants,

Dr Roslyn Russell
What's in a Name?
Descent , Vol. 53, No. 3, September 2023, pp. 96–98 (Society of Australian Genealogists) Book Review September 2023 Abstract A heritage controversy in Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point in March 2023 becomes the starting point for tracing an unexpected historical connection between Australia and Jamaica. Focusing on Shafston House, the article follows the origins of its name to the New Shafston Estate in Jamaica, associated with the Pinnock family- an enslaving family whose descendant

Dr Roslyn Russell
Hidden Lives: Discovering Women’s Lives in Local and Regional Collections
Academia Letters April 2022 Abstract Local and regional museums hold countless traces of women’s lives, yet many remain unnamed, unrecorded and unexplored. From a young governess whose identity is lost in a 19th-century family album, to diarists, artists, photographers and widows whose letters survive in church archives, fragments of women’s lived experience are preserved across Australia in small institutions and community collections. Hidden Lives argues that these collecti

Dr Roslyn Russell
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