by Robyn Watters
Captain James Renton Watters Born: 14 October 1838, Longhope, Orkney, Scotland [1] Died: 4 February 1919, Prahran, Melbourne [2]
Captain James Renton Watters, master mariner, settled in Port Melbourne and surrounds in 1875, bringing his Cockney bride with him. Ancestral pride swelled his reputation as a capable and adventurous seafarer but The Truth newspaper filled me in on…
by Robyn Watters
Gertrude Brown (nee Duncan), Moorabbin, Victoria, c. 1964-68.
As a child I had a horrified fascination of a piece of metal lodged under one of my grandmother’s fingernails. I was told it was from an industrial accident when she was a jeweller’s assistant.
Years later when I investigated this claim, the electoral rolls for my grandmother Gertrude Duncan in…