Now if you really want to find The Way They Were, go to the Queensland State Archives site and search through the indexes. Shipping records vary in the amount of information they contain, but you just might be the lucky one... Remember, there are assisted passages, though in browsing through, I have seen some who 'paid full fare'. Have fun!
Assisted immigration 1848-1912
These registers contain passenger lists of immigrant ships arriving in Queensland. Details vary over time and between registers but include the names of ships, their dates of departure from European ports and arrival in Queensland ports, the tonnage etc of ships and names of masters, surgeons etc as well as the passenger lists, usually arranged by type of passage (eg free, assisted, remittance, bounty, steerage) or sometimes by type of immigrant (eg railway workers).
Details for each entry for a passenger include the name, whether married or single, male or female and age, whether a child 1 - 12 or an infant. A summary of passenger totals, including births and deaths, may also be included.
The passenger lists are primarily for assisted passengers from the United Kingdom and Europe. Please note that this list does not include passengers from New Zealand, the Americas, Asia, Africa, other Australian ports or those passengers who paid their own fare (in a few lists there are fare paying passengers included).
This index does not include all immigration records for that period. The records for the 1860s are incomplete because they were inundated in the 1893 floods. The registers held at Queensland State Archives were rewritten from the damaged originals during that period.
The images below (click for larger images) are pages from the registers. On the left is the page for the Great Queensland, page 772, and on the right is the register page for the Cloncurry, page 1. This arrival of the Cloncurry was in 1884.
Coincidentally, my husband's grandmother, Mary Christina Callanan arrived with her family on the Cloncurry, just two years later, in 1886. She was but a wee child at the time, and disruptive enough to have been put into a cabin alone for a time. She became Mary Goopy... Nana to many, who lived till almost 92. I have written a little about her here...
