Mass immigration to Australia began in the late 1830s. It was a small part of the international movement of people in the nineteenth century. The majority of emigrants to the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century were from Britain and Ireland. As in north America in the previous two centuries, they quickly overwhelmed the indigenous people and became the dominant population on the Australian continent. In the first half of the nineteenth century the British government and British private enterprise were instrumental in diverting some of the flow of emigrants from Britain and Ireland to the Australian colonies away from north America. Other factors, such as chain migration, helped once this emigration field became known. At the heart of the immigrants' quest, as it probably was for most free emigrants in the nineteenth century, was the family. I have constructed a story of the operation of two sets of extended families over several decades to provide insights into their culture and customs, to look at the contribution they made to the communities in which they lived in eastern Australia and their continuing connections to family and kin in England. At this stage in my research I make no claim that they are representative of English or British settlers in eastern Australia, but the detail of their lives helps to build a picture of the activities and values of some English immigrants and their roles in two Australian colonies.

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