The Collins Family

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first of our family groups to arrive in Australia.

The first time that Edmund and Catherine Collins appear in the NSW State Records of  Births, Marriages and Deaths it is for their marriage in September 1843 at St Francis Xavier's Catholic church, Wollongong. 

Theirs is not an easy road to follow. Little information is available from archives. They pop up again in 1846 in Campbelltown, NSW, about 50 kilometres from Wollongong, where Edmund is a baker. Three children are christened in St Peter's Anglican Church, Campbelltown. An ecumenical couple this. Two of their children are buried in that same period.

In the late 1850's gold was discovered in NSW. The area around the present town of Hill End, along theTurong, became a magnet for thousands of settlers, looking for quick riches on the banks of the river. They came on foot, in carts, on horses, by bullock dray. They staked their claim and put up makeshift living quarters, tents and lean-tos. Some made their fortune, most did not, The diggings had a life and culture of their own and many are the tales of the Goldfields.

Wiiliam Bailey's history of Campbelltown records the departure from that town of the first party of five men to travel to Ophir, on the NSW goldfields, in 1861.

One of these is Ned Collins, the baker, pushing a barrow. According to his death certificate, he lived at Golden Point. The conditions on the Australian goldfields in the winter of 1863 were horrific. Wet and cold. Many died of pneumonia. Ned Collins was one of these. He was buried in Sofala cemetery, but no trace can be found of his grave. As one old resident of Sofala said, "They just threw 'em under a rock somewhere, love. There was just too many to bury proper."

Catherine stayed on in Hill End. Their daughter Ann married William Charters. In 1872 she witnessed the birth of her grandaughter, Ada Charters, the first female child to be born in Hill End, who later married John Sutton. Their direct descendants have unwittingly returned to the area of their origins and live around the Wollongong area of NSW.

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