Chris Carpenter grew up in Ballarat, Victoria, and has researched his family history for over two decades. He now lives in Melbourne and enjoys assisting other people researching their family history.

Author email: chriscarpenter.au@gmail.com

Ann Hodgkinson has a PhD in economics and worked for over 25 years as a university academic in Victoria and New South Wales, examining regional development, small business and environmental economics. On retirement she completed a Graduate Diploma in Local, Family and Applied History at the University of New England. She began volunteering at the Bellarine Historical Society, Drysdale, where she is now president. Ann combines her prior knowledge of economics with new skills in historical research, focusing on the colonial economic history of her local area.

Sarah Harris is a Senior Analyst, Records and Archives at Public Record Office Victoria.

Andrew J May is a professor of history in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

Author email:  a.may@unimelb.edu.au

Malcolm Campbell is a retired construction industry commercial manager whose interest in scales, weights and measures was sparked by the find of a half pennyweight weight in the Amherst goldfields while metal detecting. From this find ensued a hobby of collecting gold scales and weights. He soon noticed stamps that were not verification stamps of the UK. These small stamps, 3–5 millimetres across, were of a Crown above a letter and a number and ‘VIC’. Eventually, finding out that they were from Victoria, the search began for the system of numbering and its meaning.

Dr Fiona Gatt’s PhD thesis in history, completed at Deakin University in early 2023, recovers the lived experience of nineteenth-century urbanisation on Melbourne’s colonial urban frontier. Her areas of interest include class, housing, urbanisation and global migration. She works at various universities as a teacher and research assistant and on public history projects. She is coeditor of the Journal of Australian Studies and Pharos, the newsletter of the Professional Historians Association (Vic & Tas).

Kendrea Rhodes grew up in Victoria and has researched her family history for over a decade. She now lives in South Australia where she works  as a researcher, artist and writer. In 2019 she enrolled at Flinders University, Adelaide, to improve her skills, knowledge and research methods. ‘Tracing ancestral voices’ is an edited composition from Kendrea’s unpublished honours thesis. Continuing with her studies at Flinders University, Kendrea is currently undertaking doctoral research into the history and narratives of the Ballarat Asylum.

Peter Davies is a research fellow in the Department of Archaeology and History at La Trobe University. His research interests include the archaeology of resource industries and the formation of rural landscapes. He is the co-author (with Susan Lawrence) of Sludge: disaster on Victoria’s goldfields, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

Author email: peter.davies@latrobe.edu.au