ABOUT ME

I am Richard Carlaw. I was born in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and grew up in a small town called Mutare (then Umtali). I attended university in South Africa, getting a degree in Electrical Engineering, and after that I kind of stayed. I am married, live in Johannesburg and work as an engineer with a mining company. I am 43 years old and counting. My interests include sailing (talking about), cricket (watching), running (I get to do that) and, of course, genealogy.

I have been researching my family tree for the last 4 years and was surprised at how quickly I was able to accumulate information. Admittedly I got a good head start through the work of my grandmother who in the 70s and 80s traced her family tree back to her great-grandmother  - it was remarkable how accurate that information turned out to be. My greatest excitement was discovering the first clues that one of my Australian ancestors might just have been a convict - a census document that contained just the tiniest clue. A moderate amount of digging and suddenly I had a wealth of evidence proving that he had, indeed, been a convict - a fact that was previously unknown to my immediate family and relatives. I subsequently discovered another convict in the lineage and won't be surprised if one day I find another.

I come from pioneering stock. Among my ancestors are some of the earliest settlers in British colonies around the globe: from 1823 onwards they started arriving in Tasmania (ok, not all of them were there by choice) ; in 1855 a group arrived at Christchurch, New Zealand and set about trying to colonise the area all on their own; then from 1900 they began drawing together on the African Continent - Natal and the newly opened area of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

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Convict Tales and Ancestors.  © Richard Carlaw 2006. [email protected]