New South Wales

Margaret and Annie O’Connor were second-generation Irish-Australians who lived in Waterloo, New South Wales, over a century ago. Scorned by the judiciary as ‘most undesirable’ women, Margaret and Annie’s so-called legal and moral ‘crimes’ included smoking opium, drunkenness, swearing, being tattooed, doing sex-work, and consorting with Chinese men. This presentation offers insights into the lives of women who, like Margaret and Annie, were criminalised by poverty, and of new ways to write about them.

This presentation describes a collaborative book project undertaken by the Ku-ring-gai Historic Society in Sydney. The book commemorates the service men and women named on local memorials by providing biographies of lives, service and links to community.

In this presentation Louise Wilson discusses methods of researching people who arrived in NSW well before 1850 and how to find the resources to support that research.