Endnotes
1. 2s 6d was the fee per registration - hence the number of applicants for Collingwood.
2. David Hume Ross was christened in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1824: information taken from the Family Search online database. Details of other British births, deaths and marriages discussed in this article have also been taken from this resource.
3. The position was for the Deputy Registrar of Births and Deaths, the returns for marriages being sent in by the clergy or authorised marriage celebrants.
4. PROV, VA 475 Chief Secretary's Department, VPRS 3991/P0 Inward Correspondence II, Unit 62, File G5052, Application of David Hume Ross.
5. ibid.
6. Registry of births, deaths and marriages, Melbourne, Victoria: David Hume Ross death certificate no. 4320 (1879).
7. Ages above 15 years were rounded down to the nearest increment of five in the 1841 census, hence the discrepancy in the ages in the 1851 census.
8. PROV, VPRS 7666/P0 Inward Overseas Passenger Lists (British Ports) 1852-1923 (microfiche copy of VPRS 947), B 023, p. 3, Samuel, Caroline, John and Henry Allen. Although it is likely that Henry was a brother to Samuel and John, who died in 1861, his death has not been identified with the same parents - Samuel Allen and Hannah Crook.
9. JF Waghorn (comp.), Index, Deputy Registrars of birth and deaths in Victoria, 1853 to 1901, JF Waghorn, Thomastown, Victoria, 1991.
10. Death certificate of Samuel Allen, no. 4232 (1864).
11. PROV, VPRS 3991/P0, Unit 61, Files H4489 and H4212, Application of Caroline Allen.
12. ibid., File H4211, Application of William John Allen.
13. In the rural areas the picture was quite different, with large numbers of women appointed to both permanent and temporary positions: see Waghorn, op. cit.
14. Registry of births, deaths and marriages, Tasmania: children of Henry William Mortimer and Mary Addis.
15. Memories of Martha Jane Mouritz, née Mortimer, in a written record created in 1900 and obtained from her grandson, Tom Davison. Martha Jane was Henry and Mary's daughter. She died in Sale in 1911 (no. 3024, mistranscribed as 'Mourtiz').
16. ibid.
17. ibid.
18. Tasmanian colonial index, compiled by the Kiama Family History Centre, Kiama, New South Wales, 1997 (microfiche).
19. T McKay (comp.) Register of land grants, Van Diemen's Land, 1824-1832, T McKay, Kingston, Tasmania, 1994.
20. MA Syme, Shipping arrivals and departures, Victorian ports, 3 vols, Roebuck Book, Melbourne, 1984-2006.
21. The story of Alexander Bishop Butler can be read on the website of Brother Tony Butler at http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/butlera/alexander_bishop.htm (accessed 30 August 2008); see also Port Phillip Gazette, 18 December 1839.
22. Martha Jane Mouritz comments that 'they were much more delicate than we colonials' (Memories of Martha Jane Mouritz). It should be noted, however, that Charlotte was heavily pregnant with her seventh child, giving birth to a son on 29 December 1839.
23. Port Phillip Gazette, 3 March 1841, p. 2.
24. John and Sara's infant daughter, Ann Eleanor, is not mentioned in the newspaper advertisement. However, she probably accompanied her brothers back to England, as an 'Ann Blanche', born in Van Diemen's Land, was recorded in the 1851 census for London as living with a couple of the same surname who said she was their grand-daughter.
25. History of the City of Melbourne, Records and Archives Branch, City of Melbourne, 1997, p. 16, available online at http:/www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/rsrc/PDFs/History/HistoryMelbourne.pdf (accessed 30 August 2008).
26. ibid. See also 'Garryowen' [Edmund Finn], The chronicles of early Melbourne, 1835-1852: historical, anecdotal and personal, 2 vols, Fergusson & Mitchell, Melbourne, 1888, vol. 1, pp. 260-2, 264. 'Garryowen' was an alias for Edmund Finn, journalist and author.
27. ibid., vol. 1, pp. 314, 449.
28. Memories of Martha Jane Mouritz; ID Clark & T Heydon, A bend in the Yarra: a history of the Merri Creek Protectorate Station and Merri Creek Aboriginal School 1841-1851, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2004, p. 59f.
29. 'Garryowen,' Chronicles, vol. 1, p. 170.
30. Information provided by Wilma Bain, archivist, St Michael's Church, Collins Street.
31. 'Garryowen', Chronicles, vol. 2, p. 863.
32.  PROV, VPRS 3991/P0, Unit 60, File G4257, Application of Henry William Mortimer.
33. Argus, 13 December 1861, p. 6.
34. PROV, VPRS 3991/P0, Unit 60, File G4257, Application of Henry William Mortimer.
35. Australasian, 23 July 1887. His son, Mark William, died on one of these journeys.
36. ibid.
37. PROV, VPRS 3991/P0, Unit 60, File G4256 (includes H4386), Application of JE Dobson.
38. ibid., File H4171, Application of JT Tulloch.
39. ibid., File H4398, Application of DC Forrest.
40. ibid., File G5598, Application of TT Greenwood.
41. ibid., File H4149, Application of Robert Black.
42. ibid., File H4384, Application of F Lawrence Webb.
43. At this time it was important to your success to be well connected. 'Honourable Gentlemen' who could be asked for a reference were of great importance in an application, and I am of the opinion that at times there were applicants who could not name these gentlemen and hoped they wouldn't be asked.
44. PROV, VPRS 3991/P0, Unit 60, File H4360, Application of William Baxter.
45. ibid., File G4459, Application of Thomas Robinson.
46. ibid., File J10409, Application of WA Sparling.
47. ibid., File H4173, Application of WA Guillaume.