I was recently asked by a Scottish cousin if I could find out what happened to his uncle Roddy McKenzie who went to Australia and lost touch with his Scottish family.
Roddy or Roderick MCKENZIE was the middle of five children born to Angus McKENZIE and Margaret GIBBONS. He was born on 2nd February, 1910 in Methven, Perthshire, Scotland. According to my cousin: “Roderick had emigrated to Australia in the 1930’s and had been discharged or perhaps demobbed from the Australian army in 1947. Apparently the family had difficulty in contacting him when his mother died”.
The first place I looked for information was the National Archives of Australia web site. The National Archives of Australia holds records about service in the Australian defence forces from Federation in 1901 – http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/explore/defence/service-records/index.aspx . Sure enough, the scanned images of his service record were available.
The service record contained a letter from Roddy’s uncle acknowledging the receipt of his campaign medals by their mother and inquiring about his current whereabouts. The letter states that: “Before the war he worked as a herd tester near Orbost, Victoria, but his precise address is now unknown to us (Roddy’s family had not heard from him since towards the end of the war)”.
The service record contained two pieces of information that would help with the next research steps. Roderick’s next of kin, as stated on his sign-up papers, is listed as J Mckenzie, wife, of Tinamba, Victoria. Roderick had married and was living near Orbost in Victoria. After some searching, and various spellings of McKenzie, I found a marriage certificate for Roderick and Muriel Jean Smith. They were married on 28th June 1939 at St Andrews Church, Maffra, Victoria. Roderick is listed as a 29 year old, herd tester from Bairnsdale and Jean is listed as 18 years old, occupied with domestic duties and living in Tinamba.
I next found some newspaper articles from the Tinamba area (I used the National Library of Australia’s Trove service at https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper to find the newspaper articles) that mentioned either a Roderick Mckenzie or R McKenzie. I managed to conclude that the Roderick McKenzie mentioned in one of the articles was the correct person by looking him up on the electoral rolls at Ancestry (http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=1207 ). The electoral rolls provided the following:
In 1949 Roderick and Jean were living in Tinambra, Victoria.
In 1959 Roderick and Jean were living at 59 Staff Ave, Heyfield, Victoria
In 1963 Roderick and Jean were living at 15 Meadow Lane, Yallourn, Victoria
In 1968, 1972 and 1977 Roderick and Jean were living at 11 Fairfield Ave, Yallourn, Victoria.
In 1980 Roderick and Jean were living at 42 Ollerton Ave,Moe, Victoria.
Online searching seemed to indicate that Roddy had died in 1989 and was buried in the Yallourn Cemetery. Confirmation of this fact was made through the Gravestone Photographic Resource website (http://www.gravestonephotos.com/?r=1&width=1366&browser=1366 – this is an international directory of grave monuments compiled from volunteer’s contributions). Roderick McKenzie died on 6th November 1989 and is buried at Yallourn Cemetery. His wife, Muriel “Jean” McKenzie died 29th Deceber, 2000 and is also buried at Yallourn Cemetery.
Both gravestones include the names of Roddy and Jean’s two children – Margaret and Donald. I have been unable to find out when and where Margaret and Donald were born (birth records less than 100 years old are not available for family history research for privacy reasons i.e. the person being researched may still be alive). I also do not know if they are still alive.
My cousins did not know how Roddy ended up in Australia in the first place. The answer to this question was found in a very obscure place. I found a reference to Roderick in the copy of a letter I had. He was mentioned in a letter written on May 23, 1933 by Jane GIBBONS in New Zealand (Jane’s sister was Roddy’s mother, Margaret). The letter contained the following sentence: “My sister has a son about 21 years old who went from Scotland to Australia under the “Big Brother” Movement some four years ago, she says he is now working at Maffra West Upper, Victoria”.
The Big Brother Movement was a juvenile migration scheme that brought young men to Australia from Britain starting in 1925. However, when I contacted the Big Brother Movement I was advised that Roderick had arrived in Australia with a similar migration scheme called the Dreadnaught Boys. He arrived in Sydney on board the SS EURIPIDES, on 12th July 1929. He then went to a training farm in Scheyville, NSW that was used by both the Big Brother Movement and the Dreadnought Boys.
I have another McKenzie cousin living in Canada who unsuccessfully tried to find Roddy in the 1980’s. It would have been very difficult to “find” Roddy thirty years ago. The introduction of the Internet and the growing interest in family history has led to the online availability of the many sources I was able to use in my search.