This has been a project undertaken not only for my children, but for  people looking for relatives, and possibly feel the same way I do, that too many things are lost, and our sense of identity and belonging in this world becomes thinner and thinner.

I would have loved to have developed relationships with many of my Collins cousins, but as you can see, or have possibly realized if you happen to be a Collins, they are not only all over Australia, they are all over the world, AND they don't seem to talk much!

I love the stories of heritage, even though I know only a few, but I want to know more. I hate the thought that what I do know might be lost, and so am endeavoring to remember it, find it, record it, as much as I have been told or tracked down by limited means, at least as much as I can. I'll keep adding to the record, the more I find out and I hope that my children will be able to carry it on past my time.

I hope that you, whoever you are, will be able to get something out of these pages, perhaps at least to fan the flames of the love and pride we (most of us) have for our families.

I began with, for many years, a simple photo of a memorial stone somewhere in Ware, Hertfordshire, England, and snippets of information that my paternal uncle had told me, and those that my Mother had gathered from Dad's family over the years.

My uncle would look at me intensely as if to say 'remember this', so when he said our family was from COUNTY LIMERICK, IRELAND that piqued my interest, and my web searches since have since revealed why these 'little bits are important!

My Uncle came to visit from Western Australia to NEW SOUTH WALES for a holiday just a year before Dad died. I hadn't seen him in so many years, and I was intent to know all about lineage and heritage, that my father seemed to have no interest in telling, but much pride in having...

My father did not tell us anything. He really didn't tell us about anything! I don't even remember him enjoying many kinds of in depth conversation, so answering my questions may have been a little out of the question.

When we were living in Victoria and Western Australia, and were living relatively close to uncles' and aunts, my mother, in the course of conversations, would pick up bits and pieces of information about other members of the family. It was the main information source along the way. We only saw for what seemed just minutes in our lives, of three of Dads' other brothers and their families. They all lived so far away. So snippets were all there were. 

My uncle seemed grateful to be able to tell someone about family, which made me think that it must have been a general Collins trait to be silent, and never openly share of themselves. I was actually reading one American family message board one day, and the comment was 'Collins families don't seem to cluster the way other families do... To me that seemed to be an understatement, at least for our part!

To be able to hear some first hand accounts, and bits of history, to know what some people were really like, was wonderful! We, as a Collins 'nation' have such a history, have traversed continents, and have played little parts in historical events, though I'm sure not all of it could have been noble and just, and have such stories to tell!

I asked my uncle what my grandmother was like, as she died when my Dad was four, he said  'She was just like you, she laughed a lot, and sang, and played the piano (I don't play the piano, I'm a guitar person) beautifully (and perhaps I play far from beautifully). She even looked like you he said! That really touched me, because something I had really missed, were grandmothers. My mothers' mother having died when she was three, and my fathers' mother when he was four.

My grandfather Collins though. was a different story. Apparently he worked on the railways from and around Allahabad and Mirzapur in India (I think he was an Inspector or Conductor), and would be gone for weeks.

While he was gone the house was alive and happy, but the moment his foot hit the bottom step coming home, the house was reduced to total silence. This story gave me a fair indication of his personality that I have seen in a couple of other Collins men along the way. (not many of them, mind you.)

My Uncle Barney (Edward) was also a Conductor, but on the buses around Perth WA when he was working. I think he was in his nineties when he died. He was eighty four when he visited us in 1990.

My grandfather, Francis, died Mirzapur India approx 1932. He would seem to have been about fifty years old when he died. My grandmother was MAUD MARY FALLS, whose father was born in the Orkney Islands Scotland. Her mother was apparently originally from Lancashire. My Grandmother died in Mirzapur, approx 1928. I would really like to know when, how and where Grandfather met her!

They had thirteen children, and from what my uncle said, there was one who died in infancy, and the last one that I don't know the name of, or anything about. But I have come across (quite by accident) a photo of a man who is the spitting image of my father, who is apparently from another Collins family of whom I cannot find any links to our family. The only tenuous connection is that he too was bought up in Northern India, in another town. My thoughts are that, perhaps Grandmother died in childbirth and the baby was given to another 'Collins' family to raise... Perhaps they were cousins?? It IS a mystery...

The names that I do have, and I'm not sure they are in order, are in the Collins Genealogy file listed on the Contents page...Barney said he was the oldest and born about 1905, and that he was twenty years older than Dad. Dad and Donald, and I guess any who were not of age, went to married siblings when their parents died and then to boarding school. Dads' Mum died, when Dad was four, and his Dad when he was eight.

Two of the sister in laws' are perhaps now the only ones left of Dads' entire generation. It seems inconceivable and such a loss, at least to me, that they are, the brothers and sisters, all gone, and it has to be another reason to make sure that people and memories of them are not completely lost and forgotten. I often feel such sadness as I walk through graveyards and memorials, that these people are quite possibly never thought of again, and after such struggles, heartbreak, and momentous effort of living and life in that short while, there is nothing, not even a memory.

The year before my father died, his older sister Sheila died in Melbourne. Within a month, her youngest son Patrick had died. Within another month, her husband Bill Had died. Then my mother died in the August of the next year, and my Dad six days later.

Another sister Noreen, died in London England the very next Christmas, and another sister Eileen, who lived close to Noreen, died within that month later. Eileen's' husband Colin had died also somewhere in the two years before her. This was in the space of two and a half years!

It was a trifle unnerving. Barney was the only one left, and he said to me not long before he died a couple of years ago, that he found it all strange, as he was the oldest of the thirteen children!

As said before, my father, DENIS ERROL COLLINS, went to, what he used to call, an Anglican Boys Academy and Boarding School in Allahabad India, after his parents died, and when he was old enough. His younger brother Donald, must have followed too at the right age. I think they spent all of their school years together there, and went home to  married brothers' families on some term breaks, and Christmas holidays. I know they were very loved and must have been missed, being two of the the youngest.

Dad was proud of the fact that he 'matriculated' from College. He proudly related often that he had attended an 'Anglican Boys Academy', that it was a boarding school, and that he went home only on the school holidays. That is all I actually know about his school days, besides that he did well. He was a maths' buff and absolutely adored 'cryptic' crosswords that no one else could get much idea about.

Dad  joined the British Army in India in about 1944, and was in a Signals Unit for perhaps five years.

In 1947, after discharging from the Army, he left India from Bombay, disembarking at Freemantle in Western Australia, to join his brother Barney and his family in Perth. I guess this was around about the time that India became independent and many British families left the shores where they had been born and grew up... It must have been a heart-wrenching time for many.

I've recently found the passenger lists of the HMAS Manoora, which arrived in the Port of Freemantle on the 15 August 1947. It lists Dad as twenty three, single, and British. It also states that he had been a permanent resident of India, and was to become a permanent resident of Australia. It also says that he had no occupation, so it's obvious that he finished his indenture with the British Army...

The Manoora served extensively during the 1939-45 conflict particularly in the Pacific arena. After the war she returned to her former role as a passenger ship on the Australian coastal run, however in 1947, she still carried her guns as can be seen from the image.

The ROYAL AUSTRALIAN AIR FORCE was to become Dads chosen occupation for the next twenty seven years or so, and Telecommunications his passion. He had traveled all around South Eastern Asia, and then back to Darwin, Northern Territory by 1950.

His Brother Donald joined the RAAF with him, and until Dad married Mum, I'm reasonably sure they were even in the same unit, and pretty well inseparable. I think they were friends much more than just brothers, and I feel very sure their separation after their marriages, for the rest of their lives must have been very difficult.

Dad met Mum in Brisbane where she was working in those days. They were engaged and married within a few short months. Dad was then stationed at Ipswich, Queensland  on the Air Base there. After they were married at St Marys' Catholic Cathedral in Casino, New South Wales on the 20th November 1954, they moved down to Camberwell, Melbourne, Victoria, where I was born, and then my sister Annette in the next year. 

We spent two and a half years there altogether, before Dad was transferred to Ipswich again. On the way there, we spent time with Mums' family in and around Casino, at a place called Wyan. The Murphys' and the Lollbacks', (ancient German spelling 'LOELLBACH' I was told by a cousin researching) are a whole other story entirely. David was born here, around the same time my Great Grandfather Lollback died, before Dad was moved on to be stationed at Ipswich for another two years. 

Denis was born during our short stay in Ipswich, after another short stay at Wyan, and from where we moved on to Pearce Air Base, twenty six miles north of Perth in Western Australia. We were there for seven years, and Patrick was added to our number! There are only about five, or perhaps six, years between Patrick and I. We were always amused that the oldest was Patricia, and the youngest was Patrick. Perhaps there weren't enough names to go around! I actually am reasonably sure  though, from what Mum said, it was to honour one of her sisters, one of Dads sisters, and a nephew of Dads' whom they were close to.

Dad worked his way up to Sergeant in 'Telecommunications' in the Air Force, and I remember when the very first American orbits were traveling around the earth in the early sixties,  Dad was one of the personnel involved, monitoring their progress. I remember him being much happier when it was all happening. It was easy to see where his heart lay.

There were so many Americans on the base at that time, everywhere you went you could hear the heavy accent. It was the American Servicemen who taught me how to swim properly. (with perhaps a little style and finesse as they say) They were certainly interesting times in the  sixties! Dad was always off to somewhere doing courses and getting qualifications of some kind. His career in the RAAF lasted around twenty years, and one day, when I can find them, I'll add to these pages, his list of accomplishments and medals.

The next transfer would have been Edinburgh South Australia, as the Air Force had a habit of moving personnel constantly, never leaving families in one place for more than seven years. But not to be so...

By this time Mum was extremely homesick. As a Sergeants' wage was not a lot to boast about with five children, Mum found a job at the Air Base Kindergarten as an Aide, and a cleaner. She earned enough to get her, and the five of us (ages 10, 9, 7, 6, 5.) on an economy class pass on the overland train, across the Great Nullabor Desert, home to Casino in NSW. No mean feat of three thousand miles or more!

This was August 1966, and there were no fast ways to do this. It took five days and five nights non stop, to get right across to the other side of Australia. The train was full of Defense Force personnel, who by the way smoked non stop, and we all ended up with pneumonia, BUT we got to Casino! I was just about to turn eleven.

In 1966, Dad transferred out of his beloved Air Force and into the Department of Corrective Services, as a Warder, to follow Mum to NSW. He did his training  at Long Bay Gaol (where one of my brothers now works as a Warder), and then transferred to Grafton, an hours drive from Casino, to work in the gaol here. Dad was a warder for sixteen years until he developed emphysema from smoking most of his life.

We moved to Grafton from Wyan, my Grandfather Lollbacks' farm, in 1967, and have been here as a family in one way or another ever since. Some have gone and come back, and others have left altogether to pursue other things. We, and our children, are the only ones of our Collins line here, although there are other, not family as far as I know, Collins in the district.

But..... members and relatives of Mums' family here are rife! My husband is astounded that nearly everyone in Grafton AND Casino, is either a Lollback, related to a Lollback, or married to a Lollback. He's sure there's something wrong with that! But then again his direct line ancestry belongs to the Gordon Highlanders, who with their surrounding clans, are not exactly scarce!

My mother, MARY GERALDINE LOLLBACK died in August 1991, of cancer in Lismore NSW, exactly six days before my father Denny, in Grafton NSW. Dad actually had emphysema, but it was not that he died of. They had been divorced sixteen years and Mum had married again. Dad never married again. He did have a couple of offers over the years apparently, but turned them down!

When he heard that Mum was dying, he simply put himself into Grafton Base Hospital, not feeling well, and although he was only suffering with mild bronchitis, he lay down and died, six days after she did. It was a very strange time. 

My mothers' sister, said she woke up the morning after Dads' funeral, and said that all she could hear in her head, was my mothers voice saying to my father, 'What are you doing here? The whole thing was a bit like that, strange and very Irish (my mother was a Murphy descendant). But it had happened in some of our other Collins families too, spouses simply passing away shortly, or even immediately, even within days after their partners' death.

Beginning to trace family genealogy on the web, is not unlike having teeth pulled some days. The search is intense, with a dot of information here, and perhaps another one there. The gaps are huge and often seemingly, only one tooth was made to fit, but it always seems, there may also be more than one tooth that fits the gap. 

For instance, Thomas Collins's it seems, especially in the 1800s, are definitely lots of lost teeth, as the name can crop up often. The problem is to figure out which one, if not all, or any, belong to you and/or whether all the names link up, or at least flow on, to each other. This is interesting when you may, like me at many given moments, only have the internet at your disposal!

After picking up and matching information in Censuses, genealogies, etc. I have realized, that our particular Collins family did not share about themselves outside of family at all, and so personal, detailed information has been more than scarce. Although what I have found, certainly matches well with personalities I have known.

Another interesting thing about the names, and places, in India, is that having nothing to seemingly go by in spelling, everyone would write their own version, phonetic and/or otherwise, of the name, so there are in fact, often, many versions of one name. That too can be a challenge!

My fathers' family  were in India for a few generations. The photo of the memorial stone I have, and where my search began, puts a date at 1842, and my Dad and his brother Donald left in 1947. The only information I had then from my Aunt Noreen, now passed away, is that we are descendant.

This is exactly how the stone reads from the photo I have,

To the memory of
THOMAS CHUCK COLLINS
Captain of H.M.s 44th Regiment,
Eldest son of
THOMAS COLLINS
Lieutenant and Adjutant, of the
2nd Regiment of H.M.s Dragoon Guards
and SUSANNA his wife
who was killed at Gundamuck, in the
Disastrous Campaign of Affghanistan
January 13th 1842,
in the 41st year of his age.
And of MARGARET,
Second daughter of the above
THOMAS and SUSANNA COLLINS
and wife of
GEORGE TREVOR SAYERS CARRUTHERS,
Captain of 1st Regiment
Madras Native Infantry
who died at Bellary, Madras
February 21st 1852,
in the 41st year of her age

This tablet
is erected by their loving mother
A.D. MDCCCLXI

This took me, a little while to figure out. I had thought from the inscription, that either the year of Margarets' death was amiss, or else the account of her age.  A chance find unraveled the mystery. Margaret was actually, the first listed, Thomas's sister! She was born in 1811 to, second listed, Thomas Collins Snr, and Susanna Chuck, which answered the other puzzle of where the name Chuck came from in Thomas Jnrs' name, and who the 'loving mother' at the end is. Sigh...

This whole family genealogy chart is included in the Collins files, and I have finally, found the links to my Grandfather. And from there I have family knowledge, and people I personally have known.

Graham Collins emailed and sent me a book that has detailed a massive amount of information and history about the Chucks and Collins families, and I must tell you that to me this was like all my Christmas's had come at once. He is not apparently related to us though...

A reference to the armies of the EIC I found, was that family members would often enlist in the same outfits, and because of this tracing immediate family history can be  easier, as immediate families, parents and children of the men were usually listed,  in the EIC records. Some even had pensions and allowances as soldiers families, which are also part of the paperwork trail. I think that in some cases the actual British Army did the same thing.

Thomas Snr, and Thomas Jnr, were in the British Army proper. (Further information is located on other pages) I think Edward (my GG-Grandfather) joined the EIC as a Cavalry Vetinary, and then I'm pretty sure he switched to the British Army. He stayed on in India, and retired to Ware, where he died a year or two later at 63 years. His son Edward Thomas (my G-Grandfather), and my Grandfather Francis Grantham, worked on the India Railways.

The 'Rootsweb' Genealogy Sites  are a mine of information and help to people researching their genealogy in and through India. It is fully worthwhile to subscribe to their lists. Another valuable place to look on the net is the new A2A site, listed on the 'Links' page.

Considering the passage of time that the British were in India, of over three hundred and more years, there were sections of their records that met unfortunate ends with wars and mutiny's and fires, but also allowing for this passage of time, much has survived, being an amazing bonus to genealogy buffs, as outside of these records, some and perhaps many of these families have no record of existence, unless perhaps church records survived better the afflictions of time and the wars. 

After the India Mutiny, many of the regiments of the EIC were either incorporated into the British Army or disbanded. Those who decided to settle and stay on in India as civilians, were sometimes given employment by the Company. My Grandfather, I have realized, and my Great Grandfather, were employed by the East India Railway, but I have yet to verify any and all the particulars of their service.

Of our particular 44th Regiment above, there is no history to be found after this date as the Afghanis' virtually annihilated 16,000 people, Soldiers, Sepoys, families, servants, camp followers, only a scant handful of men, women and children made it back.

An account of the Battle and Campaign in
^{"General Pollocks Memoirs"}

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