Australia Day Challenge 2014

Quoting from the Public Holidays Australia website:

Australia Day is celebrated on January 26 and commemorates the first landing in Australia by Captain Arthur Phillip. Between January 18 and 20, 1788, the First Fleet of 11 ships sailed into Botany Bay to set up a penal colony there but the bay proved to be unsuitable. Captain Phillip took a team north and named the area on the south shore of Port Jackson as Sydney Cove. The formal establishment of the colony occurred two weeks later on February 7.

The article goes on to explain the significance of the day to most Australians. Now my friend, Jill Ball, Australia's Premier Blogger, has written about an Australia Day Challenge 2014. I don't pretend to understand all she has to say, but here is the challenge from Jill:

My blogging mate Pauleen from Family History Across the Seas has issued this dinkum challenge for Australia Day. Even though I am flat out like a lizard drinking I just couldn't resist this challenge.

Now here was the challenge:

G’day cobbers, how’re you going? Hope you’re feeling grouse. Australia Day is coming up so it’s time for another dinkum-Aussie challenge. Since quite a few of us are gearing up for the next Unlock the Past cruise, I thought I’d make it a quick and easy geneameme for those who wish to participate, eh.

Let’s see how deep your roots go into our Aussie soil. Do you have Australian Royalty?

If for you Australia Day is Survival Day, tell us your family’s story and show up our Johnny-come-lately status.

The geneameme comes in two parts: one to test whether your family is ridgey-didge and the second to show us how Australia runs in your veins, without any flag-waving and tattoo-wearing. Shout it out, be proud and make everyone wish they lived in this wide brown land of ours.

I have family from Australia, but they mostly were passing through but some of the relatives stayed and over the years I have had some correspondence with family members there. I don't know if some of my transient ancestors qualify in either category, but others did stay long enough to have a bundle of children before moving on to the U.S and some died there. My Bryant Family members were born in Mailand, New South Wales starting about 1844. My Great-great-great Grandfather, James Parkinson, arrived in New South Wales as shown by the Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists, 1828-1896, on 11 March 1849. He died on 2 September 1870 in Brookfield, New South Wales. 

I think I can consider myself to have a dinkum Australian heritage, even if I don't live there myself and I hope I can considered to be a cobber.