This is a milestone edition of Ancestor, as we farewell a long-standing editor and welcome two new members to the team. We thank Martin Playne for his contribution and dedication as an editor. He is stepping down from the team after 14 years. He was a member of the initial team established in 2012, who took over from the then full-time editor Narelle Duncan. Our new members are Ann Prince and Jane MacIsaac. Both are past contributors to Ancestor, and participate in the GSV Writers’ Circle. We are looking forward to the new perspectives that they will bring to our journal. 
Members of the GSV Writers’ Circle develop their storytelling skills collaboratively with short writing exercises. For our new series on ancestors’ homes, several contributors have transported themselves back to childhood with evocative memories of their grandparents’ homes. 
In our features articles, contributors consider their ancestors in the context of colonial Australian society. By tracing his ancestor’s movements against known locations of conflicts, Bill Barlow considers what part his great-great-grandfather Edward Needham Barlow may have played in the Frontier War. June Torcasio tells the story of William Kershaw, a mining engineer who developed the Kershaw pump. He became an important figure in gold mining in Yackandandah, Tarnagulla and Adelong, but he died mysteriously in New Guinea in 1920. Melanie Atkins describes the hard life of her 3x great grandmother Alice. On the Victorian goldfields in the 1850s and 60s, Alice had nine children, two husbands, and a gun to protect herself.
In our ‘How to’ article Deborah Purvis explores the many online resources that are available to anyone seeking details about their Latvian ancestry. Researching in other languages can be challenging, and Deborah offers some strategies for tackling this. Research Corner has some tips on finding birth, death and marriage certificates from England and Wales. Based on the discussion they led at a recent Writers Circle, Margaret Vines and Penny Mercer offer some tips about making your writing sparkle. In ‘Getting it write’, they show that lively and memorable writing is within reach for all of us.
 

Emma Hegarty
Editorial team