3 Mar 2014

The Australian Gathering will happen!

In only two months time in early May, Di and I will be nearing the end of our visit to Indonesia and Australia. On the last weekend before we fly home via Singapore, there will be another Swinfield Gathering. This time we will be in Sydney on Saturday, 3rd May 2014.  

Ray Swinfield of Family 3B has arranged for us to all meet together from 1-4 pm at the Auditorium of the Calvary Retirement Community, 678 Victoria Road, Ryde NSW2112 where he lives. All current Australian Swinfields, or those who have used our surname in the past, are very welcome to come along. There you will be able to find yourself on the family trees, which I have drawn up showing the Antipodean bearers of our name, and, most excitingly, meet up with new cousins and distant relatives who were previously unknown to you. This is a not-to-be-missed opportunity gather together to share in the history of “our family”. The vast majority of Swinfields there will be related as they are descendants of William Swinfield (1804-1876) who reached NSW at the end of 1848.You will all be cousins of some sort. I will show you how!

How many Australian Swinfields may be there? I have a rather vague idea how many people with our rare surname live near Sydney. My guess is somewhere in excess of a hundred. There are certainly 43 subscribers listed in the current White Pages of whom 33 live in NSW. All were written to back in mid 2012 by Andrew Swinfield. He will now be contacting you again, inviting you to be there. Please respond so that we will know how many to cater for. We hope that as many of you as possible will make the effort to come along to find out about the family's history. Bring along your family's documents and photographs to share with your new-found relatives. 

It is likely that we will have attendees from as far afield as Queensland, Adelaide and Tasmania.  Let's make their trip worthwhile by as many people as possible being there from the NSW area. I will be there from the other side of the World representing your English cousins!

Put this date in your diary and be there on May 3rd!