Dear Listers, This is Part Four of how my brick wall fell recently. There was this clue for my WFG, in the rumour of him possibly deserting a ship. During a visit to our NFHS library, I was handed the "Ships Deserter" book. Sure enough there was a Francis GOODHEW listed as deserting the "Sarah Newman" in March 1863. Would you believe this happened in the Port of Newcastle, NSW? The timing seemed OK (married in 1866) and certainly the place couldn't be better. Did my WFG like what he saw when his ship berthed at Newcastle and figured he could easily spend the rest of his life at this place? I looked up the shipping list for the Sarah Newman on the website http://mariners.records.nsw.gov.au/, and there was Francis GOODHEW, as an Ordinary Seaman on the voyage from London to Sydney departing 15 Nov 1862. Wow! The only glitch is that his age is shown as 32. My WFG would have been 22 years at that time. Is this a simple clerical error? Certainly evidence was strengthening that I should be looking for Francis GOODHEW back in Kent. The next step is a sidetrack. I decided to register for the 2006 GRD (it will appear in May). At the time I purchased a back copy for 2004. Marking up my surnames I found a THEAKER. Now that is not a common name (good for genealogy). The contact was Graham C from Melbourne, who conveniently listed his email address. Emailing Graham, I found he very helpfully extended my THEAKER ancestry by two generations - my THEAKERs coming from Yorkshire and his from Shropshire. But the significance was that I happened to mention in passing that I had a frustrating brick wall in my GOODHEW branch. Graham eagerly asked for details, because his real passion is breaking down brick walls. Was my luck in that day? No mistake. Graham understood how the Internet resources worked and he had a friend, John R., of Brisbane who had other resources and they worked as a team, as it were. Within days Graham had found the family mentioned on the IGI and where they lived via the 1841 and 1851 census returns. The problem is that the census images clearly showed that my Francis was spelt "Frances" and the age (9 months & 10 years resp) was clearly written in the "Female" column. But the sibling names checked out and were aligned to those of Josephine (remember her 'Emma' from a previous episode of this story?). More confusion, conflicting gender. There will be more to this drama to come ... Ron Goodhew, Adamstown.