Smith's Emigrated to Australia (General)

by sidtoomey01 , Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, Monday, November 22, 2021, 09:48 (885 days ago) @ Forest Freda

Hi
Do you have details of exactly when Benjamin, Frank, Amos and George Smith came to Australia ?
If you don't,, let me know as i have details of dates and the ships on which they possibly came, which look promising.
I also found a newspaper article regarding the details of Franks divorce which is interesting.Let me know if you want more information.
Regarding tracing the photograph of the soldier in Perth W.A. which is likely George Smith , i have done some haphazard searching of the National Archives of Australia, WW1 Soldiers service records, just to get a feel for "the needle in the haystack".
Doing a name search (free) for "George Smith" comes up with 655 possibilities where the given name "George" appears as one of the Smith given names.
Out of these , around a third of the records have not yet been examined so further details are not available on line.
Looking at the remainder, without opening the record which might sometimes be twenty or more pages long, there are numerous records for George Smiths from Newcastle and districts who enlisted in the Army in WW1.
Just by looking for ones born in the UK narrowed the search , and for records for someone born in Gloucestershire or Wales or Herefordshire narrowed the search to just a handful.
Also, looking at the photograph, i think (and i am definitely not an expert), by looking around the eyes, the person doesn't appear to be "Young", so if i am correct we are looking for someone "mature" which would match your George Smith's age.
There are so many flaws in this line of searching that i don't want to think of them.
Using "Trove" digitised Newspapers, i searched for the war years and a possible mention of a George Smith, restricting the search to the Newcastle Newspaper. There were several articles involving returned soldiers, killed in action or invalided back to Australia. Each of them gave further information to follow but since we don't know for sure if George actually lived in Newcastle or whether he worked in the mines in the Hunter Valley or Catherine Bay or Maitland, it widens the search area immensely. Having an uncommon name like "George Smith" certainly doesn't help.
Haven't given up on the search.
Sid Toomey