Unsung Heroes From Aussie Italian Gold Rush Miners to Sailing Ship Mysteries & a Lost British Prince In Aus.

It’s the Gold Rush era of California, New Zealand and southern Australia. They came from the Ticino region in the south of Switzerland and the foothills of the Alps in the north of Italy in the 1850s hoping to strike gold. Many sailed out on borrowed money expecting to strike it rich and make their fortunes in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia, where I lived for 5 years. Most didn’t.

But hey, were they unsung heroes who left behind a permanent legacy of Italy in the Aussie bush?

There was a ghost. A clue led me back to a fashionable Catholic widow over 200 years ago in Regency England who secretly married the heir to the British throne, the Prince of Wales. I think it was a legitimate marriage which, if proven by the other clues I uncovered, would have cast serious doubts on events of that time. If there were legitimate children then where are they? Who were they? And how did they change history, if at all?

But hey, was the first born son an unsung hero who was sent secretly to Australia and became the enigmatic Commander of the ‘Lady Nelson’?

And there’s more.

Explore.

Illustrated: The tale of the mutiny on the Bounty remains one of the most intriguing stories of adventure on the high seas more than 200 years after the ill fated voyage that made Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian legends. But what of the unsung heroes (like the unknown British sailor without a past who became Commander of the ‘Lady Nelson’) who sailed with Bligh on the ‘Bounty’?

Neil.

How Miracles Happen.

I was broke. For 5 years my home was a leaky old caravan parked outside its owner’s home at the end of a dead end street in Hepburn Springs in Victoria’s Central Highlands. I was at a loose end. I started to look into the fascinating stories of the Gold Rush in the area. I found a largely untold history of Swiss-Italian migrants who came out in the 1850s to try their luck on the goldfields. Many stayed on. Fresh pasta was still on the menu at many local restaurants. The local butcher still sold the real Italian bull-boar sausages. Many of the original typical rural Swiss or Italian farmhouses were still working farms, others lay in ruins. I wrote the story and it was published in the local newspaper. The owner of the General Store picked up my story and started a Swiss-Italian Festa with street marches, history displays, even a pasta sauce recipe competition. After 30 years it’s still an annual tourist event in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia. ‘Italy In The Aussie Bush’ is chapter 8 of 30 chapters in ‘Man Steps Off Planet’. We don’t need money to make miracles happen.