Welcome to
Lost Voices, Unearthed Stories
A History of the Mazlin, Anthony & Poulton Families in Australia
This is where you can access each chapter as it is completed. The story begins with Hannah Brown and Thomas Mazlin, two convicts transported to New South Wales in the early 1800s. From their struggles and beginnings, the Mazlin, Anthony and Poulton family lines took root. Each chapter gives voice to their lives, shaped by hardship, hope, and change across generations.
If you have reflections, comments or family connections to share, you are warmly invited to get in touch using the contact link on this site.
Chapter 1: Convict Origins
Traces the journeys of Hannah Brown and Thomas Mazlin from conviction in England to early colonial New South Wales. Amid hardship and punishment, a relationship forms and a child is born, marking the beginning of the Mazlin family line in Australia.
Read Chapter 1 & Illustrations
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Chapter 2: Currency Lads and Lasses
Follows the later life of Thomas Mazlin as he raises two families in colonial New South Wales, first with Catherine Cook, then with Anne Wing. Set against a backdrop of timber work, landholding, and community life on Sydney’s North Shore.
Read Chapter 2 & Illustrations
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Chapter 3: Settlers to Queensland
Shifts focus to the Anthony family in Ipswich and Toowoomba. Covers the marriage of Robert Anthony and Mary Jane Gibson, their working lives, and the raising of their children in a growing frontier city.
Read Chapter 3 & Illustrations
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Chapters in Development
Chapter 4: The Mazlin Brothers in North Queensland
Will follow the next generation of Mazlins as they leave Sydney’s North Shore to establish farms and families in the tinfields and tablelands of North Queensland.
Chapter 5: Conflict on the Frontie
Will explore the ongoing dispossession of Aboriginal people during the northward expansion of settler families and the moral complexities that accompanied it.
Chapter 6: A Century of Turmoil
Will examine how the Mazlin and Anthony families experienced war, drought, economic depression and social change across the 20th century.
Chapter 7: A New Australia
Will trace the post-war transformations that shaped modern Australia and reflect on how descendants navigated shifting expectations and identities.