When I got my Australia project badge, I said I wasn't really sure how much I would be able to contribute; but as time has gone on, I've added, or adopted, many more collateral family members and, unlike my direct line, some of them have convicts on their upper (Australian) branches.
I've found those I would term "heroes" (Great War ANZACs and one WWI ANZAC (I'm not counting my Mum and Dad)); people I have grown rather attached to as I find out more about them as people and not just a name on an index card from 20 or 30 years or so ago. I found that my first cousin twice removed was a WWII POW who escaped and made his way to Switzerland, via Italy. I had known he was in the military, but nobody told me the details, so I only really knew of his 20-yr-old brother who died in the Great War a few weeks before Armistice.
I've listed a couple of notables; again, collateral to my direct line, but they're still my rellies!
I look at al these people and wonder at what they managed to achieve. Just as I've always looked at my gr-gr-grands and above who came from foreign lands to start a new life.
I found more details on my one lot (my Mum and I had obtained their ship details from the Queensland State Library, back in 1992), but to read of the conditions of their ship (it was compared to the Black Hole of Calcutta) and to read that most of the passengers thought it not so bad .. but only because of what they'd left behind. You have to wonder; and weep; when you know what the Black Hole was like and compare that to a 3-plus month voyage at sea and think of just how bad things were in England that the ship was a better place. I am awed, at times, to know that their blood runs in my veins.
So, overall, I've "contributed" more than I thought I would .. and have had so much fun along the way. :)
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(I also made a sticker thing to show my Mum was a WAAAF, not WRAAF and not RAAF. She was before all those and there was nothing for her, so I made it.)