Family History. Better.

Before any project begins, I want you to get excited — as excited as I am about what can be done. I might bring something real to show you about your family, and will then also show you some amazing examples of what has been done, what can be done, and where the journey might lead us. The Glimpse shows you what's possible before you've committed to anything — and it's also where the project starts to take shape. I want you to know there is never such a thing as a 'boring family'.

The irreplaceable is at risk. Photos in shoeboxes. Documents deteriorating in the back of a cupboard. Relatives 'borrowing' photos and never seeing them again. Memories held by one person who won't always be there to share them. Before research, before narrative, before anything else — sometimes the most urgent task is securing what already exists. I can digitise photographs, slides, and documents, record oral histories, organise digital archives, and advise on preservation. I can also help guide DNA collection where relevant, and assist with donating significant items to museums or archives with proper documentation. Gather is all about capturing, organising, and protecting so you or others can use it.

This is where fragments become facts and the foundation for amazing stories. I can build and verify the family tree, analyse DNA results and matches, transcribe hard to read documents, find new and unusual nuggets of information that may not be online, and establish documentary proof using archives, certificates, newspapers, military records, probate files, and land records. Australian, British, Irish, Scottish and German records are particular areas of depth. Growing your knowledge of a person beyond a name and a birthdate is the foundation for Give and Go.

Documents are valuable. Stories are unforgettable. Give is the Studio's signature specialty — the stage where research becomes something people will cherish, revisit and share across generations. Many people can research; far fewer can analyse, shape and produce the work into something finished, moving and presentation-ready. Struggling to get others to engage in the family history like you do? This is where we create the interest. That editorial and production process is what the Studio does best.

If your research is already in good shape — whether you supply it or we build it together — first-pass deliverables can often be ready within days. The emphasis is always quality first, then speed. The Studio builds in structured review stages at agreed milestones, so you can read, respond and shape the direction before work moves forward. You stay in control of how your story develops.

The work follows a natural progression:

What Creative Non-Fiction Looks Like

A vignette is a short, carefully crafted scene drawn from the historical record: a moment in time, rendered so vividly that it reads like fiction but is true. Click to read an example of what's possible.

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It is April 13, 1855. The Rose of Sharon, a battered immigrant ship, limps around Sydney Heads. Her mainmast is gone, her topmasts splintered, her rudder cracked and barely holding. The timbers groan, the rigging hangs limp. She's survived — but only just.

The wind has dropped. A few of the 365 weary passengers — new immigrants — begin to creep out onto the deck. One woman clutches her child and whispers: "Thank God." Then, glancing at a crewman limping past, "And thank you, David."

David Winders doesn't answer. Nineteen years old, his leg aching from an old injury, he just gives a faint nod and ties off the line in his hand. He looks up. Seagulls wheel overhead. The sunlight is warm and bright, very bright. Somewhere in the breeze is the strange smell of eucalyptus. And Sydney rises ahead through the swell.

But David isn't thinking about landfall. Not yet. He's thinking about Alexander.

A few weeks earlier, in the middle of the Southern Ocean — 600 miles south of Australia — the ship had been struck by a hurricane. The mainmast torn away. Topgallants gone. The rudder nearly useless. And worst of all, the carpenter, Alexander Maxwell — gone overboard in a flash. Swept away.

David had been beside him. They were trying to close the hatches. David couldn't swim. Not a stroke. But he held his ground, got the last hatch shut, and clung to the rigging through the storm. Someone found him at dawn, barely conscious, tangled beneath a tarp and a mess of ropes.

He's not getting back on that ship.

His first voyage at fifteen — an apprentice aboard a coal ship between London and Newcastle — had ended with a shattered thigh and a hospital discharge. He signed on again, this time as an Ordinary Seaman. Only to live through this.

He doesn't say a word. Just stands at the rail, watching Colonial Sydney grow larger with every gentle roll of the ship.

This time, he's done. He's not getting back on that ship.

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This vignette is based on immigration records and crew lists, newspaper articles, apprenticeship and hospital records. David couldn't swim — as recorded in his inquest, he later drowned while bathing in a disused, water-filled quarry.

Knowing the story is one thing — experiencing it is another. When you walk in your ancestor's footsteps, visit the home they lived in, or stand on a battlefield they fought on, the past becomes real in a way that documents alone cannot achieve. I create custom travel guides built for a specific heritage journey or holiday 'add ons': maps, story stops, historical photographs and annotated routes. Wherever you're travelling, I can create something that makes the stop meaningful and help you bring the past alive.