The Restless Constable
It is the evening of 1 April 1914, in the Police Barracks at Bathurst, and a big man - six feet three, eighteen stone - is turning a set of silver-mounted pipes over in his hands, a parting gift after thirty-four years in uniform.
This is the story of Constable James Barnes, a Lake District farm boy who crossed the world twice and never quite settled, and of Emily Keziah Borrman, the goldfields girl he married at the river port of Wentworth. From a medieval farmhouse in Cumbria to the tin-shed lock-ups of the silver country, the trenches of Broken Hill and the quiet churchyard at Kelso where they lie together, it is a true colonial life - told from the records and from the memory of the daughter who outlived them all.
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This story stands on sound family research and primary records; where the paper runs out, we say so plainly rather than invent.
Read the full story
The full illustrated family history of James and Emily Barnes - their origins, their roving years across colonial New South Wales, and the quiet place they came to rest.
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