The Family History Studio · PastPort
In Their Footsteps
A travel companion to the world of Alexander Shearer & Annie Tyre
Ardrossan · the Castlereagh · Sydney & the Hills
This is a guide for standing where they stood. It gathers the places in Alexander and Annie's story — what each one was to the family, what is still there to see, and what survives nearby to help you picture the rest — written for a descendant planning a visit. Where a building is gone, we tell you where it stood and what marks the spot now.
Itinerary One
Ardrossan, Ayrshire
Ardrossan in Alexander and Annie's day (the 1880s–1910s) was a busy harbour-and-shipbuilding burgh on the Firth of Clyde — one of the "Three Towns" with Saltcoats and Stevenston. Coal and pig-iron went out from its docks; a shipyard rang on the waterfront; paddle-steamers ran day-trippers across to Arran; the railway tied it to Glasgow. People lived close, in stone tenement streets a short walk from the salt water. It is still a harbour town today — the docks now a marina ringed by housing — and the grid of streets the family knew is largely still on the map.
Ardrossan Harbour & the Barr & Shearer shipyard
Harbour survives · yard gone
This was the working heart of Alexander's town — the slipways, the clang of riveters, the steamers. By a genuine quirk the town's shipyard was founded in 1842 as Barr & Shearer (John Barr and James Shearer), later the Ardrossan Shipbuilding Co and Ardrossan Dockyard; it built minesweepers and small warships and employed some 2,300 at its WWI peak. (The shipyard "Shearer" is a name-coincidence — no known connection to this family — but a good story to tell on the quay.) Shipbuilding finished in 1990; the great harbour basin remains, now a marina with housing around it.
What to look for- The old harbour basin and breakwater — the water Alex's ships worked from.
- The marina and quayside walk; waterfront heritage signage.
- The view out to Arran every Ardrossan child grew up with.
Open in Google Maps ↗
214 Glasgow Street & the Post Office
Streetscape still there
By 1901 the Shearers were at 214 Glasgow Street, and after Alexander's father died his widowed mother kept the Post Office on Glasgow Street — the counter that held the family together. Glasgow Street is still a main street, and much of its Victorian/Edwardian terrace frontage survives, so you can walk the same pavement and picture the shopfront.
What to look for- The period tenement and shop frontages along Glasgow Street.
- A current/former post-office premises on the street, if you can identify it locally.
Open in Google Maps ↗
9 Harbour Place — where it began
Street still there
Alexander was born at 9 Harbour Place in 1887, right by the water; Annie was born close by in 1889 — the two grew up a street apart, near enough that the back greens nearly touched. Harbour Place survives in the old grid by the harbour. Stand here and you are at the few hundred yards of streets where the whole story began.
What to look for- The tenement streetscape of Harbour Place, hard by the harbour.
- The short walk up into the old town — their whole childhood geography.
Open in Google Maps ↗
16 Winton Place
Street still there
This is where the story turns cold. Widowed Annie brought her three girls back here in November 1922, to her parents' home above the shop — and found she no longer belonged. Walking Winton Place in a grey wind, you understand why Australia had become home.
Open in Google Maps ↗
Round out the day:
Lodge Saltcoats & Ardrossan No. 320 (where Alex was made a Mason in 1909), the Arran ferry from the harbour, the Ayrshire coastal path, and the period kirks of the Three Towns.
Itinerary Two
The Castlereagh — Coonamble & Mendooran
The country Alexander chose is wool-and-wheat plains on the Castlereagh River in central-western New South Wales. When he arrived the railway had just reached Coonamble (1910); Mendooran, downstream, was already the oldest town on the river, a crossing-point from the 1830s. Wide, dry, big-sky country — the "as far from the Firth of Clyde as a man could get" of his letters. Both towns are quiet today; Mendooran has leaned into its history, with painted murals all over town.
“Ardrossan” — 3771 Castlereagh Highway, Mendooran
The name still stands
The keystone of the whole story. On this leased property (Portions 76/77) Alexander drove in a hand-painted sign with the name of his birthplace, and — remarkably — the name "Ardrossan" still marks the land today. To stand at the gate is to stand exactly where a Scottish seaman planted his home town in a dry NSW paddock, the paddock running down to the Merrygoen Creek.
What to look for- The property name and gate on the Castlereagh Highway.
- The lie of the land down to the creek — the view of his 1917 vignette.
Open in Google Maps ↗
Annie's shop & the family town block, Mendooran
Town survives · sites part-confirmed
This is where Annie made her stand as a widow — first a sewing trade, then a fruit-and-refreshment shop on the main street, next door to Stitt's hairdresser. Quite separately, George Colley and Annie owned a town block on Bandulla Street (Allotment 6, Section 8) — bought 1924, put in Annie's name in 1929, sold 1939; it is now the town's tennis courts. The town itself is the oldest on the Castlereagh, and since the 1990s local artist Karin Duce has covered its buildings with murals of bullocks, sheep, horses and rural life; in the old butcher's shop you'll now find the award-winning Blue Sky Cheese.
What to look for- The 1920s main-street shopfronts — Annie's shop stood beside Stitt's.
- The Bandulla Street tennis courts — the family's old town block.
- The heritage murals through the town centre; Blue Sky Cheese (Wed–Sat).
Annie's shop ↗
Town block ↗
Mendooran Cemetery — Alexander's grave
Still there
Alexander Shearer was buried here on a December day in 1921, some hundred Oddfellows and Masonic brethren following him out. His headstone carries the square and compass of his lodge — the same tie that, years later, would school his daughters. The cemetery is a recognised heritage site and the grave can be visited.
What to look for- The Shearer headstone with the Masonic emblem.
- The pioneer section — the company he was buried among.
Open in Google Maps ↗
Coonamble & “Wheatlands”
Towns survive · farms private
Coonamble is where Alexander first built a life — a carpenter in Namoi Street, a prize-winning singer at the eisteddfod, and where daughter Meg was born at "Roslin" in Warrana Street in 1915. North of Mendooran lay George Colley's "Wheatlands", the 1,358-acre farm of his good years. The town streets are walkable; the farms are working land best seen from the public road.
Coonamble (Namoi St) ↗
“Roslin” ↗
“Wheatlands” ↗
Itinerary Three
Sydney & the Hills
Sydney is where the story begins and ends in Australia — the harbour the broken Loch Katrine was towed into in 1910, the church the couple married in in 1914, and the orchard country of the Hills district where Annie and George saw out their later years. The North Shore and the Hills were leafy, churchy, orchard country between the wars; today they're suburban Sydney, but real fragments survive.
St John's Uniting Church, Neutral Bay (the marriage church)
Still standing · heritage-listed
On 28 July 1914, two days after Annie stepped off the ship, she and Alexander married at the Neutral Bay Presbyterian Church. The building — on Yeo Street, opened in 1890, architect Charles Slatyer — still stands and is now St John's Uniting Church, on the NSW State Heritage Register. You can stand at the door they walked out of as husband and wife.
What to look for- The 1890 sandstone church on Yeo Street and its heritage-listed pipe organ.
- The streetscape of old Neutral Bay around it.
Open in Google Maps ↗
Check visiting times with the congregation before you go.
Balcombe Heights Estate, Baulkham Hills (the daughters' school)
Original buildings survive
Because Alexander was a Mason, his daughters could board at the William Thompson Masonic School, opened at Baulkham Hills in November 1922 for children left in hard circumstances after the war — at its peak home to 364 children. The school closed in the 1970s and The Hills Shire bought the site, now Balcombe Heights Estate. Several original buildings still stand — dormitories, classrooms, the gymnasium, staff cottages and the Georgian Revival administration block — so you can walk the grounds the Shearer girls knew.
What to look for- The Georgian Revival central administration block.
- The surviving dormitories, classrooms and gymnasium.
- The school's war memorial / avenue of honour on the estate.
Open in Google Maps ↗
“Brucehaven”, Kenthurst & Castle Hill — the orchard years
District survives · orchard private
George and Annie's "Brucehaven" orchard (about 137–151 Kenthurst Road, Portion 51, 40 acres, bought 1939) sat in the Hills orchard belt, and Annie's last long chapter played out nearby at 7 Church Street, Castle Hill. The orchards have mostly given way to housing, but the district keeps its heritage layer — Castle Hill Heritage Park preserves a slice of the old orchard-and-bushland landscape, and Kenthurst still has period homesteads to evoke the orchard era.
What to look for- The Kenthurst Road orchard frontage — the lie of "Brucehaven".
- Castle Hill Heritage Park — remnant orchard-era landscape and Blue Gum forest.
- Kenthurst's surviving period homesteads and rural fringe.
“Brucehaven” ↗
7 Church Street ↗