Online database shows Britain-Australia links

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2008

LONDON (AFP) — Details of millions of Britons who travelled to Australia in the late 19th and early 20th century in search of economic success were released online Wednesday as part of a social history collection.

Website Ancestry.co.uk has compiled the details of 8.9 million so-called "free settlers", or economic migrants to Australia, which the website says gives the average Briton a 25 percent chance of having a free settler ancestor.

"Australia's free settler heritage is often overlooked in favour of its more colourful convict past," the website's managing director Simon Harper said.

"However, it should be remembered that free settlers were brave and ambitious, making the choice to leave their homes and travel by ship for many months to the other side of...