Since taking up the challenge to trace my grandmothers' roots, there has been a man's name - 'Shillington', which keeps cropping up at every little find I have made.

He has appeared so many times I feel that somehow I am related to this vagabond. I say this because he doesn't appear to have any roots that I can find, as yet.

Maybe there is a surprise in store for me, if and when I can untangle the puzzle.

I seek him here, I seek him there, but to no avail. That is why I call him my Mystery Man.

What if he came from a very well-to-do or even Royal Family? He could have been banished to Australia for some dastardly deed he had done, couldn't he?

What if he was just an ordinary bloke? One who loved to work on the land and with cattle, as according to the records, he was a boundary rider and stationhand.

He may have had a wife and children tucked away somewhere as he meandered like a river through Australia, but it appears he sired my grandmother from an Aboriginal woman he met on his travels.

This man seems to have died early in his life. Was he thrown from a horse, was he gored by an out of control steer, was he bitten by a deadly snake, did he drown in a swollen river, did he die of thirst as he crossed a lonely desert with cattle or did he return to where he came from after he had had enough of the lonely way of a vagabond's life?

So far, I can find not a skerrick of life to put into my deflated Mystery Man.

Anyway, back to my dreaming, as I do believe in the Dream Time you know.