I am obsessed with wanting to know who my ancestors are. When I asked my parents what our ancestral background was, they’d respond with a vague, “Oh, you know, English and Irish, I think.”

My husband and I had just moved back to Australia after a stint in London, and the bug to find out more about my ancestors had really bitten. I’d watched Who do you think you are? and had seen advertisements for Ancestry.com, so I knew my search for family details should be easier than ever.

I logged onto Ancestry.com.au and signed up for a free trial*. After creating my account, I entered information about myself, then details of my parents, and my grandparents. I entered as much information as I knew about them, such as full name, the date and location of births, marriages and deaths, and where they lived. Woah! I started having second thoughts. I recalled that a security question often asked online is the maiden name of your mother. Is adding my parents’ information online a good idea?

I found the Ancestry.com.au Privacy button, which provided some reassurance. Only the details of deceased people (or people over the age of 100) are made public. And I also had the option to make my tree publicly or privately available, or private and not searchable. I had control over how much I shared. Reassured, I added in as much information as I knew.

As I completed each person’s profile, little green leaves appeared in the top right-hand corner of the records I added. Each green leaf offers a hint that new, potentially relevant, information about the individual is available.

Hints are found based on the combination of information entered about an individual (name, location, date of birth, death or marriage; and name of spouse or children). These data are automatically cross-referenced with Ancestry.com’s vast databases of public Family Trees and access to Census Records and Birth, marriage and death records.

To see the hints, I clicked on the individual with the green leaf, then Profile, then finally on the Hint tab. The hints listed information sources such as publicly available trees, that often included new information about the person I was researching. They also include links to other records. I now discovered new family members (living and dead) and my tree branched out.

Like any healthy tree, mine sprouted in all directions. I added in family members from the maternal and paternal sides of my father and mother. Then, I found information about my four sets of grandparents’ maternal and paternal sides (although information on my father’s maternal side came to a fairly abrupt halt). So, you get the idea that I became swamped with a tsunami of information. I originally ignored information about siblings as I became overwhelmed—preferring instead to focus only on my direct ancestors—but I soon discovered that a much richer trove of knowledge of my direct ancestors became available to me through descendants of my ancestors’ siblings.

Getting to this point devoured hours of my time, but I only had a one-dimensional view of my family tree. Whilst, I had many names of people I never knew existed, and some minor details such as the dates of their birth and death, a three-dimensional picture of who these people were and how they lived eluded me.

I needed to narrow my focus, so devoted my attention to my father’s paternal line. I want to state at this point that I place an equal value on my father and mother’s family. For example, my 5x Great-Grandfather whose surname I wasn’t born with holds an equally precious position in my family tree as does the 5x Great-Grandfather whose surname I shared. But I had to start somewhere.

Next time, I share the discovery of my paternal family line, which takes me to Ireland.

*To ensure that everyone receives only one trial, a payment method is required to initiate a free trial. A small pre-authorisation charge will appear (and disappear) during the trial to verify the card information. For more information about free trials, see Ancestry® Free Trial.

Learning about my family tree obsessed me since I was young. Before the internet. Before it was easy.

My grandparents told me about their grandparents. With this information, I sent letters to Births, Deaths and Marriages in the United Kingdom seeking details of my relatives.

I’d wait for weeks for a reply and when the envelope with a Great Britain postage stamp arrived, I’d grab my pencil, and record full names and information of births, deaths and, well, marriages. I suddenly had ‘great-great-great’ grandparents! A family tree of sorts appeared in a child’s scrawl.

Sometime around the time I left school, I forgot all about my dusty relatives and focussed on building a career, meeting the man of my dreams and creating a family. But the pull of the unknown surfaced again once my children needed less of me. And there was the internet, and there were websites that offered to help.

Not all members of my family share my enthusiasm for finding out who our relatives are. Their interest in my discoveries range from rapt attention and shared joy to a disinterested “how does that change anything for me?” I get it. I really do. Unless I uncover a long lost wealthy relative looking to distribute their riches to us, our day-to-day lives don’t change with knowing who our ancestors are.

But I am a believer we are all a product of nurture and nature. Within every human lies (potentially) genetic material from ancestors as far back as their 5xGreat-Grandparents. Think about that for a moment. Let’s leave physical medical history aside here (although essential!) and look more at our nature. Have you ever wondered about where your music ability comes from when your parents are tone deaf? Or about any of your special skills and talents that you appear to be born with, that you don’t share with your mother or father?

I knew about the people who have nurtured me. But I knew little about my extended family members whose DNA I shared. I knew nothing of their lives or their struggles. What did they have to sacrifice in order for me to live in the lucky country that is Australia?

By 2010, there was another, more distinctive, pull for me to uncover my ancestors. I’d just spent two years living in London with my husband. During that time, the precious aspect of heritage in Great Britain was bought into sharp focus. I envied their sense of belonging and sense of place. Their names handed down through generations identify their lineage and their religion. They know where their community is and take great comfort in that. I am a proud 5^th-generation Australian—and yet I am wrong-footed with sections of the Australian community who consider people like myself ‘not really of this land.’ Australia is my home, but where do I belong? Do the English, whose family connection to the country is hundreds of years old, ask themselves the same thing about their home in the English country-side? They know they belong. In our country, multi-generational Australians are so removed from their heritage that their children’s names are chosen based on fads. Perhaps this is a positive move towards an assimilated country, where our tribe colours are fading. But still, I wonder whether I’ll ever be allowed to feel guilt-free about my white European background—in my home?

Marcus Garvey said, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” I needed to find my roots.

Next, I’ll share with you my journey in uncovering my family tree.