Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the Botany Bay Chapter of the Fellowship of the First Fleet. It's an elite group.
We are at the Gardens on Forest in Peakhurst which, more usually, is "the perfect venue for elegant weddings and special celebrations".
Today they are welcoming visitors who are proud of a direct link to a convict past. Their relatives stole haberdashery, ripped lead from roofs and carried out acts of highway robbery. One pinched a gamecock and two hens.
It seems likely that several of those that have turned up for today's meeting may even be distant relatives of one another. There were only 1500 people – officials, seamen, marines, convicts, women and children – on the first fleet of 11 ships that arrived in Botany Bay in 1788.
Stories, exchanged over coffee and fruitcake, emerge of the colony's first farmer, the commissary who was awarded a large chunk of Woolloomooloo – and then lost it, and, we like a bit of gore, the first official hangman.
Have they no shame? Of course not. There was a time, only a generation or so ago, when such matters wouldn't be discussed in polite society, if at all. Convict shame, however, has become convict chic.
An academic paper, Convict Ancestry: a neglected aspect of Australian Identity, published in 2003 in the journal of Nations and Nationalism, stated: "...the 'hated stain' of convict ancestry is senescent, and will diminish with intergenerational replacement."
Since the 1988 bicentenary, it adds: "It became increasingly fashionable to uncover a convict ancestor. Early arrivals, especially on the first fleet, were particularly welcome finds with convict ancestry 'one of the most sought-after prizes of genealogical inquiry'."
Brad Argent, spokesman of genealogy site Ancestry, said there was a time when the ‘convict stain’ was very much hidden.
"I’ve heard stories of politician’s (historically) disposing of records to hide the shame of a convict ancestor," he said.
"I think the cultural turning point was Season 1 (2007) of WDYTYA (Who do you think you are?) where Jack Thompson, upon discovering his convict ancestry, proudly proclaimed them as 'Australian Royalty'."
The Botany Bay chapter will extend from Cooks River to Waterfall and to Cronulla. Jon Fearon, president of the Fellowship, said: "We are hoping people in that area will find the joy of belonging to a chapter together as first fleeters."
There was certainly a joy evident in extending some of those remarkable personal stories to a wider audience.
Rebecca Moody, a teacher of languages from Peakhurst, offered the story of John Palmer who arrived in Australia on the flagship HMS Sirius, which also carried Captain Arthur Phillip.
"He was the purser, the supply person, he became the Commissar of NSW because the former commissar couldn't do his job," she said. "Where the Art Gallery of NSW is, that's where they were positioned. He was granted land in Woolloomooloo, so he owned all of Woolloomooloo, he had a windmill to grind grain and he had some ships that did sealing.
"He was involved with Bligh and Macquarie tried to get rid of Bligh. He was having a dinner with Bligh that night when they came in and dragged Bligh out from under the bed. [Palmer] had to go back to England and testify in court about the rum rebellion and Bligh. Because he left, he left his his property it got rundown and lost value."
She added: "We didn't get anything. It's gone. It got sold to somebody else. I am really proud of all the things that he did and to be a descendant of his."
Also doing his bit to help feed the fledgling colony was James Ruse, the first farmer and five times great grandfather of Margaret McLennan.
She said: "There's James Ruse Drive out Parramatta way, Ruse the suburb and James Ruse Agricultural High School. He was a farmer back in Cornwall. He was convicted of stealing two watches.
"He came out here and put his hand up when Arthur Phillip said we need somebody to try and help us with supplies. He started the farm out at Harris Park with only two crops , maize and corn I think it was. He tilled the soil and burnt ash in the soils as a fertiliser and he supposedly made a hand plough.
"My grandparents kept it quiet. My mother was right into it. She took herself off to uni and did an Australian history course."
Margaret Lacey had a story somewhat darker. James Freeman grew up on the streets of Hertfordshire. He was charged with stealing as a highwayman with other "gentlemen". He was then sentenced to hang.
"At that age, he was 16, the judge commuted it to transportation so he spent more than 12 months on the hulks on the Thames and then travelled on the Alexander in the first fleet. In the early stages of the colony they had a famine and didn't know when supplies were coming. [Governor] Phillip cut back the rations and he [Freeman] and another chap were caught stealing flour.
"His partner, in crime, was hung beside him and he had the noose around his neck himself and Phillip realised at this stage that he was a young man, he was 18, and he needed young men to build the colony.
"Phillip made him the offer, his plea bargain you might say, that he was never to leave the colony but he was to become his hangman because the previous person totally botched the job."
She said she had learnt the detail of the hangman story about 10 years ago. "I thought it was wonderful Australian history. I was absolutely thrilled. I don't think my parents would have been."
