Down near picturesque Lake Jindabyne, at the feet of the majestic Snowy Mountains, lies the grave of a man who could be my Mystery Great Grandfather, aka MG.

But is he MG? Is he my grandmother’s birth father? That’s the six million dollar DNA question.

George Collman was born just before Christmas 1877 on the family farm known as ‘Boloco’; a delightful Christmas present for his parents Charles and Louisa.

It seems fairly clear what was expected of George in terms of how he would be spending his life. By the time that George was ten, as far as the 1887 Government Gazette is concerned, he had his very own registered cattle brand – two upper case letter ‘C’s above a lower case ‘n’.

George was in his early 30s when my grandmother was born and he wasn’t yet a married man. He’s definitely in the frame… if I could just place him in the right location at the right time… but none of his records seem to be labelled anything other than Jindabyne or Paupong or Boloco; the family farm.

In January 1914, at about the same time that my grandmother’s mother, Miriam, was abandoning her third baby in Sydney, George Collman married Catherine Elizabeth McGregor, the daughter of a Jindabyne sawyer. Two months later Miriam got married in Queensland.

Between 1914 and 1930, George and Catherine parented at least eight children at home in Paupong which is just south of Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains.

In March 1962, George died in Jindabyne. There is nothing obvious that might link him to Mirim or her significant locations of Sydney or Mallanganee…

Except this one tiny clue… his death record says that his occupation was ‘mail contractor’.

Miriam’s mother was the postmistress at Mallanganee.

It’s a thousand kilometers away from Jindabyne.

But could this be a link? Could this tiny clue actually be the smoking gun?