Well...after many weeks of waiting, the full article from the National Beta newspaper site has finally come online, and it's left me with a deep sense of sadness and, as usual with this family, more questions.
As seen above, the Police Report was published in the Argus on Friday, July 10, 1863. It reveals that Anthony was arrested and had to front the court after he was found sleeping in a horse stall in a Melbourne stable. Why did he have nowhere else to sleep? Where were his wife and children? It was the middle of winter..to have no home or a warm place to sleep would be a terrible situation to be in.
This event occurred only weeks before Anthony travelled to Geelong to sign up with the Auckland/Waikato Militia- was his destitute state responsible for his signing up to serve in the Maori War? Promises of a free passage to New Zealand with free land grants at the end of service must have sounded tempting to a man who didn't even have a roof over his head in Melbourne's cold winter.
The first advertisements to be carried in the Argus in relation to recruiting for volunteers to fight in the Maori wars appeared in the week of July 17, 1863- just a week after Anthony Corvan appeared in Court. The following blog entry features one of these notices, exactly as our Anthony would have read it in his copy of the Argus newspaper.
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