Today's post is about one of my distant relatives on Mum's (Atkin) side of the family. My 2x great-grandfather Samuel Atkin came to Australia from Lincolnshire in 1853, and three years later was followed by his older brother Henry with his family. Henry settled near Newstead (not far from Castlemaine), and his daughter Elizabeth married Charles Slee, the Slees being another prominent early Newstead family. Elizabeth and Charles had 14 children (!) and this story is about their grandson Mark Mackie - my third cousin once removed - and what would have been, for the time, a pretty incredible adventure. Mark Mackie was born in Camberwell in 1899, and was educated at Scotch College. He worked as a photo-engraver and had a keen interest in yachting. In 1927 he was one of several ex-public school boys to undertake an 8 month trip in the South Pacific, aboard a yacht named Utiekah III, a 37-ton, 56 ft, auxiliary ketch built in Tasmania two years previously. The Utiekah...