First Fleet descendant Roma Loretta Whybin of East Maitland took a trip into her family's past during a horse and carriage ride around Morpeth for her 80th birthday.
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Roma, nee Wright, is the great great granddaughter of First Fleet convict Joseph Wright from Middlesex, England who was convicted for stealing building materials while working on a building site and second fleet convict Eleanor Gott from Liverpool, England.
At 80, Roma is the youngest surviving fourth generation descendant of Australia's First Fleet settlers.
Her connection to Morpeth started when two of Joseph Wright's children John (her great grandfather) and Thomas left Sydney to settle in Morpeth in the 1840s.
In 1852, her grandfather Robert Wright was born at Phoenix Park, Morpeth.
Roma's father Ernest George Wright was born in 1888 to Robert Wright's second wife Annie Shoesmith at Morpeth.
Roma's father, known as George, was a broom maker and had a millet farm at Phoenix Park.
He married Reta Vera Nash from Dungog in 1932 and they were living in Princess Street, Morpeth when they had their first child Marie.
Roma was born on September 17, 1934.
After the death of their father in 1935, Roma and her sister where raised in the Princess Street house by their mother Rita and grandmother Maria Nash (Charlsworth).
Her sister Marie still lives in the house.
Roma is a cousin to Morpeth farmer John Wright.
During the 1955 Maitland flood Roma was working for Sim Brothers car business in High Street, Maitland.
She was caught in the rising flood waters and retreated to the second level of Hamilton Wright dentistry in High Street.
Roma was stranded there for several days until the water receded.
She married Maitland butcher John Thompson Nichols (who died in 1963) on December 17, 1955.
The couple purchased a house in Narang Street, East Maitland and they had two children Brett and Jennifer.
Roma married radio and television technician, the late Raymond Whybin, originally from Paterson. Raymond and Roma had two children together - Gary Whybin born in 1970 and Chris Whybin born in 1972.
Roma has five grandchildren - Amanda Solomou, Michael Solomou, Sarah Solomou (O'Connor), Renae Anderson (Nichols) and Ryan Nichols and four great grandchildren Ryley and Charlie O'Connor, Ruby Anderson and Grace Neilson.
Roma's family secretly planned her special birthday celebration since January.
This included a horse and carriage ride through the streets of Morpeth with her family and sister and lunch at the Commercial Hotel overlooking farmland owned by the descendants of John and Thomas Wright since 1840.
