The 2015 Theo Barker Memorial Lecture at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Bathurst on Friday 14 August will explore relationships, marriages and families in early colonial New South Wales. Head of Campus at CSU in Bathurst, Professor Jo-Anne Reid, said this free annual memorial public lecture celebrates the life and work of former history lecturer Mr Theo Barker. "This is the sixth Theo Barker Memorial Lecture and it will be presented by guest history lecturer Associate Professor Grace Karskens from the University of New South Wales," Professor Reid said. "The title of Professor Karskens' talk is 'Men, women, couples and families on Australia's first frontier, 1803 to 1830'. In it she will explore the findings of her research on relationships, marriage and families in the early settler community at Castlereagh on the Nepean River in New South Wales. The lecture will examine the impact of the shortage of women on the marriage stakes in early colonial New South Wales. She will ask and answer, what happened when older men married fourteen and fifteen year old girls? What about the fact that there were so many young convict men around? How big were their families, and what became of all those children? And just how far were men and women prepared to go for love and passion? This will be a fascinating and fitting public lecture and I invite the Bathurst community to attend." This free public lecture is co-presented by CSU and the Bathurst District Historical Society (BDHS) in honour of the late Mr Theo Barker, Bathurst's historian and a long-standing member of the BDHS. Mr Barker wrote a two-volume history of Bathurst, and The Story of Three Colleges, a history of CSU's three predecessor institutions.