Diary of an Australian Genealogist

Genealogy notes 23 - 29 Feb 2012 - lots of blogging

2012-02-29T13:04:00.000-08:00

We've been back from Darwin four days and most of that time has been spent trying to catch up with everything in between various medical appointments. I had to finalise the last of the daily blogs from the War Comes to Australia tour (appeared over six days in Diary of an Australian Genealogist) and then do an overview report on my website. The other Darwin blog I finished was a report was on the family history seminar held after the tour.

There was the usual pile of mail waiting for us and I was excited to see my prize for winning one of Inside History's Friday Facebook competitions. I'm looking forward to reading Lucy Frost's Abandoned Women: Scottish Convicts Exiled Beyond the Seas! Currently I'm about half way through Babette Smith's Australia's Birthstain: The Startling Legacy of the Convict Era so it looks like my convict reading theme will continue for a bit longer.

Another exciting piece of correspondence was to receive an invitation to speak at the Deniliquin Genealogy Society's annual expo in October. The last time we were in Deniliquin NSW was because our car broke down travelling back from Adelaide to our then home in Canberra. I'm sure this visit will leave much more pleasant memories.

I didn't think I would get to Sydney this year but the Royal Australian Historical Society have asked me to partner with Carol Baxter to present a full day workshop on researching your family and writing up the family history. I've worked with Carol in a writing seminar before and she is an inspirational speaker who really gets people enthused about writing up their family stories in an interesting way. The new RAHS Calendar of Events (for Apr-Jun) is not up yet but the dates will be 12 April and 19 April - it will run twice as they are expecting it to be popular.

It's my other half's birthday and every year I try to take him some place special that we haven't been before. As we have just got back from Darwin and are going to Adelaide in a few weeks, I didn't want to travel to far. One of the places that has been on my bucket list since arriving in Melbourne in 2003 is to stay at the Vue Grand in Queenscliff. We've done a few fishing charters out of Queenscliff and quite often go down to the Bellarine peninsula to get fresh mussels from Portarlington but we've never stayed at this historic hotel. By chance, I saw a special summer accommodation offer and although summer is now technically over, I was still able to book a night at the special rate for his birthday. I'm really looking forward to it as we haven't even been inside before.

We can't linger down at Queenscliff as I'm giving three talks at the Kyabram Regional Genealogy Society on Saturday and eight of my Deniliquin friends are going to make the trek over to Kyabram (VIC) as well. It should be a good day although after that many talks and lots of questions I often feel a little drained! Max is going along to to sell some of the Unlock the Past publications that I usually take along with me because people out in regional areas don't always get to look at books prior to buying. I know I always like to see before I buy!

There is a stack of unread blogs, e-newsletters and even emails still to catch up on so enough diary writing for now! Until next time.

Genealogy notes 22 Feb 2012 - Final day of Darwin battlefield tour

2012-02-23T17:11:00.000-08:00

The last week has gone very quickly although we have been kept very busy on the War Comes to Australia tour organised by Unlock the Past in collaboration with Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours. This last day is basically breakfast and then transfers out to the airport although a number of people seem to be staying on to do other things in the Territory.

It was also a last chance to say goodbye to new friends and swap contact details. I was particularly looking forward to going down to breakfast as I had given Brad Manera my uncle's WW2 kidney dish to look at overnight. I wanted to know if this was a common item that every soldier brought back or something more unique. Mum had said that my uncle used it to eat out of but it didn't really seem big enough for that.

I was very excited when Brad confirmed it was uncommon and that it appeared to be either Italian or French in origin. As my uncle had engraved the various places he had been to in the war along with dates and various drawings and symbols this made it even more unique. I am now more than ever determined to research his war service and he will be my ANZAC day blog this year so I have a bit of time. Also when I go to Brisbane in June I will ask Mum about his photo albums as I remember seeing WW2 photos amongst Mum's albums. Brad and I will keep in touch about our findings.

I will be doing an overview blog which will appear on my website but just to wrap up this daily blog, I have found the tour really enjoyable and interesting. Not only that it has further awakened my academic interests which have been a bit dormant since I finished my Masters back in the late 90s. While on the UTP genealogy cruise last November a friend asked when was I going to do my PhD as it is on my list of things to do when retired. My response was I hadn't found a topic yet (you have to be pretty passionate about something for a PhD) and my interests have moved on since I did my Masters on Female Philanthropy in Colonial Queensland. I suspect that I really should do another degree or post graduate degree to get back into research before plunging into a PhD. I should probably move house too as that is disruptive and time consuming!

Would I do another battlefield tour? Without hesitation, especially if it had a personal connection to our own families. I'd like to thank again Unlock the Past and Mat McLachlan for giving me the opportunity to be part of the tour.

On Saturday there is the Unlock the Past Family History Seminar with the Genealogical Society of the Northern Territory and the Northern Territory Library (being held at the Library) so stay tuned for a report on that. Rosemary Kopittke and I are each giving three talks and it should be a great day.

Genealogy notes 21 Feb 2012 - Day 5 of Darwin battlefield tour

2012-02-22T22:48:00.000-08:00

Today was an early start on our War Comes to Australia tour as we were heading down to the Adelaide River area to visit various military sites. I was on the second bus and our driver gave a running commentary on the history of Darwin and the Northern Territory as we made our way south. First stop was the WW2 Strauss airstrip where there is a static display outlining the role of the airstrip and three large kittyhawk aircraft replicas attract passers by as it is not obvious it is an old military airstrip until you stop.

Second stop was the Rail Heritage Precinct at Adelaide River where there was lots to see especially about the railway and the building of the overland telegraph. I wandered around the grounds to see the outside displays as well but it was incredibly humid. We also had morning tea here as well and I think my very nice, but hot cup of tea only made me sweat more.

The third stop was at the Adelaide River war graves cemetery and here Brad Manera performed a short, but moving, ceremony reciting the very moving "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old, Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, We will remember them". Followed by Lest We Forget. Then members of the War Widows' Guild laid a wreath at the memorial. We then had a quick look around but the humidity must have been 100% and most of us tried to stay in the shade.

We then had a short drive out to Mt Bundy Station which is a well known working cattle property for a look and just near the station were some incredible termite mounds and also a herd of buffalo. We didn't get out here and after a few 'termite photos' we went back to the Adelaide River Inn for lunch. I was fortunate to be sitting at the same table as our driver and he pointed out some of the very interesting birds in the nearby trees. Of course I can't remember their name now but they had red eyes and yellow breasts.

After lunch we swapped our bus for the all terrain vehicle which the other group had been on in the morning. I felt sorry for Brad at this point as he had to do the all terrain trip again as he was giving the commentary on the significance of the Snake Creek area. I hadn't even realised this area was there and as we made our way in, you could see all kinds of relics in the bush, from munition storage depots to old research buildings and accommodation places. The old train tracks were also visible in places. A fascinating area and I felt like wanting to go on an archaeological dig there, as it awakened feelings I haven't felt since I did archaeology at university many years ago.

From there we made our way to the old WW2 Coomalie airstrip and a local expert on the area gave us a talk. We were very lucky as it had been teeming rain all the way from Snake Creek to Coomalie and the runoff was flooding the sides of the road. However as we arrived at Coomalie the rain stopped and we were able to get out and look around although the thunder still rumbled overhead. The humidity had dropped substantially which was most welcome.

Then it was the long trip back to Darwin and Brad told various anecdotes and answered questions and we were back at the hotel in time to freshen up for the farewell dinner. This was a buffet with various roasts, potatoes, vegetables, salads, soup, bread and a very tempting dessert section. There was lots of conversation, farewell speeches and people swapping contact details.

Tomorrow those heading home will be taken to the airport, but quite a few are staying on to see more of Darwin. We will be doing some sightseeing ourselves and the arrival of the Queen Mary 2 in Darwin tomorrow is a must see. Till next time.

Genealogy notes 20 Feb 2012 - Day 4 of Darwin battlefield tour

2012-02-21T23:15:00.000-08:00

Regular readers will know that I'm on the Unlock the Past and Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours War Comes to Australia tour and I'm a bit behind in my blogging as the days are quite full and there isn't that much time to write my blog let alone keep up with my emails, tweets and other social media. Plus the heat and humidity has a way of sapping one's energy too.

Day 4 was a combination of visits to various museums and then three talks in the early evening from 4-7pm at the beautiful Northern Territory Library within the NT Parliament House which was an experience in itself.

First however to the museums and we boarded our buses ca 9.00am to head out to East Point Reserve and the Darwin Military Museum and the new Defence of Darwin Experience. We had a group photo with one of the WW2 military gun emplacements in the background. It was also good to see some wallabies seeking shade under the trees near the museum too.

I've been to the museum a few times and you could spend hours looking at both the indoor and outdoor displays but I was more interested in the new Defence of Darwin Experience which had only opened two days earlier for the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin. This is a very impressive interactive display and if you fully explored everything it would take some hours (Max spent four hours there but that included time chatting to old diggers).

Those of us on the tour didn't have that luxury and I found that one of the most moving exhibits was a map of Darwin which then has virtual Japanese planes flying over and dropping virtual bombs in the two raids and you see just how much of Darwin and the harbour was bombed as these big red/yellow splotches cover the map. The realistic re-enactment in the theatre is both audio and visual and almost leaves you a little shell shocked at the end (there is a warning outside that advises about the bright lights, noise and so on). A must see addition to any visit to Darwin.

With the morning gone we returned to either the city centre or the hotel for lunch and then out to the Australian Aviation Heritage Centre for the afternoon. I have been there many times so I stayed behind to write the Day 3 blog and caught the bus again later to go to the Northern Territory Library for the talks. Perhaps what I found the most staggering when I went to the Aviation Heritage Centre was the magnificent B-52 bomber which is just so huge. The Centre has all kinds of aircraft as well as other displays and is a must see museum even if you aren't a plane addict!

As I suspected by the end of the day some people on the tour were too hot, tired etc to attend three hours of talks at the Library. Perhaps if the talks were at the hotel we might have got more of the tour people attending. However, the talks were also free to Darwin residents so there was still a good turn-up at the Library. As it is inside Parliament House everyone and their bags must be screened on entry - I never beep at the airport but I did there! As we were a bit late getting there, the talks started a bit late as well.

First up was Dr Tom Lewis OAM who talked about the Myths and Perceptions of the Raids on Darwin 19 Feb 1942 and I had an idea of what he would be talking about as there was an interview with him about this topic in the NT News anniversary souvenir which I had read. As a professional historian, Tom gets frustrated/annoyed at the errors/misperceptions/myths about the bombing that are repeated and he pointed out numerous examples and what the 'truth' was using documented sources. In particular he looked at the comparisons with Pearl Harbour.

I was not totally comfortable with Tom making fun of, almost ridiculing the 'amateurs' or 'not for profits' he was using as examples and I don't think he really should have named and shamed at a public talk. I could see the point he was making but I still found myself hoping that none of those people were present. As someone with a history background I can understand his frustrations but with my archives and libraries background, I am also aware that these 'amateurs' and 'not for profits' are also sometimes the only ones interested in events/subjects and without their keenness to capture stories/save/donate records etc, we might not have anything for future generations. I see our job as to educate and encourage use of documented sources and citations whenever possible and in family history the rule is to have at least two pieces of evidence to confirm every fact. No doubt this difference in viewpoints could be debated much further, much like all the disputed points of Darwin's military heritage.

Brad Manera was next and at first I wondered where he was going with his talk on an overview of war and Australia's role in the Empire under threat. He started with the marines/soldiers that guarded the convicts and reminded us that most of them had military experience in the American revolutionary war, the Crimea and so on. He moved on to NSW sending a contingent to the Sudan (and I loved his reference to Charlton Heston at Khartoum) and from there to the Boer War and the colonial/Commonwealth contingents. Then to Gallipoli and the Western Front and one thing that particularly struck me was his explanation of the various war memorials across Australia for WW1. The reason that Australians did build such elaborate WW1 memorials was because we couldn't visit the graves of our husbands and sons as they were buried overseas in foreign countries and we needed somewhere to mourn. He had slides showing images of the various places which made it that much more poignant. It was a great overview and could have been longer.

By the time it was my turn to speak it was just after 6.30pm and a number of people left then but it was still a good crowd (not sure what the overall numbers were) and those staying were more interested in family history than military history. My talk was on Discovering Your Military Ancestors in Australia and I have promised to put a copy of my presentation on my website on the Resources page but haven't had time to do that yet (within the next week). Strangely enough my talk was a good follow on to Brad's as my family examples all fitted into the places/battles that he had talked about and put a real person with family into those horrific situations at Gallipoli and the Western Front. I even held up my Uncle's 'kidney' dish to show how war time souvenirs can also help to trace a relative's war experiences. I was pleased that three Darwin people came up and said how much they enjoyed the talk and two said they were also going to next Saturday's family history seminar, again at the Northern Territory Library. I also received good feedback from people that night at the hotel and the next day as people caught up with me.

I think my presentation may have been better placed at the start of the tour so that those who didn't know me, could have chatted to me about their family history problems earlier than the last day. I have even taken some problems away with me and will get back to people by email although it's always better to have a personal chat and discuss results if you can.

It was after 7.30pm by the time I finally caught up with Max for dinner and there was a thunderstorm imminent so we drove up Smith Street looking for inspiration and dinner. We saw Hot Noodles and couldn't resist and had Sweet Chilli Quails for entree and Curry Laksas sitting outside while the rain came down in torrents. By the time we finished a terrific meal, so had the rain and we drove back to the motel. It's an 8.30am start tomorrow as we are heading down to the Adelaide River area for a full day of touring various military attractions. Stay tuned.

Genealogy notes 19 Feb 2012 - Day 3 Darwin battlefield tour

2012-02-19T21:30:00.000-08:00

The 70th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin on 19 Feb 1942 also marks the introduction of the Bombing of Darwin Day into the Australian calendar of military events. It's good to know that the 19th of February will be remembered every year in a formal way just like ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day.

The Sunday Territorian had a wonderful 32 page souvenir wraparound which is full of moving personal stories, great photographs and contributions from the Prime Minister, Chief Minister and the Lord Mayor of Darwin. So I made sure to get a copy of the newspaper early as I did not want to miss out. NT News also has a special multimedia presentation on their website.

Along with just about everyone else in Darwin, we attended the main commemorative service at 9.30am, although a little later than that due to the usual last minute delays. Everyone attending was given a program and a very handy City of Darwin/1942 Frontline Australia hand fan and a free bottle of water which was great to see and much appreciated. Obviously there were not enough seats for everyone but huge screens had also been erected for those who couldn't get close enough to see in person. Fortunately the area has lots of trees for people to sit/stand under as well.

We managed to find a place to stand at the back of one of the seating areas with a screen just in front so we had a great view and it was easy to hear too. Next to me was a very elderly man on his own and he looked like an old digger and I was concerned to see him standing when just in front of us there were a number of families with very young children occupying chairs. I started thinking that one of the parents should put a child on their laps and give the old man a chair. Well my thoughts must have communicated with the parents as after about a half hour, one of the fathers offered me a seat. I immediately offered it to the old man and he said no, I should have it. After insisting, and holding the chair for him so that he could shakily sit down, he gave me a big smile and a thank you.

As we started going through the program and listened to the speeches I could see him trying to discretely wipe the tears behind his dark glasses and felt my own eyes misting up as I sensed his memories. I don't know if he was one of those personally caught up in the bombing of Darwin on that fateful day as he was reluctant to talk but when he got up to leave during the wreath laying, he thanked me and gave me that big smile again and wandered off on his own. I'm so glad that we decided to stand next to him and in some strange way it made the whole ceremony that much more personal for me.

As I mentioned earlier there was a program and Ray Martin was the Master of Ceremonies and was on stage with all the official dignitaries including the Governor General, Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, Chief Minister, Lord Mayor and so on. The Darwin Choral and Australian Army Band Darwin sang I Am Australian and the air raid sirens went and a RAAF PC3 Orion Aircraft flew over. A very realistic re-enactment was then staged by the Australian Army and one of the other freebies given out were ear plugs to minimise the noise. Within a few minutes it was very easy to appreciate how loud and scary it would have been for everyone in Darwin on that day.

The Lord Mayor then welcomed everybody and the Governor General, Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition all gave speeches and then there was the wreath laying ceremony which took quite a while as so many people wanted to lay wreaths. The local guest speaker was next and Mrs Ada Mumford told the audience of her own personal memories of that day and it was a very emotional moment for her. A commemorative prayer followed and then there was the minute's silence (which some people don't seem to understand means that you do keep quiet and don't talk). The ceremony concluded with the first verse of the national anthem Advance Australia Fair (and the words were on the program which was handy as a lot of people around us didn't seem to know the words).

We then wandered back to our hotel and a cup of tea in air-conditioned comfort. Overall I found it very moving and it must have been even more so for all those with personal connections to Darwin on that day. Nothing else was planned for the group and it was a free afternoon and evening although there were other events that people could attend.

Personally I would have liked to have had another talk or two in the afternoon as it was so hot and people might not have wanted to walk into the shopping area or wherever. It is always hard when you are on bus trips as you don't have your own car to easily drive somewhere. Tomorrow there are three talks scheduled from 4-7pm after a big day touring various museums and it might have been preferable to have one of those on Sunday. I'm also an early dinner person so perhaps that's part of my thinking that 7pm is a late finish.

I know how hard it is putting these programs together to try and please everybody (not quite possible anytime) so Unlock the Past and Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours are to be congratulated on the program so far. Everything has gone quite smoothly and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Genealogy notes 18 Feb 2012 - Day 2 of Darwin battlefield tour

2012-02-18T22:59:00.000-08:00

After a very nice buffet breakfast I joined everyone on the War Comes to Australia battlefields tour on a bus trip around Darwin to see the various military sites. As I explained in my Day 1 tour blog, I've been to most of these places numerous times but never as part of an organised tour. The first thing that struck me was that the commentary from the bus driver does really set the scene and that local knowledge is not something that you can read for yourself in the various tourist brochures on specific sites.

First we had a bit of a drive through the city as we made our way to Stokes Hill and on to Fort Hill Wharf. Then to our first stop which was the WW2 Oil Storage Tunnels and I remembered how surprised I was when I first went into them because they are so much bigger than you actually expect to see. My fellow travellers were equally surprised and everyone wandered the length of one of the tunnels looking at the various photo displays along the wall.

Then we went out to the Charles Darwin National Park which I had never been to so I was surprised to see the almost underground old RAAF ammunition bunkers and we had a quick stop at one with a comprehensive display inside. There wasn't really time to have a good look so we will go back out on Wednesday after the tour as I'm not sure why Max hasn't taken me there before, perhaps he has just forgotten about them or doesn't expect them to still be there. The lookout at the Park gives a magnificent view of Darwin and it's worth the drive out alone just for that.

Then it was back into the city and although I've walked past Christchurch Cathedral many times, I've never bothered to walk down and look inside. It's partially survived the bombing and Cyclone Tracy and is today a mix of the old front of the church and a more modern building behind. Back on the bus and we went out to the other side of the city and passed the 1934 QANTAS Hangar another place we've never visited. Unfortunately a stop there wasn't on the agenda so we will go there on Wednesday as it is run by the Motor Vehicle Enthusiasts Club so no doubt lots to interest Max.

Our next stop was the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory another familiar place for me and a great place to take the grand-kids. Still it was good to have a quick look around and I noticed that Frontline Australia was running a Darwin Film Festival there from 15-22 February including the National Sound and Film Archive film Out of the Ashes. Different films were running on the hour and you could easily spend the day in air conditioned comfort for free.

Then back on the bus and back to the hotel to get ready for the two afternoon lectures. First up was Dr Tom Lewis OAM, Director of the Darwin Military Museum and he is the author of a number of military books including A War at Home. I found him an entertaining speaker who talked fast and never used notes (yes an ex schoolteacher). Tom's talk was NT Under Attack: 1942 air and submarine attacks and introduction to war heritage sites, including Darwin Military Museum and I did wonder how he would fit it all in and finish on time but he did.

With the use of two large, easily read maps, Tom was able to discuss the Japanese and American strategies and where Darwin/Australia fitted in this bigger picture. While I was aware of the bombing raids on Darwin, I had not realised that submarines were also active in the area prior to the raids so I found this part of Tom's talk really interesting. Towards the end of his session, Tom then talked about the bombing raids and at this point I would have liked to see a slideshow of images behind Tom as he discussed the various ships, buildings and so on. I think this would have given a much more visual insight into the death and destruction that he was talking about. Given the scope of his talk I could have listened to more, but we are visiting the Darwin Military Museum on Monday (I've been several times and always found it fascinating) plus we are also going to the just opened Defence of Darwin Experience so that will reinforce the points Tom was making.

The next session was Brad Manera and his topic was on the Japanese Submarines in Sydney Harbour 1942 and again I had some familiarity with the topic. Although Brad has a script he doesn't refer to it very often and he is an easy speaker to listen to. Perhaps what struck me most about his talk, was the slide showing the map of Sydney Harbour and the paths taken by the three Japanese midget submarines that night of 1 June 1942. I hadn't realised that one of the subs had actually sailed down and around Fort Denison which is pretty close to where the Sydney Opera House is now. The other surprising fact is that Fort Denison bears two scars from the Americans trying to shoot one of the submarines when it surfaced. I would have liked to have seen a photograph at this point so that next time I'm sailing around Sydney Harbour I know exactly where to look as I've not seen it before, or not realised what I was actually looking at.

The other thing I really liked about Brad's talk was his detailed information on the crews of the three submarines. He had photos, biographical information and so on that showed they were people just like anyone else but caught up in a war. I'm not sure if it was the proximity to St Valentine's Day or not, but I found myself wondering about whether they had wives and families or girlfriends they had left behind like everyone else. And of course their mothers.

One submarine the crew blew up, the other ran aground and the captain killed his crewman and then himself and the third escaped but its fate was not known until it was finally found five years ago. In the chase that night in 1942 there were casualties apart from the 4 Japanese crew, 19 Australians and 2 British sailors were also killed on board the HMAS Kuttabul which took a torpedo and sank within minutes. The Kuttabul is the focus of a commemoration project 1942-2012 and descendants and relatives are being sought.

After a few questions we were all heading out to the buses for the trip down to Darwin wharf and our sunset cruise around the harbour. I've done a few of these (even the pearl lugger used in the movie Australia) but never with a commentary specifically about the bombing raid and where all the various ships were in the harbour. The welcome champagne was nice and the nibblies delicious but then I've never met an oyster kilpatrick that I didn't like!

After sunset we headed into port and the long walk down the wharf back to the buses and the short drive back to the hotel. Tomorrow is the official memorial celebrations and we will all be making our own way there (just a short walk along the Esplanade). There's a free afternoon for people to do their own thing, I'll probably be catching up on my blog writing!

I should also mention that Unlock the Past and Gould Books are tempting people with their book stall at each lecture session and one lady mentioned to me on the harbour cruise that she had spent a small fortune. For once it wasn't me! Till next time.

Genealogy notes 16-17 Feb 2012 - Battlefield tours

2012-02-18T18:29:00.000-08:00

Why is it when you have limited time, everything goes ever so much faster. Thursday was a blur with lots of unexpected things happening while I was busy trying to tidy up before leaving for Darwin and the War Comes to Australia tour. This has been organised by Unlock the Past and Mat McLachlan's Battlefield Tours and I am very privileged to be one of the speakers on the tour.

This is my first battlefields tour and I have contemplated doing one to Gallipoli or the Western Front as we have relatives who died at either place - Tasman Jarvis who died at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and Frederick Trevaskis who died at Langemark, Belgium on 13 Oct 1917. I'm a bit cranky with myself for missing Greece and Crete last year as Max's father Charles Douglas Spencer received his military medal in Greece in 1941.

I also wouldn't mind doing a South African one as two of my mother's uncles, Solomon and William Price went to the Boer War twice, both joined the South African Police and William even married a Boer widow before he died in South Africa in 1916. The other trip I would seriously consider doing is Tobruk where my uncle Leslie Gordon Price was a 'Rat' but his 'kidney dish' shows that he was at many other places in the Middle East and later the Pacific.

So in some ways it's a bit odd that I have ended up in Darwin for a battlefields tour with no personal connection apart from Max's 25 years defence service which saw him in Darwin with both the Army and the RAAF in the 1960s and 70s. However, it was a good opportunity to see how these tours operate and whether you do find out more about the military side of things as well as doing the touristy thing too. As we have four grandchildren in Darwin, we know the city fairly well but I was interested to see how others highlight Darwin to tourists.

So it was with some excitement that I made the trek out to Melbourne airport and after about an hour's delay due to 'paperwork', my Jetstar plane finally made it into the air. It's a long flight over Central Australia and I always get a window seat so that I can look down on the desert, see the sand dunes, the salt lakes, sometimes flooded creeks and rivers and so on. It's fantastic scenery even from that height although we didn't seem to be as high as usual. The pilot also managed to make up some time and after collecting our luggage we (other battlefields tour people were on the same flight) were quickly met and at the Novetel Darwin Atrium on the Esplanade in no time.

With about five minutes to spare before the official welcome dinner we all quickly checked in and headed back down for dinner which was postponed for a few minutes so that we could all settle. I had a bit of trouble with my key card not opening the door but that was soon sorted. Given my hearing issues, they very nicely left me a seat on one of the front tables where I was pleased to see two people I knew from Queensland and the gentleman on my right was from the same suburb where I live (talk about a small world).

Like most group dinners this was an either/or choice and I ended up with chicken for a main and the pudding for dessert with the other choices being steak and cheesecake. Tables of eight never really work for me but given the noise level everyone else seemed to be having a good time getting to know each other. A sponsor of the tour is Inside History Magazine and there was a complimentary copy of their magazine handed out to each individual or couple - appropriately it was their military issue Sep-Oct 2011. After dessert we had the first lecture of the tour, no wasting time!

Brad Manera's World War 2 1939-45: an overview of Australia's role in Europe and the Pacific was a very good introduction to the whole tour. Brad is an easy speaker and his photographic presentation supported what he was saying. At the end he took lots of questions from a very keen audience.

We all have to be ready for our tour of Darwin in the morning at 9.00am and as I had already lost 90 minutes that day (daylight saving & time differences within Australia for my overseas readers), I went to bed! Tomorrow afternoon there are two more lectures and a sunset cruise so another big day ahead. Stay tuned.

Genealogy notes 8-15 Feb 2012 - Cornish genealogy this week

2012-02-15T20:12:00.000-08:00

Where does time go? I've spent a lot of the last week sidetracked by cleaning out my family history file cabinets and rediscovering bits and pieces I'd forgotten about. It really is amazing how much is now online. I must have spent a small fortune printing out images of BDM indexes and other genealogy resources on fiche and film which of course I no longer need hard copies of. Also lots of poor quality printouts from early newspapers which I can now get better quality digital images of through TROVE.

I also spent a bit of time looking at my Cornish ancestors as St Pirans Day is approaching in March. The FamilySearch website now has digitised images of Cornish parish registers so as long as you know the date of the event you can get an image from the digitised register. Certainly beats all those hours of winding through microfilm back in the late 1970s early 1980s when I first started researching my Cornish gg grandparents. The Cornwall Online Parish Clerks website is a perfect companion to the Family Search site and it's no wonder I lost a day or two.

Perhaps the most exciting news of the week was that I entered an Inside History magazine competition and was one of the lucky winners. I'm eagerly awaiting my prize which was a copy of the book Abandoned Women by Lucy Frost - all about Scottish female convicts to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).

I'm off to Darwin tomorrow for the War Comes to Australia Tour which is participating in the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin. It's only five days but the itinerary includes a lot of touring and seminars which should be interesting. Then I have three days off to see our four grandchildren and to do other touristy things in Darwin. We go up every year, usually in the rainy season as there are less tourists then.

Before we head back to Melbourne there is a Darwin family history seminar with the Northern Territory Library and the Genealogical Society of the Northern Territory where Rosemary Kopittke and I are giving three talks each. I'm hoping to do some tweeting and blogging from the far north over the next week as I think it will be a fascinating time to be in Darwin.

Reading the Queensland State Archives Feb 2012 qsa-bulletin, I noticed that there is a new online index to lands sold 1842-1859 which is exciting and one of the reasons I subscribe to free government archive e-newsletters is to learn about new resources. The February issue also had lots of other interesting news and if you have Queensland interests then past issues may be worth looking at here.

One day I will catch up with all my reading piles, paper, email, and online but it won't be anytime soon. There's too much happening which is a good thing for family history. Until next time, happy searching!

Genealogy notes 21 Jan - 7 Feb 2012 - Lots happening

2012-02-07T20:30:00.000-08:00

It has been unbelievably hard settling back into a routine after our five week trip. Even with the laptop permanently set up and connected to the internet again, I find that it is not as easy to spend as much time online as I did before. Probably a good thing!

Part of the issue is catching up with everything - all the emails, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so on. I feel that I have missed so much and just reading the online newsletters takes a while, especially if you stop and look at links mentioned. This is especially true for Lost Cousins, Dick Eastman, Now & Then (SRNSW) to mention just a few.

Then I have my 'paper' genealogy journals and magazines to catch up on and the various books I bought on the cruise. Plus I've been down to the local library and took out two books that people suggested I read for information and background on convicts (Alison Alexander's Tasmania's Convicts: How Felons Built a Free Society and Babette Smith's Australia's Birthstain: The Startling Legacy of the Convict Era).

We've also made a decision that we are definitely going to sell up in a couple of months so a lot of my time has been tackling various rooms of the house in a bid to declutter and pack. It's also been a discovery process as we are now looking at some boxes that we never really unpacked from Canberra (yes I know it's been nine years). Max has an incredible number of photo albums, loose photos etc plus we 'found' all his mother's albums as well which Max received after she died. So I have been distracted by early photos of Max including his school days!

What I also discovered going through some of Max's boxes was that he has kept all my letters to him after I moved to Melbourne (he didn't have email) so that is bringing back a torrent of memories for us both (and what do I do with them - never imagined anyone would keep my letters!). So while it is relatively easy to clear out cupboards, repack and so on, it is also incredibly easy to get sidetracked. Another bag of letters were from his mother and included all sorts of correspondence from family and friends so I have a lot of reading and sorting to do. It is all Max's family, but that's not what he likes doing so it's up to me to be the family archivist for his side, as well as my own.

I also have some genealogy commitments coming up so I've been busy reworking a military talk I am giving in Darwin for the War Comes to Australia Tour and another three talks for the Unlock the Past Darwin family history seminar on 25 Feb 2012. The AFFHO genealogy congress in Adelaide is fast approaching (28-31 March) and I have to get my two presentations to them in advance. The congress should be good as lots of my friends from around Australia and New Zealand will be there and we are even having a Genealogists for Families catch up as well.

The Kyabram Regional Genealogical Society have asked me up there for a seminar on 3 Mar so I'm fitting that in between Darwin and Adelaide - one day I will learn to say no, but these small societies don't get the chance to hear 'external' speakers all that often so it is hard to say sorry, can't do. Plus I have been friends with one of their members for a long time and she is letting us stay with her.

As well as my talks, I also try to do a blog or two and I participated in Twigs of Yore's Australia Day Challenge with my Thomas Price - Wealth for Toil blog and I can never resist a Geniaus challenge so I also did a My Bucket List geneameme. I'm also writing an article for Inside History magazine.

My aim is to get back to doing this diary on a more regular basis as well as keeping on top of my emails and other genealogy news. It makes me wonder how I fitted everything in when I still worked every day - was I just more organised and focussed or am I taking more time out now to smell the roses (and overdosing!). Enough pondering for now, it's back to work - should I tackle all Max's mother's letters or her photo albums? Stay tuned!

Genealogy notes 13-20 Jan 2012 - end of the journey

2012-01-23T15:59:00.000-08:00

Thanks to those people who have been commenting on this blog either directly or through Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. It's always good to know that someone is reading it!

After my idyllic stay at the Jamberoo Pub, we went on to Ulladulla where we spent two days with Max's brother and checked out some nice places to live including Tabourie Lake and Burrill Lake. Now we are wondering if Port Macquarie will be too hot and wet although the Ulladulla area is a little cool for January. The only thing we agree on is that we want to leave Melbourne and move to a much smaller town, away from the traffic madness of a capital city.

We then continued on down the coast and originally planned to stop in Eden but we have been there many times, so pushed on to Mallacoota in Victoria. We have only been there on day trips while passing through so it was good to stay overnight although there was no mobile phone coverage and incredibly windy. We usually cook outside or use the camp kitchen/bbqs but the wind was whipping up a bit of dust so we went to the Mallacoota Hotel for dinner (very nice seafood platter for two and three times cheaper than Melbourne and other places we've been). The stars tonight were absolutely brilliant as there is very little light as Mallacoota is so remote.

Next day we stopped in remote Cann River for an early lunch and unbelievably I had more mobile phone coverage there than I usually get at home (outskirts of Melbourne) so I'm not sure how they roll their networks out! One can't go past a Cann River pie and we didn't - not sure how many Cann River pies I've had over the last few years that we have been doing this trek through Victoria/New South Wales but it's quite a few! We weren't disappointed and after satisfying our pie lust, we moved on towards the Gippsland Lakes which are the largest network of waterways in Australia.

Our friends have a remote property just outside of Paynesville (apparently the boating capital of Australia) and they invited us to stay for a few days. Their place is a haven for just about every bird you can think off. You could spend all day watching the galahs, crimson rosella and lorrikeets and at night you have the owls and possums and other wildlife moving around as well. The fish weren't quite as plentiful but we did manage a feed of garfish which were incredibly tasty once you managed to remove the backbone.

They do a lot of their travel down there by boat so we did the trip into Paynesville by boat and also down to Loch Sport as well as visits to various of the islands which are also breeding colonies for the many species of birds that make the Gippsland Lakes their home. We even had a picnic breakfast on one island, you take all your rubbish back with you and the eco-toilets were interesting. I could have done without the very big hairy spider running across the picnic table as were eating, but then I wouldn't have known that I can still move that fast!

Eventually all good things come to an end and we said goodbye for the trip back across Melbourne and home to Hoppers Crossing (five weeks away and just over 5,000km). The pile of snail mail was unbelievable, but our good neighbour had mowed the lawn for us so that didn't look too bad. Unpacking the caravan was a chore along with washing it down, doing the laundry and going out to the shops, paying the bills and so on. How quickly life returns to normal!

My 'to do' list is several pages long - I have an article to write for Inside History, a Twigs of Yore challenge blog to write for Australia Day, four talks to prepare for the Unlock the Past War Comes to Australia tour to Darwin and the genealogy seminar on 25 February, two presentations to finalise for the AFFHO genealogy congress in Adelaide at the end of March, not to mention getting the house ready for sale! At least the time will go quickly and who said retirement is boring with nothing to do - they obviously weren't a genealogist. Stay tuned.

Genealogy notes 2-12 Jan 2012 Still following in ancestral footsteps

2012-01-12T16:47:00.000-08:00

One thing that has surprised me on this trip is the varying range of mobile phone and internet connections as we move from place to place. Sometimes I have been unable to connect when I fully expected to yet in small remote places I have been able to. One thing I do know, if all capital city people had to experience the varying and frustrating cover like regional people, then I suspect our communication systems would improve speedily!

Before we left Tweed Heads, New South Wales (see last Diary post), we visited the North Tumbulgum historic cemetery as my John and Sarah Finn family moved to Tumbulgum after they sold their farm at Nambour in Queensland. The cemetery is literally on the side of a small mountain in the middle of a rainforest and not quite 20 years ago there was an effort to reclaim the cemetery from the rainforest and signs explain the history of the area and the cemetery. However it was obvious we were the first people to visit in quite a while and the trees and other vegetation have grown even more and the mosquitoes were very hungry! It reminded me very much of Walhalla in Victoria but it's not in a rainforest.

We also took time out to visit Grafton again as another one of my families, John and Helen Carnegie moved there from Brisbane in the 1860s and early 1870s (only then they were temporarily using the surname Stanley) before they moved back to Toorbul in Queensland and restarted using the Carnegie name! Both John and Helen Carnegie are buried in the historic Toorbul cemetery and their gravestone is the only surviving one. I actually have a photograph of it before it was broken.

From there we moved on to Coffs Harbour and stopped at Boambee for the night. As Coffs gets bigger, the smaller towns around it seem to become suburbs and we nearly drove right past the caravan park as we were thinking south of Coffs not in it!

Then we arrived in Port Macquarie a place I have visited many times over the years and is now firming up as one of our options of retiring to. Although I will say it is a very busy place in the Christmas/New Year period, usually we are there outside of the holiday season. The weather was great, although a little humid some days and even a bit cool on others (but then the whole east coast seems to have been cooler this January). There is lots to do here but one of our highlights was an afternoon cruise on a real Chinese junk through the various waterways and we were even followed by a school of dolphins which was good to see.

We had to keep moving on so after four days we headed south and did the big detour around Sydney and finished up in the Southern Highlands, overnight at Moss Vale. This is another family area where my Thomas and Elizabeth Price first went to after arriving in Sydney in 1878. I can track their movements as they had a child in various towns (with my grandfather Henry Price being born in Nattai near Mittagong in 1887) before they moved down to the Shoalhaven area. As we drove down the incredibly steep escarpment via the Illawarra Highway and Macquarie Pass, I couldn't help wonder how they travelled down it in the late 1880s.

We stayed two nights in Shoalhaven Heads and spent our days exploring this very scenic area and again visiting the various places my Price family lived before they left for Charters Towers in Queensland. I also spent time speculating on the fact that if they hadn't done this, Henry Price would never have met Alice White and my mother (and me) would never have been born. It was quite chilly at night for January (although the weather reports said that it was unusual weather) but we still left with Port Macquarie our firm favourite to retire to.

After a look around Kiama where another Price child was born, we headed to Jamberoo where Max was meeting up with his brother for a bit of bush camping which is not quite my style. I am currently booked into the historic Jamberoo Pub and Motel enjoying the peace and quiet and catching up with my emails, writing some long overdue blogs and generally relaxing (although the cockatoos are a bit noisy).

I also have a lot of email newsletters to catch up on and there must be heaps of genealogy news I've missed via tweets and Facebook but I also have to say that I don't think I've been this relaxed in years. Sometimes it really is good to stop and notice the wonderful countryside in which we live and it's great to be able to visit the places my ancestors lived and try to picture what it was like for them back then. Until next time, all the best with your own genealogy searches.

Genealogy notes 18 Dec 2011 - 1 Jan 2012 Genealogy on the Road

2012-01-01T16:01:00.000-08:00

The first two weeks of being a grey nomad has simply flown by, but not without a few dramas along the way. I even managed a bit of genealogy too.

Before we set off we made certain (or tried to) that we had both the car and caravan mechanically sound - new tyres, batteries, services etc - because we knew that we would be travelling on outback roads. We also were keeping up with weather reports because we were travelling in the wet season and that area can flood quickly. Stopovers included Finley (largest irrigation channel in Australia), Forbes (home of Ben Hall's grave, he was an Australian bushranger for my overseas readers), and Gilgandra (home of the 1915-16 Cooee March). The bird life on the way up the Newell Highway was amazing and in many places water lying either side of the road had transformed the area almost into a wetlands. I loved seeing all the emus as you don't always see them closer to the coast.

We finally ran into both mechanical trouble and floods just as we were heading into Walgett, a small town in north western New South Wales which doesn't have a caravan park either, so we couldn't stay. Nor could we find anyone with the time who could help with the caravan dust caps popping off - Max being mechanically minded knew that there was a problem with the bearings so we decided to do makeshift repairs ourselves, gave up on trying to reach Lightning Ridge where we might have been flooded in for Christmas, and made a run back to Narrabri on a road that was 'open with caution', floodwaters having receded a little. We treated ourselves to dinner at the Narrabri RSL and their restaurant the Outback Shack is definitely worth a visit for both its amazing decor and food (real country servings). This is also a cotton growing area and it was interesting to drive through all this lush greenery when we expected dry and dusty.

We have Top Cover with RACV and we were aware that there was a reciprocal arrangement with other RAC organisations around Australia. So we also contacted NRMA but under the arrangements we only have basic cover in NSW which meant the caravan was not covered and they couldn't help us until we actually broke down and needed a tow. We need to look into this a bit more when we get back as breaking down in the outback with no mobile phone coverage is not something we really want to do. Nor do we want to take up membership with every RAC organisation either, although maybe you can't if you don't actually live in the state. I could rave on here about why isn't Australia a single country with a single RAC and all the other state differences (including fishing licenses) we have every time we cross a state border but I won't.

I was disappointed about not getting to Lightning Ridge as I do want to see where my great grandmother lived for a time. But she was also out at Thargomindah and Eulo so we will have to definitely come back in the dry season as those towns are even more remote. I always wonder how she managed to get that far out - coach? And of course, the big question - why?

Our repairs held so we moved on to Goondiwindi just over the Queensland border but by then we knew we were in trouble but again, only a day out from Christmas Eve, we couldn't find anyone that could help. So doing more temporary repairs on the other wheel too, we decided to try and make Brisbane. The RACQ advised the best road was via Toowoomba so we set off on the long lonely stretch between Goondiwindi and Millmerran, a town even smaller than Walgett. I was very happy to see the caravan park in Millmerran as at least we would have somewhere to stay as it was now obvious we needed to fix the bearings on the caravan wheels.

Advised there was only one mechanical place in town we went there seeking advice and walked in on them having lunch. To our surprise, they came outside straight away, checked both caravan wheels and said, yes you have big problems! This was more than we had been able to get anyone else to do but then they went on to say they could fix both wheels for us and have us back on the road within the hour. And they did, all still within their lunch hour! We gave them a bit extra so that they could have a Christmas beer or two - we would never have made it down the Toowoomba range without their friendly assistance.

I have always loved small Queensland towns and Millmerran is now one of my favourites for its hospitality and helpfulness. We wandered around the main street while the mechanics fixed the bearings which apparently hadn't been put back on quite properly when serviced.

We then made it into Toowoomba (Max's great grandfather was mayor at one time) and finally Newmarket (Brisbane) to spend Christmas Day with my family. We also caught up with Max's cousins in Burpengary and Redcliffe. We also spent some time in Toowong cemetery looking for family graves which I had last seen thirty odd years ago! Armed with my laptop we could look up Grave Location Search which gave us portion, section and grave number and a map to assist (but it still took some searching and Toowong is very steep in places). Sadly it didn't look like anyone had been to my grandfather's grave in the last three decades so we spent time digging up all the weeds and we then took new digital photos of all my relatives graves. I have old photos at home so it will be interesting to see the changes as the graves look more worn and one had even collapsed.

We are currently at Tweed Heads on the Queensland/ New South Wales border and catching up with friends and relatives before heading further south. Max is off visiting an old army mate who he recently found after forty years and I am taking the opportunity to catch up on my emails, enewsletters, blogs and so on. Before our next trip, I definitely need to get a smaller laptop (or whatever) as this is too big to set up daily, not that I have the energy, or even the inclination, every day. The other drawback is that we don't always have mobile phone or internet coverage and we spend long hours on the road some days.

However it's been great fun so far and we are learning more about our country's history and geography as we go around and I really need to do something about organising our digital photos and movies as we go or it will be an enormous job when we get back! So many interesting things to take images of but often the real thing is so much better to watch. I've seen some great outback sunrises and sunsets, not to mention the absolute beauty of the stars at night in areas where there are no streetlights.

Until I next log on, all the best for 2012. I hope it's a great year for everyone.

Genealogy notes 6-17 Dec 2011 Hitting the Genealogy Road

2011-12-16T12:04:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe it is twelve days since my last Diary post - so much has happened but not all genealogy related. Having been away for almost three weeks there was lots to catch up on in regard to snail mail, bills, emails, weeds in the garden, shopping and just getting over the trip.

I did do my overview of the Unlock the Past genealogy cruise and my last Update from Australia (should be published in a day or so) for MyHeritage plus I have done some updates on my own website. In particular I have listed events that I am involved in in 2012 and I added a link to the Genealogists for Families project on my homepage. Keeping websites up to date is not that easy but you don't always have time to go back and look at every page and time does have a habit of slipping away all too fast.

I'm still to do my traditional Christmas cards but have sent a lot of emails - somehow it is easier to sit and type then handwrite cards and then mail them, yet the time involved is probably not all that different. We haven't done any Christmas lights or decorations this year as we haven't been here but the caravan looks good with the tinsel here and there. My family stopped giving Christmas presents a few years ago now but we did pick up a few little items on the cruise.

Plus we had to pick up our new caravan and start getting that ready for the trip up to Brisbane and back. Today is our big day - in a couple of hours we will be hitting the road, driving through Victoria and New South Wales to reach Brisbane by Christmas eve. We're taking the Newell Highway as I also want to pop in (or is that out) to Lightning Ridge where my gg grandmother was for a time. I've never been out that way so really looking forward to it. I wonder how she got out there from Brisbane??

I have done the Newell before and really like driving through western NSW but it is a bit remote in places. It's 2723km not counting the side trip out to Lightning Ridge and then of course, we are returning via the Pacific Highway but I haven't looked at distance yet. Either way it's going to be a big trip.

I'm not expecting a lot of phone or internet connection so tweets and updates may be few and far between but I'm keeping a log as this will be our first 'grey nomad' trip. Although I will have a good internet connection once we get into Brisbane, I'll take this opportunity to wish all my family, friends, colleagues and internet buddies a happy and safe festive season and a very happy New Year!

Thanks for reading my Diary in 2011 - it's been appreciated.

Genealogy notes 4-5 Dec 2011 - Last day at sea & trip home

2011-12-05T15:47:00.000-08:00

Finally finishing off this last daily blog of my Unlock the Past Irish Scottish history and genealogy cruise on board the Volendam. Hard to believe the 14 days are nearly over, I could easily stay at least another week!

The last day was at sea without internet so most people attended all of the genealogy talks starting at 8.10am with Chris Paton talking about Scottish marriages - I had no idea it was so complicated depending on dates and religion. I was next speaker with Making the Most of Australian Government Archives Online which was a quick trip around the various states and territories highlighting some of the features I particularly like.

A quick question to the audience showed that most people had attended the majority of my talks (11 all up) and the feedback I received personally was really nice. I do like to try and help people do their own research once they get back home by providing URLs and broadening their knowledge of what might be available on particular topics. I was also very pleased (if somewhat embarrassed) to be called almost a living genealogy wiki by Jan Gow during her presentation last night. All the people who brought me their individual problems said that I had either found things they hadn't or I had given them other options to follow up so that was good too. It would be nice to know if they ever do solve some of those rather challenging brickwalls.

The afternoon session was back to back talks including Richard Reid's talk Obliged All the Small Cottiers To Leave His Land which was another emotive session followed by Perry McIntyre on Free Women in the 1830s: Irish and English. Keith Johnson's talk on Books for Irish Research was good and he had a three page handout listing books, articles, journals, directories and so on - although when I will find time to read them is another question!

Lynne Blake then did Young Genies: Helping and Inspiring Young People and I particularly liked her phrase 'catch them when their young and hook them before your dead'! We all need someone to leave our research and family stories too. The last session before dinner was Richard again with Sinners Saints and Settlers: Irish Place Stories Kiama-Kalgoorlie and we all have our own Irish stories that should be captured.

After dinner there was a gathering of all UTP cruisers, with photos, thanks and the drawing of the various prizes. The final talk of the cruise was Chris Paton with the The Mount Stewart Murder which is the oldest unsolved murder in the UK and it also happens to be his direct ancestor. The book is coming out next year so I won't spoil it by giving away any details but it is a fascinating story.

I forgot to mention yesterday that there was a session at the Celtic Club in Melbourne with Richard, Perry, Jan and Rosemary giving talks along with Dr Liz Rushen on Researching Irish Emigrant Women and in Sydney Chris and Rosemary gave talks along with Dr Brad Manera on Sydney Under Attack May-Jun 1942 at the State Records NSW. There was also a session on War Comes to Australia: WW2 70th Anniversary.

As I wanted to see the Volendam berth in Sydney I was up early (as were a lot of other UTP cruisers) to watch the ship sail past the Opera House and under the Sydney Harbour Bridge before berthing at Darling Harbour. It was a magnificent sight watching as the ship passed under the bridge and I don't think there was a lot of room to spare, so I was really glad I made the effort.

After breakfast we went back to the cabin to wait for our turn to leave the ship, and as we had early afternoon flights we weren't required until 8.45am. We passed through immigrations and customs easily after finding our luggage (all neatly laid out in designated colours depending on your departure time). It was outside that we then ran into problems. We had prebooked and paid for airport transfers from the ship to the airport with Clean Cruising so we expected to simply be put on an airport shuttle.

However we were told that there was no booking and were sent to wait with other Clean Cruising airport transfer people with the same problem. It was compounded by the fact that Brisbane is not on daylight saving time so we had to wait until 9.00am for the office to open. One of our growing party of unhappy people rang and was given a booking number which still meant nothing to the Holland America staff organising everyone to their respective buses etc.

As time was passing a number of people said they couldn't wait and left to get taxis to the airport. We continued to try and get some help from Holland America and were passed from person to person until eventually a spokeswoman came and said to us and said there was nothing they could do from their end, it was a Clean Cruising error. We agreed that our tickets from Clean Cruising were 'ambiguous' but a number of us had also queried it with the Front Office staff on board a few days ago and were all told it was ok when in fact it wasn't.

By this time (45 minutes later on a cold windy wharf) there were only four of us left so the Holland America spokeswoman arranged for us to go to the head of the taxi queue and also arranged for a maxi taxi to minimise our costs. Ironically, the taxi driver, despite Sydney peak hour traffic managed to get us to the airport for a cheaper price than what we paid for the airport transfers from Clean Cruising per couple.

Being left 'high and dry' so to speak on the wharf at Sydney was a disappointing way to end the cruise and even more disappointing was the treatment we received from Clean Cruising staff. The staff person who took the phone calls from our party said it was 'not their fault' and it was 'too bad' for us. Well in our group's opinion, it is 'too bad' that Clean Cruising doesn't have a better customer service policy. We will be officially complaining and seeking an explanation along with a refund for the airport transfers that never eventuated.

NB As one who travels all the time, I know things don't always go according to plan but booking a ticket on a transport shuttle is not difficult, especially in your own country and if a travel client has a problem, most companies usually try to help in some way.

We eventually arrived home in Melbourne just after 4.30pm totally exhausted with carrying our heavier luggage and juggling extra bags. So after a nice home cooked curry, an episode of Criminal Minds that I hadn't seen before, I went to bed. Tomorrow will be a catch up day and I am planning to do an overview blog of the cruise in the coming week.

Genealogy notes 2 Dec 2011 Genealogy cruising & Melbourne adventures

2011-12-04T13:17:00.000-08:00

There were no talks this morning due to the early arrival in Melbourne and most people were keen to go ashore. As I live in Melbourne (or at least within a 40km radius) I decided to spend the day catching up with my blogs and to also spend some time looking into the various queries people have given me on the trip so far.

Once I caught up with the last few days cruising blogs, I then put them out via Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Having ticked off those items, it was time for a coffee and a break up on the deck. Suitably refreshed I then tackled the queries. Some people came prepared with their laptops and family history databases, others had printouts and still others were relying on memory.

In every instance I was able to suggest other avenues for them to follow up and in some instances I redid their searches looking for spelling variations etc to find elusive ancestors. I managed to turn up some references for one lady that she hadn't found although it still didn't solve the overall problem of why the family changed their name after the parents had married.

In another query I felt that the family couldn't be convicts as they weren't showing up in the usual indexes so over lunch I discussed it with Keith Johnson and the lady had also followed up my suggestion to talk to Keith so he was familiar with the query. There's probably a military connection but we would need more resources on board for that so the lady has some homework to do once back home.

All up I gave everyone a brief report/suggestions on what I would do next and I have asked them to let me know how it goes. It's always good to know if your ideas work.

After dinner when everyone was back on board, we had two talks - Jan Gow discussing various aspects of researching with FamilySearch and also a brief look at their indexing program. I gave my talk on Online Newspapers and my fondness for looking at the real estate section of modern newspapers from my research counties of interest.

Although I had had a fairly lazy day, I was still tired so I had an early night. Tomorrow is another full day at sea with a number of interesting talks to end the cruise on. I will probably be out of internet range again so this will probably be sent from Sydney and before we disembark to fly home to Melbourne. It's going to be a sad, but happy kind of day tomorrow.

Genealogy notes 1 Dec 2011 Genealogy cruising & Burnie Adventures

2011-12-02T20:30:00.000-08:00

The last two days at sea on board the Volendam and with the Unlock the Past history and genealogy cruisers was amazing and my report of the various sessions is on my other blog SHHE Genie Rambles - read about the two days of full on genealogy here.

Today we were back in Australian waters and accordingly we had a customs inspection before we could go ashore in Burnie Tasmania. The tricky part was that our deck was being called at 7.30am and I was due to speak on Warning Warning: Tips & Tricks to Avoid Common Mistakes at 8.10am. I ended up getting to the theatre with just a few minutes to spare and this talk is also on my website under Resources and scroll down to Presentations.

Rosemary was next with a session on FindMyPast Australasia which I didn't stay for as we wanted to go into Burnie and have a look around. In the afternoon I came back to the ship to work on some of the queries I had been given over the last few days. I just did some preliminary online searches to see if I could solve some of the brickwalls but in most cases it was more a case of providing potential avenues and people will have to follow through when they get home.

Rosemary and Chris Paton gave talks to the members of the Burnie Branch of the Tasmanian Family History Society in the afternoon.

After dinner Richard Reid spoke about Not Just Ned - a True History of the Irish in Australia which was a very successful exhibition at the National Museum of Australia earlier this year. I made a last minute dash to Canberra the weekend before it closed and I'm very glad I did as it was an excellent exhibition and I even purchased the catalogue.

The final speaker of the day was Jan Gow on Checking the Big 5: Creating A Check List for UK Research and in this Jan demonstrated how she keeps track of what she has looked at when searching for various ancestors. There are so many different ways to organise your research and it is always good to see and hear about how others do it.

Afterwards I had thought I would find Max in the Casino again but he had gone to the movies (Pirates of the Caribbean) so I watched Perry and Richard for a little while on three hand poker and 21 respectively. Then it was down to the cabin and bed for me as tomorrow is Melbourne - it does seem strange to be visiting one's home town but I will be using the day to catch up on my blogs and queries while Max shows some American friends around the Queen Victoria Market and other CBD sights.

Genealogy note 29 Nov 2011 Day 10 genealogy cruising at Fjordland New Zealand

2011-12-01T20:43:00.000-08:00

Today was sailing around Fjordland on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand. Our genealogy talks and private session times were changed to fit in with the Volendam’s scenic cruising as we arrived earlier than expected.

It was truly magnificent sailing into and out of Doubtful and Milford Sounds and it is a wonder that a ship this big can even go inside them and still turn around. We also saw a few other local, small cruise boats and even a few planes flew over Milford Sound. It was very cold with strong winds blowing off the icy peaks.

To start the day we had Perry talking about The 19^th Century Irish Landscape of Your Ancestors which was a slide show of various photographs with Perry outlining the significance or features within the photo. At one point Perry asked who had been to Ireland and I think I was the only one who didn’t put up their hand. So that settles it – I have to go to Ireland!

Jan Gow followed with Using the New Zealand BDM Records Online: Hints Tips & Unique Features. I have used these before but it was good to have some of the unique features explained in greater detail. For example, deaths are 50 years access or if the person was aged 80 years or over – this means you can get a death certificate for someone who died in 2011 if they were aged over 80 years.

I had three one on one sessions today and these last on average 45 minutes depending on the query but most have more than one query to ask about. The lack of internet access makes it hard to immediately give answers so I have undertaken to do a little searching once we get back to Australian waters and internet range. They are all interesting queries so I am looking forward to the challenge.

Helen Smith was due to talk about Using UK Archives for Family History and I was to do my Google Your Family Tree Talk: Tips and Tricks but that was a direct clash with Milford Sound (no contest really) so we rescheduled those talks till later in the voyage.

After dinner we listened to Chris Paton talk about Scottish Weavers (I don’t have any but still interesting to see how Chris traced his ownfamily of weavers and the sources he used). Then there was a Trivia Quiz which some people stayed for and I ended up having a drink or two with Chris and his wife Claire.

As I have just had an article published in a UK magazine it was interesting to talk to Chris about writing for the overseas market. With any interesting conversation time flies and it was well past my bedtime before I made my way back downstairs. The only advantage was that we were to gain an additional hour of time as we started adjusting back to Australian time!

Tomorrow is totally at sea so we will have a full day of genealogy talks – hope I don’t get writer’s cramp! Yes I still use pen and notebook for my note taking. Until tomorrow.

Genealogy notes 28 Nov 2011 Day 9 Genealogy Cruising & Dunedin NZ

2011-12-01T11:45:00.000-08:00

Today was an onshore day at Port Chalmers and Dunedin and there were no genealogy talks in the morning. The Research Help Zone operated during the day for those who didn't go ashore and the two talks after dinner were my Family History on the Cheap: Tips & Tricks based on my book of the same name and Helen Smith talking on Digitising and Organising Your Family History which nicely followed on from what I had mentioned in my talk.

We took the shuttle into Dunedin and wandered around the craft markets in the Octagon, had our customary latte on the sidewalks but it’s interesting to note that New Zealand has not banned smoking in public places. You can be walking down the street and the person in front is smoking and you get a face full of smoke or in outdoor cafes etc if you are downwind of a smoker, it can ruin a good latte. It will be nice to be back in Australia for that reason alone!

One of the craftspeople advised us to go and see OlvestonHouse and said it was even better than Larnach Castle (another house with a tragic history) which we had seen on an earlier trip to Dunedin. As it was only a 10-15 minute walk from the Octagon we decided to go to Olveston House. What they don’t tell you is that the walk is straight up the side of a small mountain! Plus by the time we got to the top it had started raining so we got wet too!

Tours are run at regular times and we were five minutes late for the 12 noon tour but we said we didn’t mind joining the tour anyway so we caught up with them in the kitchen having missed only one room. It is truly amazing and belonged to one family who only had two children neither of whom had children so when the daughter died she left the home and all its contents to the city of Dunedin.

It is still very much as it must have been a century ago with the exception of electric lights and security cameras and it has been faithfully restored where necessary. The furniture, artworks, chinaware and silverware, sculptures and tapestries must be worth a small fortune with many dating back to 15-18^th centuries.

The house also has one of the finest collections of Japanese weapons and other Eastern treasures that I have ever seen, even in museums. It is definitely worth a visit and I can’t imagine how the family lived there by themselves, it’s huge although there were also servants of course. The old Fiat car is still out in the garage! The rain meant we couldn’t explore the gardens or the conservatory but they looked well maintained too.

The family's history is briefly outlined on the website including photos and it's a bit sad that the family patriarch David Theomin and his wife Marie only had two children Edward who married but did not have children and Dorothy who never married. But in a way it is fortunate for the city of Dunedin, as they have this magnificent house and its history as part of their ongoing heritage.

It was still raining when the tour finished but not too heavy so we decided to walk back quickly and it is much easier walking back down than going up! Some people took taxis there and back but at least we got some serious exercise!

After the night talks I went down to bed as there was a serious roll which continued for most of the night. Tomorrow we will be cruising around Fjordland and entering Doubtful and Milford Sounds which should be truly fantastic!

Genealogy notes 27 Nov 2011 Day 8 at Sea & Adventures in Akaroa

2011-11-27T19:42:00.000-08:00

Today was an onshore day at Akaroa, just south of Christchurch, South Island of New Zealand. Due to the severe earthquakes Christchurch experienced last year and earlier this year we were unable to go to Christchurch as originally planned.

I was supposed to meet up with my son's girlfriend's family in Akaroa but due to a mixup this didn't eventuate so we spent the time exploring the shops, having seafood chowder for lunch and visiting the Akaroa Museum. While there we watched an interesting DVD of the town's history from the time of the Maori people arriving, through the various explorers, the French colony and through to the present.

We returned to the Volendam mid afternoon so that I could send off my Wellington blog and my Picton blog but I did have to go up to the ship's library to find an internet connection strong enough. It was another formal dinner night and afterwards I went to the two genealogy talks. It was a bit odd seeing people sitting there in their formal outfits and taking genealogy notes. Somehow glamour, sequins, heels and genealogy don't seem to fit together to me!

However both talks were worth attending with Richard Reid introducing both Perry McIntyre and Keith Johnson and their talks. Perry's talk Get To Know Ireland outlined the basics about identifying where your ancestors may have come from in Ireland and although I knew some of this, it is always good to go back to basics and a refresher course in what's new also helps. Perry also highlighted some key books which I haven't read so I'll be making an inter library loan request when I get home (if I don't buy my own copy!). She also mentioned her CD with Terry Eakin Ireland Townlands 1901 which is available from the Society of Australian Genealogists.

Keith's talk complemented Perry's and his was titled Research on the Ground in Ireland and again looked at some of the basic resources eg National Archives of Ireland and National Library of Ireland. But he also looked at directories, maps, Griffiths Valuations etc and gave examples using his own research. As he had still more to talk about, it was agreed he will finish it at his next session.

Chris Paton and Helen Smith (who joined the cruise in Wellington) gave talks to the Little River branch of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists in the afternoon so it is good to see that people who aren't on the cruise get to see and hear Chris and other speakers as we move around New Zealand.

I took some more bookings for one on one sessions to discuss problems and as we have a few days at sea coming up, there will be more time for those types of discussion. Tomorrow is Port Chalmers and Dunedin and most people will take the opportunity to go onshore and see the sights. There should also be internet connection and I will be able to send this blog off.

After Dunedin we are travelling around the bottom end of the South Island of New Zealand and up to Fjordland (where I don't imagine there will be internet coverage but the truly stunning scenery makes it all worth while) and then two days at sea as we cross the Tasman Sea and head to Burnie in Tasmania. I am expecting that will be the next opportunity to post a blog, tweet etc plus my phone should be working again too. In fact it should then all be back to normal - almost!

Genealogy notes Day 7 at Sea & Picton South Island Adventures

2011-11-26T18:54:00.000-08:00

Today was an onshore day at Picton at the top end of the South Island. We were greeted by a welcoming committee giving out fresh flower posies and I Love Marlborough badges (that’s the area not the cigarette). The locals run a free shuttle bus into town but it is only about 15 minutes walk from the ship so you could choose – we opted for the shuttle as our legs are starting to complain about all the upstairs/downstairs we are doing on the ship.

As it was Saturday the local Lions Club had their regular market and there were lots of hand crafted jewellery stalls, homemade soaps, wooden crafts and other handicrafts for people to look at. From what I saw, the local craftspeople must welcome the arrival of cruise ships in Picton. I know we did our bit for the local economy and with Christmas coming up, we picked up some nice unusual gifts for family members.

We also wandered up and down the main street looking at the various touristy shops and had a latte on the sidewalk and watched our fellow travellers. As we have been to Picton before, and visited the various museums including the Edwin Fox Maritime Museum (location of the remains of the Edwin Fox, 9th oldest wooden troop ship in the world and even transported convicts to Western Australia) and the local Picton Museum we didn’t go there again. We caught the shuttle back in time to get the buffet lunch on the Lido Deck and we have been eating out on the back deck which is very pleasant and not as noisy as inside.

I haven’t been able to get an internet connection in Picton so the Wellington blog hasn’t gone up yet and neither will this Picton one. However I am taking the opportunity to still write them everyday otherwise it is too big a job at the end. Plus I might forget some of the details and highlights.

This afternoon a fellow UTP cruiser booked an appointment with me and I have had others ask me questions in passing or over coffee or a drink or even out on deck. I find that much preferable than trying to answer people’s questions at tables of eight in busy dining rooms where everyone is shouting to be heard. It’s also easier to talk without trying to eat at the same time.

There were no onshore seminars in Picton so all speakers were free to do the touristy thing.

I gave another talk tonight (there was a good turn up again so they mustn’t be sick of listening to me yet) but as we as we had entered open waters after sailing back through scenic Queen Charlotte Sound there was a bit of a swell. The talk was Behind Bars: Convicts & Criminals (an ambitious talk for just 45 minutes) and there is a version on the Resources page of my website, scroll down to Presentations. Chris Paton followed with his talk on Scottish Land Records which I heard (and reported on ) at the Auckland seminar.

It was South Pacific night at the Casino tonight so I put on the lovely blue flowered top I bought in Noumea last time and went along to get my free raffle tickets. They were offering great prizes and you have to be in it to win it. You also had to be present and what is a bit strange for us Aussies, is that the Casino is a designated smoking area inside the ship.

To get to the Hudson Room where a lot of our genealogy lectures are, you actually pass through the Casino (it is not enclosed) and the smell of smoke can be quite strong depending on how many are smoking. The smoke/smell also doesn’t stay within the Casino and drifts into neighbouring areas including the jewellery and other shops and neighbouring rooms and bars. Given that smoking is banned in all public areas including bus stops etc in Australia, I’m not sure that this smoking inside the ship will be a hit with Aussies. I also wondered if they can still do it once they are within Australian waters or is the ship outside of Australian laws. Yet another question to ask.

Tomorrow is Akaroa and last time we were there we had a delicious seafood chowder so we will be having that for lunch! I’m also a little nervous as we will be meeting my son’s girlfriend’s father and his partner. My son came over to Christchurch with his girlfriend at the beginning of the year and had a great time with them so it seems opportune to also meet them while we are so close to Christchurch.

Amazingly I am not giving any talks tomorrow - Perry will be doing Getting to Know Ireland and Keith is doing Research on the Ground in Ireland which should be interesting. I still plan to visit Ireland myself hopefully in 2013. Without internet there seems little point to be chained to this laptop so I think I will sign off and wander back upstairs and perhaps even take the shuttle back into Picton (oops there goes my secret – I partially write these blogs at various times of the day and then tidy then up when I go online).

Signing off until we connect again!

Genealogy notes Day 6 at Sea & Wellington adventures

2011-11-26T12:06:00.000-08:00

Today was all day in Wellington and right through into the evening. We have been to Wellington many times so we decided to have a leisurely day starting with the shuttle into the CBD, then a short walk over to Te Papa, the national museum. Although we visit Te Papa just about every time we are in Wellington, this time we focused on the immigration and military displays fitting the theme of some of the genealogy talks so far.

The Museum also has a giant squid which is nowhere near as big as the giant baby squid we saw in Auckland. It was interesting watching the video of how the fishermen caught the squid and how it finally ended up in the tank at Te Papa. We stopped to buy some lovely paua jewellery at the Maori Artworks and then had latte and gingerbread watching the world go by on the harbour front.

Then a short walk back into the main shopping area where we wandered around buying a few things that caught our eye. We then managed to find our way back to the shuttle stop and we went back to the ship about 3.30pm for a late lunch up on the Terrace Deck (I could eat Mexican everyday especially when washed down with a Chile chardy – I haven’t a hope of remembering how to spell this really nice South American wine).

Afterwards it was back to the cabin to send yesterday’s Diary, check emails and generally relax. The late lunch didn’t work with the early dinner booking so we ended up going to the Level 4 Rotterdam dining room and were placed just one table over from the Captain and his wife. We then engaged in what can only be called ‘Captain gawking’ while we enjoyed scallop ceviche and orange and ginger pork followed by a divine orange sorbet. The bread basket for two would have fed a small army. We also enjoyed a glass of Australian Rosemount chardonnay.

Then it was time to stroll around the deck looking at the lights of Wellington while we tried to work off the many calories we had just consumed. All the activity over the last few days was catching up with me so I headed off to bed and Max went to catch the crew’s show which started at 10.30pm. We passed the Hudson Room and there were still Unlock the Past cruisers in there making the most of the Research Help Zone and online databases.

At about 3.30am I was woken by the ship’s roll and I knew (having crossed Cook Strait before) that we were in open sea, probably approaching the South Island. Looking out the window I could see the ocean swell so not surprised about the roll and then I noticed all these flying fish (although Max says they were birds). You could easily see them in the ship’s lights and I will admit they didn’t fly like other flying fish I have seen before but then I didn’t think birds flew at night, except owls etc. Maybe seabirds do too. I will have to find out.

Anyway before I totally wander into 26 November, I will go back to the day’ genealogy talks starting with mine on Making the Most of TROVE. I do have a version of this on my website Resources page but I have added some new features so need to upload this new talk (but I am finishing this blog in Picton and there is no internet connection). My session was followed by Richard Reid talking about Farewell My Children looking at Irish assisted immigration and I will confess that this is the book that I brought on board to read during the cruise. So far I’ve only managed a few pages and for a reader like me, that says there are lots of other distractions on board!

There was also an onshore seminar with the Wellington branch of the Society of New Zealand Genealogists where Chris Paton and Rosemary Kopittke gave three talks.

Until next time I have an internet connection!!

Genealogy notes 24 Nov 2011 Day 4 at Sea & Napier Adventures

2011-11-24T20:37:00.000-08:00

Today we arrived in Napier in the afternoon. Strong winds put a question mark over whether we could actually berth but after a short delay we were guided in by the local tug boats. A bus shuttle then conveyed passengers into Napier as wharf security and distance meant we couldn't simply walk off by ourselves.

Our friends picked us up and we were then chauffeured around in a very nice, newish Lexus (thanks Lexus of Hawkes Bay)and first stop was The Mission Estate Winery and we did a quick tour of the main building. The old photographs on the wall were fascinating as the Mission is seen as the birthplace of New Zealand wine since 1851. Then it was a short drive to Hastings and up to Te Mata Peak which is a very high lookout reached by a very narrow road but the views are spectacular.

Then it was back to Napier where I asked for a quick stop at The Art Deco Shop where I could have spent a lot of money but restricted myself to a couple of calendars and a beautiful writing journal as potential Christmas gifts although I don’t rule out giving them to myself! Napier is famous for its Art Deco buildings and the Art Deco Trust works towards preserving this unique heritage.

The others were a bit bored so then on to the local Speight’s Ale House where we tasted a few beers (we did the Speight’s Brewery tour some years ago in Dunedin) and I also tried Monteith’s Crushed Apple Cider which is quite refreshing and deceptive (doesn’t taste of alcohol). By then it was time to make a dash back into the City centre to catch a shuttle back to the ship.

The day’s genealogy sessions started after breakfast - Chris Paton did Discover Scottish Records (which I heard and reported on at the Auckland seminar) and Richard Reid talked about Key Irish Documents. At breakfast we were seated next to a couple who do lots of house swaps (overseas) and house sits (Australia) and we have often discussed trying these out. So with the interesting discussion and the drawn out breakfast (some people order more than one course) we ended up inadvertently missing Richard’s talk (time seems to disappear on a ship).

All was not lost as Perry McIntyre (her website is now working again) in her talk on Irish Census and Old Age Pensions made a few references to things Richard had said in his talk. One of the key documents was Form B of the 1901 Irish census which tells you what class of house your ancestor lived in. Now I have looked at these and noted all the information but I have never looked for an image of the four house classes (in hindsight it seems obvious but unless someone points us in a particular direction, we may not think of it ourselves).

Perry had a great image of the four types and then brought up a photo of a Class 4 house that Richard had also used in his talk. It is from the National Library of Ireland’s online photos collection (Labourer's hut, Gweedore) and is really a very evocative image and it is not hard to wonder why so many of our ancestors came out to Australia.

Perry’s comprehensive look at the Irish census was also very good for highlighting that not everything was destroyed in the 1922 PRO fire – some of the census records had already been pulped or had been used for paper recycling during World War One. So even if there had been no fire, we still wouldn’t have had access to these records.

The second part of her talk was on the introduction of the 1908 old age pension and the need of many people to prove that they were 70 years of age. With the introduction of civil registration only in 1864, many had to use the 1841 and 1851 census to prove how old they were. These records are mainly for Ulster and there are some indexes but not all online, although some are. Perry suggested using Google to find some of these smaller, localised indexes.

My talk for the evening session was Tracing Your Military Ancestors in Australia which is a broad overview of the main sources and there is a version of this talk on my website Resources page (scroll down to Presentations). I was going to go and join Keith Johnson for a drink in the Oceans Bar afterwards, but knowing that I had to be up and with it for a talk on TROVE at 8.00am the next morning, I decided to head back to the cabin and bed.

Before I forget, there was also an onshore seminar with the Hawkes Bay members of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists and Chris Paton and Jan Gow gave two talks.

Cruises are supposed to be relaxing but can be hectic when you try to combine ship activities, extended meals at breakfast, lunch and dinner (because you are talking to others), onshore tourism and genealogy sessions. It’s Wellington tomorrow all day and into the evening and I’m wondering if I should try and schedule in an afternoon nap!!

Genealogy notes 23 Nov 2011 Day 3 Tauranga Adventures

2011-11-23T15:47:00.000-08:00

Today was mostly spent in Tauranga New Zealand with many people taking shore excursions to Rotorua. Having been to New Zealand many times, especially to Rotorua, we decided to simply walk around Tauranga and do some shopping. Ran into Geoff and Marg from Brisbane and hadn’t even realised they were on the cruise so good catching up with them briefly in the main street.

Did some shopping, new walking shoes as I had somehow left mine at home, some souvenirs and a few toiletries before we sat down for a nice latte. It was interesting watching all the tourists and crew from the two, yes two, cruise ships visiting Tauranga today. As well as the Volendam, the Dawn Princess was berthed in the harbour. Very impressive seeing the two ships together and the local economy must be pleased if not very busy today.

Back to the ship for a late lunch and I read the newspaper while Max tried out the pool and spa which wasn’t too crowded with most still on shore. Then he went off to his digital camera and photography lessons while I caught up with my email and writing this blog.

While we did the touristy thing in Tauranga, Rosemary, Richard and Perry gave talks to the Tauranga branch of the New Zealand Society of Genealogists. I had almost forgotten about the onshore seminars, so I hope that some of the New Zealand attendees write a blog or two about the various seminars being held in each port we visit.

Tonight we had dinner in the Rotterdam dining room with the rest of the UTP cruisers before heading to the Hudson Room for the evening seminars. Originally I was a bit sceptical that people would turn up for night sessions as usually the ship has a competitive evening program or people are simply tired after a big day ashore. I spoke to an almost packed Hudson Room which proved me quite wrong but that was ok as I much prefer to talk to an eager audience.

I gave Asylum Records: A Place to Look for Missing Ancestors (there is a version of this talk on my website Resources page, scroll down to Presentations). Rosemary followed with a talk on Directories and Almanacs which I didn’t stay for as we wanted to catch one of the ship’s evening events. I also had thought this was a talk I had heard before but it was a brand new one so I will get a copy from Rosemary over the next few days and view her slides. That’s not quite the same as hearing a speaker’s commentary but it is still a useful way to gain an understanding of a topic and to learn new URLs and so on. That’s the primary reason I put copies of my talks on my website, the commentary is missing but people still learn something which is the main purpose.

It was going to be an early night as we have a big day planned tomorrow in Napier, friends from the first Unlock the Past cruise in March 2011 are picking us up to show us around Napier and surrounding vineyards which should be good. However, long time friend Perry and I took the opportunity to have a couple of drinks and catch up for a good talk as usually we only get to say hello, how are you and a few other things when we meet at expos, conferences or wherever. It’s hard to think that nearly thirty years have gone by since she first wandered into the Queensland State Archives reading room and found me on research duty!

Before we disembark in Napier, Chris Paton is doing Discover Scottish Records (which I heard and reported on at the Auckland seminar) and Richard Reid is talking about Key Irish Documents.

Genealogy notes 22 Nov 2011 - Day 2 on board Volemdam

2011-11-22T11:47:00.000-08:00

As usual I woke up early before the alarm so had plenty of time to shower, dress and do final run through of my talk for the early 8am start to our genealogy sessions on board. We also decided to simply have breakfast in the cabin rather than have it up in the restaurant in case there were any delays. The ham and cheese omelette was certainly substantial and the cup of tea welcome. I usually like one first thing but no tea making facilities in cabins although you can get them to bring you one but that seems a bit strange to me (perhaps I’ll change my mind before the end of the trip).

My talk At Sea Then and Now was on at 8.00am followed by Chris Paton then no more sessions till after lunch as we were travelling around the scenic Coromandel Peninsula and people wanted to be out on deck looking around. I have put my report on the various sessions I attended on my website to avoid making this too lengthy. See Day 1 sessions at sea report here.

I decided to skip Chris Paton’s talk on Discover Scottish Genealogy as I had heard it before and went instead to the Meet the Captain session (I always like to know who is driving the ship)! The other ship offering I attended before the talks after lunch was the Tour of the Kitchens which was amazing in every sense of the word. They give you a four page handout with various facts including how much food is eaten each week (40,000 eggs is just one example). There are dedicated areas to all the various kinds of meals eg soups in the soup kitchen, huge dishwashers one for china and one for glassware, lots of staff and the head chef gave us a brief chat and of course, there is the ship cookbook which I must have a look at.

We had lunch on the Lido Deck at the Terrace Grill (overlooks the pool area at the top of the ship) and I had my first cheeseburger (may even be my last, the pickle seems odd) and it is easy to see the Volendam is an American ship which usually caters for that market. I like my burgers with beetroot but then I also realise that not all Aussies like beetroot.

Then it was off to the Hudson Room for an afternoon of talks. To avoid having too lengthy blogs I am splitting the genealogy component out and putting that on my website. My report of the sessions is here. Just before the 4.00pm talk, the ship was due to circle around White Island which is an active volcano and I simply had to go out on deck and see that. We went up into the bow area with lots of others to get a really close look and the ship actually circled around the island several times and at one point stopped off shore at the area where the volcano is most visible. But this meant I missed the last two talks of the day and I had wanted to hear them – like any genealogy conference you make choices but it is hard.

It was a formal night tonight with everyone dressing up for dinner but we had already decided not to attend the dinner in the Rotterdam dining room with the other UTP cruisers. We were sneaking off for a private, romantic, celebratory dinner at the Pinnacle Grill (each UTP person was given a gift voucher to try out this pay restaurant on board). Now before all the romantics leap to conclusions, it was not that kind of event. It is three years since Max’s major surgery for cancer and we like to take time out to reflect on the last few years and to plan ahead. We should have known you can’t hide on a ship and as we had been seated in one of the restaurant’s windows (internal), we were spotted by none other than Alan Phillips!

The Pinnacle Grill was a fantastic choice as the staff were friendly, the food amazing and perhaps too much (four different kinds of bread, three kinds of salt to try (and I don’t even eat salt but loved those three), natural iced water was automatically put on the table, there were lots of choices but we couldn’t go past the seafood and the desserts were so good. After a delicious scallop in pumpkin puree, we had an entree of smoked salmon, with fresh salmon and prawn with an amazing wasabi cream followed by a small lobster with butter sauce, mango coulis (feel like I’m describing a Masterchef show) with fresh asparagus & hollandaise plus an Idaho potato with the works (garlic butter, sour cream, bacon and chives). Desserts (shared) were a cherry bombe Alaska and a divine chocolate lava cake. We went for a bit of a walk on deck afterwards!!

I was a little put out at first that the Pinnacle Grill didn’t have any Australian and New Zealand wines to choose from on their wine list – mostly American and French. However, when we travel we always try to have the cuisine and drinks of the country we are visiting so as we were on an American ship, we decided to go American. I ended up selecting a very nice chardonnay from Washington (the State not the city) and was pleased with the choice as it complemented the seafood perfectly.

We had such a great time we will probably go back to the Pinnacle Grill again before the end of the cruise – even though it is a paying restaurant on board, you could have everything we ate for just $25 per person. Amazing value for a delicious meal with excellent service in a quiet venue!

After our walk it was back to our cabin to read up on visiting Tauranga, our port of call tomorrow. There are only two talks tomorrow night, I’m doing one on asylums and Rosemary is doing one on directories and almanacs.

Genealogy notes 21 Nov 2011 Monday in Auckland, then the Volendam

2011-11-22T11:24:00.000-08:00

NB This diary is being written daily, but depending on internet access may not be published daily.

After checking out of our hotel, we made our way to the Auckland Central Library where there was another on shore seminar with Dr Perry McIntyre and Dr Richard Reid. The Library was having a massive book sale with everything just $2.00NZ and to completely avoid temptation, I didn’t even look!

I didn’t attend Perry or Richard’s talks as I will get to hear them during the trip. I wanted to do some research in the AucklandResearch Centre looking up some names in their card indexes. I put in my usual plea that these indexes should be data entered and put on line but of course the Library has the usual resource restraints and things take time.

After the seminar ended, we then trundled our suitcases down to the wharf where we had our first sighting of the Volendam. Amazingly there were no queues and we filled in all the paperwork, handed over our suitcases and passed the various check points and went straight to our cabin. We then spent a bit of time exploring the ship, before we joined the other Unlock thePast ‘cruisers’ for dinner.

What a choice for dinner – appetisers, soups, salads, entrees, mains and desserts so choosing was a bit difficult. I ended up with a shrimp cocktail and a rib eye steak and as it was first night, I had dessert – red velvet cake all washed down with a glass (or two) of Rosemount chardonnay.

After the dinner was the Welcome session for all Unlock the Past ‘cruisers’ where registration kits and name tags were handed out along with a complimentary copy of Inside History for those who had not seen the magazine before. As I am the first speaker of the cruise at 8.00am tomorrow, I checked out the main theatre with Rosemary and also the other smaller room. Then I went back to the cabin to have a quick run through my talk.

The Volendam left Auckland at midnight but I didn’t hear it although Max said he heard tugs hooting etc. There are lots of talks tomorrow as it is a day at sea, although we do sail around the scenic CoromandelPeninsula.

Genealogy Notes 19-20 Nov 2011 - Auckland adventures

2011-11-20T10:32:00.000-08:00

I originally said that I would put all cruise blogs in Diary of an Australian Genealogist but given the length of my report on the first Auckland onshore seminar, I changed my mind and detailed reports will go on my website and more diary like reports will go here. So my account of the first Auckland seminar is here.

Sunday was a late start because it took me so long to write the report, but we wandered out in time to see the start of the World Triathlon event through the main streets of Auckland. After watching the women riders for a while we made our way down towards the harbour (no easy feat with the closed roads and limited crossings when the bikes weren’t whizzing past).

We spotted a hotel serving New Zealand green shell mussels steamed with your choice of a delicious sauce (we picked coconut and lemongrass curry) so lunch was good, we could still see the race and our lattes came with a lovely little gingerbread.

Finally got to the harbour in time to buy our tickets on the ferry for a 90 minute tour round Auckland harbour (no getting off) and although a bit windy and rough in the more open places, it was great to see the various places from the water. Then at the last stop (about 15 minutes from the terminal) we decided to check out Kelly Tarlton’s AntarticEncounter and Underwater World as a few other people were also getting off.

After a few minutes of working up the nerve to jump from the ferry to the jetty (it was rough and there is no walk off plank, with the ferry moving up, down, in and out) I finally made it safely on to the dock. It took a few more minutes for the adrenaline to slow down and my partner, who usually says I’m just wimpy, admitted it was a bit dangerous. It reminded me of Bangkok where you have to leap in and out of the water ferries because the drivers don’t stop for long.

It was just a short walk then to Tarlton’s Underwater World where we found that the free shuttle back to Auckland had already left (why it doesn’t continue to run until the place closes is a mystery as we couldn’t be the only tourists without our own car). Anyway we still went in and were quite surprised to find that most of the place is actually underground which is why it isn’t a big building.

There is a snowcat vehicle that seats nine at a time that takes you through the penguin (both King and Gentoo penguins) enclosure and you see them swimming in the pool and up on land/snow/ice (not sure what to call it). There were also some nesting penguins with new born chicks to slightly older chicks but all so cute. I think I could watch penguins walking around all day, as it is so different to watching them swim (blink and you miss them, they are so fast).

Then there is the usual underwater tank with fish, sharks, sting rays etc but interesting to see some of the more unique New Zealand fish. The baby giant squid (dead, washed up on a beach) was huge/amazing and makes you really wonder about all those horror giant squid stories of ships being attacked. My favourite was the Seahorse Kingdom as I have a real fascination for sea horses and could watch them for hours and they had quite a few different species.

In the gift shop I couldn’t resist a new penguin key ring for my new (used) 7 seater Ford Territory (crystal green and to tow our new (used) caravan) which was delivered the day after we left home (sob), the obligatory fridge magnet (penguins) and a Rotorua mud face mask.

After a short walk to the bus stop we gave the friendly bus driver every New Zealand coin that we had and he dropped us as close to Queen Street as he could, given the streets were still barricaded off. On the way back we decided that we simply had to taste one more New Zealand beer, plus we were really thirsty.

Then just before we got back to our apartment we smelt a delicious curry smell. We had passed this place a few times in our walks to and from Auckland City Library so we decided it would be good to have a curry takeaway, a New Zealand chardonnay and watch TV - Rick Stein and his cooking adventures in Spain (which brought back memories of my trip there in 2000).

I also made the observation that Rick Stein (English chef, world traveller etc) had decided to retire to Mollymook which is next door to one of the towns we have been looking at retiring to. If it was good enough for Rick Stein, then why not us but my partner thinks I’m keen on it just so that I can eat at Rick Stein’s restaurant at Mollymook all the time!

The other great thing about takeaway and eating in, is that we had the washing on while we ate and then we tried out my new Rotorua mud face mask which was fantastic and I’m sure my skin looks softer and more glowing! By the end of the night our clothes were washed and dried without having to leave the room.

We picked our hotel via Wotif and got a great three night deal with more breakfast than we could eat (mango juice popper, fruit yoghurt, oat muesli bar, delicious mixed grain/seed bun, banana, tea/coffee) so it also doubled for lunch most days and one hour’s free internet each day. The banana was a bit of a luxury as most of the time in Australia we can’t afford to buy them. All within a one block walk of the library.

Monday is another onshore seminar at the Auckland City Library with Dr Perry McIntyre and Dr Richard Reid (Irish and military historian) so we will walk our suitcases down to the Library and from there on to the wharf and the cruise!

Genealogy notes 15-18 November 2011 Auckland Bound

2011-11-18T01:09:00.000-08:00

The last few days have been frantic trying to finalise everything I needed to do before leaving for Auckland today. The bills got paid, the rubbish taken out, my talks finalised and my suitcase under the required kilos. It was some relief that I said down in the Qantas Lounge for a latte and French pastries. The flight was a little delayed and we finally arrived at our hotel in Auckland just after 7.00pm having left home at 8.00am.

Tomorrow I am speaking at the first of the onshore seminars associated with the Unlock the Past history and genealogy cruise which has a Scottish and Irish theme. Auckland City Libraries is the host venue for the seminar and speakers include Chris Paton, Rosemary Kopittke and myself with Seonaid Lewis giving a tour of the Central Auckland Research Centre. It will be good to catch up with my Auckland friends and I also hope to do a spot of research if time permits.

Sunday is a free day and if the weather is nice, we hope to have a ferry ride around Auckland Harbour, something we haven’t done before. On Monday we make our way down to the Harbour again to board the Volendam for our 14 day cruise around New Zealand, back to Burnie in Tasmania before crossing Bass Strait for Melbourne and finally finishing up in Sydney. Along the way I hope to blog and tweets all the things I learn at all the genealogy sessions, not to mention some of the fun stuff that happens on board cruise ships including the food and entertainment.

I haven’t managed to do much else over the last few days but I did do another guest blog for MyHeritage and it was good to mention the KIVA Genealogists for Families project. This is all about helping other families and individuals with small loans for their businesses (usually $25) and then this is repaid over time. In some ways it is the gift that keeps on giving as I usually just reinvest in another project. Deciding who to support is a key part of it and I described my choices in my 27-29 October diary blog.

I’m looking forward to sharing my ‘cruise news’ with everyone but getting access to the Internet may be tricky (or just expensive) – my hotel room actually gives me free Internet for an hour each day so while in Auckland I should get a few tweets and blogs out. Although you can’t join me physically, I hope that some of you will follow my doings over the next two weeks in what should be a Scottish Irish genealogy extravaganza!

Genealogy notes 6-14 November 2011 To Pambula & Back

2011-11-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

Once you get behind, it is always so hard to catch up again. Various domestic issues continue to unsettle my usually organised work space and complicating it even more was our recent trip to Pambula, New South Wales for the Bega Valley Genealogy Society annual seminar. That took three days and for the most part we were without mobile phone/internet coverage which means backlogs in emails, online newsletters, phone calls and so on. Still, as I said in my review of the seminar, I always love doing these regional genealogy events.

As well as the online backlog, my printed reading pile seems to have mushroomed in my absence and I am still struggling to get past the first few pages of the latest issue of Inside History - one of my favourite genealogy magazines! It's not helping that I am in the grip of the dreaded Melbourne hayfever (itchy watery eyes and when my partner said this morning, 'your eyes look a bit puffy', he was being generous as I could hardly see out of them). It's also hard to type when you have to stop every few seconds to mop your eyes!

After today, I only have three days to finalise everything I need to finalise before we leave for Auckland on Friday. I'm speaking at the Auckland Library genealogy seminar on Saturday with Chris Paton as a preliminary event prior to the Unlock the Past history and genealogy cruise next week. It's all very exciting at this late stage but I am still trying to finalise all my presentations (15) and then there's the hairdresser (I wasn't going to bother but said partner also asked this morning was I going to do anything about the grey hair) so that's happening tomorrow now.

I have my to do list and the focus is on what is critical pre cruise but we don't get back till 5 December, 20 days before Christmas and only 12 days before we head off to Brisbane in our new car and caravan and neither of us have towed a caravan before. A huge learning curve ahead but it will be fun and we'll be passing through Lightning Ridge (Black Opal country) where one of my gg grandmother's spent some time. But for now, it's back to finishing my cruise presentations and thinking about what to wear and pack. Just as well I like travelling!

Genealogy notes 30 Oct - 5 Nov 2011 Birthdays & Anniversaries

2011-11-05T18:34:00.000-07:00

I've been offline for a few days for a variety of reasons. The first week of November is always a big week for me, with all sorts of memories swirling around me. Firstly it's my birthday week and I'm a child of Guy Fawkes - some of my earliest memories are of helping my father build a bonfire in our backyard and creating a Guy Fawkes out of straw and old clothes. Those were also the days when everyone could buy firecrackers at the local store. So those early birthdays were fun, if a little dangerous given our backyard backed onto a bush area.

In their wisdom the Queensland government decided to move Guy Fawkes night from November to June from 1967 so that there was less chance of fires and eventually the sale of firecrackers was prohibited to individuals in 1971 because of injuries.

Birthdays were never the same for me as a child but as I grew up I discovered the Melbourne Cup (first Tuesday of November) and every so often it would actually fall on my birthday. While living in Brisbane and Canberra I would try and take the day off work and book into a Melbourne Cup Day lunch and enjoy the whole day, even if it wasn't on my real birthday. Of course now that I am living in Melbourne, Cup Day is a public holiday and my birthday tends to stretch out for the whole week.

But not only is it memories of birthdays past that occupies my mind during the first week of November. It is also memories of family members lost during this week. On my 16th birthday I lost one of my favourite uncles and my grandmother died on my birthday in 1994 - she had never wanted to leave her own home, or move into a nursing home so in some ways it was 'good' that she died while playing the pokies. Another reason why I have a little flutter and gamble that week is because it was what she loved. Four days of the week she managed to get herself onto the pensioner bus (and that wasn't easy with a walking stick) and down to the NSW pokie clubs because it was an outing, she was with friends and she liked to play (but never seemed to lose?). Why NSW? Queensland didn't have pokies when she started this 'hobby'.

I won't list all the family deaths in the first week of November, but I was reminded of 'the trend' when I lost another two family members this week. One was an avid family historian and had done lots of research and died too young and the other was one that had probably lived too long. But when he could, he also enjoyed getting out and playing the pokies, having a flutter on the horses and most times when I was in Brisbane I would take him along to the Casino for a few hours of 'the good old times'.

Oddly enough two of Australia's most famous genealogists also died in my birthday week. Nick Vine Hall died on 31 October 2006 but his funeral service was not held until 9 November 2006. I first met Nick in the late 1970s when he was Director of the Society of Australian Genealogists and our paths continuously crossed over the years/decades and I have fond memories of him and I sitting on the grassy area outside the State Library of Victoria eating take away Chinese for lunch while discussing genealogy and how to raise the profile of the Australian census amongst other things. We even tossed around ideas of projects we might work on when I retired from the public service but sadly that wasn't to be as Nick died too soon aged only 62 years.

The other Australian genealogist was Janet Reakes who died on 9 November 2002 at the far too young age of 50 years. I had worked with Janet at a number of genealogy events while I was employed at Queensland State Archives and later the John Oxley Library. I particularly liked going to her Australia Day weekend genealogy expos in Hervey Bay.

It's great that these two Australian genealogists continue to be remembered by the genealogy community. The Australian Federation of Family History Organisations (AFFHO) maintains the annual Nick Vine Hall Award to promote family history society journals and newsletters and Australian Family Tree Connections (AFTC) maintains the Janet Reakes Memorial Award which is an annual essay competition open to everyone.

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has a birthday that coincides with close deaths in the family. There's also Christmas, New Year, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day and so on. There's always good memories along with the sad ones and I suspect that what is most important is to capture those memories so that we don't forget as time continues it's march ever onwards.

Genealogy notes 27-29 October 2011 Genealogists for Families

2011-10-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, Judy Webster a good friend of mine in Brisbane sent me an invitation to be part of a new group she had established, Genealogists For Families within KIVA. I hadn't previously heard of KIVA and at the time of her note, I was busy with a deadline hovering over my head. Like most busy people I have a 'to do' list on my desk and I added Judy's request to follow up later.

Again like most busy people, my 'to do' list is never ending and something else always seems to crop up. I regularly read Sydney friend Geniaus' blogs as they are always relevant and interesting so when I saw her blog title, It's Taken Me a While, I immediately wondered what she was referring too. As I started reading, it could have been me writing that blog because I still hadn't got back to Judy. So once I finished reading, I went back to Judy's request.

I signed up for Genealogists for Families then and there and managed to take something off my to do list! Click here to join

I then spent quite a bit of time trying to decide which projects I would personally support as they all sounded worthwhile. I decided on the $25 loan option as that would allow me to support two loans. I ended up choosing one from Mongolia as I had spent a week travelling through Outer Mongolia in 1996 and had slept in a yurt and visited with local families. The other project I chose was from Peru, a place I have always wanted to visit (Machu Picchu is on my bucket list).

The very next day I received two emails telling me that both projects had been totally filled and that the recipients had their loans and I would receive progress reports. I was surprised as I had thought it would take longer to fill the loans. I then decided to support another project and again spent some time trying to decide but eventually picked a project in Kenya and just this morning I found out it has also been fully funded. It's terrific that these loans get funded so quickly.

My partner is now interested in KIVA and how it allows people to establish or run their own businesses or helps them out with special projects. He will probably fund a couple of projects too so I am looking forward to see what his choices will be.

The other really good thing is that Judy's idea is now gaining fantastic support from genealogists around the world and within a month of starting Genealogists for Families, there are 45 members with 62 loans with a total amount loaned of $1550. While this doesn't sound like much, it is supporting 62 people with their businesses, farms or whatever and is not just a charity handout. The loans are expected to be repaid and at that point, you can then reinvest that original loan money into new projects. In other words your original gift keeps on giving if you want it to. I think that's what I like best about KIVA.

Despite my tardy start on the team, I totally recommend and support the Genealogists for Families team on KIVA and I would love to think that some of my readers might do so to. Check out the links and if you can't get involved now, help us spread the word to genealogists everywhere. Click here to join.

As I indicated in my last Diary update, I am having a lovely weekend alone and have made some nice progress on my Wiltshire families thanks to purchasing my ggg grandmother's marriage certificate (she married again aged 70 years). However I will report on that next time as I am still looking for a few more bits and pieces. Until next time.

Genealogy notes 22-26 Oct 2011 collecting archives & genealogists

2011-10-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

So much for my last entry wishing for a quiet week this week. I've barely been able to keep up with emails let alone anything else. I was meant to have the weekend alone and Saturday was very much a genealogy day where I tidied up bits and pieces of filing, did some scanning, checked out some sites, caught up with print magazines and so on. I had hoped that Sunday would be similar but as it was cold and wet, the camping trip had been a bit of a fizzer and my 'me' time came to an abrupt end late Sunday morning.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here, but we've bought the caravan and of course that means a bigger, stronger vehicle to tow it so we put my beloved little green 'beemer' for sale online. I secretly never expected it to sell as nobody likes fern green. Two days later my car was gone to a lady very much like myself who simply loved the colour. The 'beemer' was my 50th birthday present to myself some years ago and I can still remember my son saying 'where did I get the money' and the look on his face when I said I was spending his inheritance. It was definitely a Kodak moment. Anyway this week has been spent looking at cars, test driving and after a few they all look the same to me which is probably why I pick my cars by colour. The search goes on!

The one think I did have to do yesterday is visit the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) for a professional development seminar with the staff over a very delicious lunch. They sat there eating and I talked (but I made certain I didn't miss out by putting a chicken and avocado wrap on my plate just in case they were ravenous). Basically I was there to talk about what genealogists want when they are searching and how they might want to access it and how the UMA might be able to make genealogists more aware of what they have. So after confessing that I had been using them as an example in my talks and books over the last two years, we had a wide ranging discussion which also called on my previous work experience in various archives. (NB the reason I use them as an example is because they have an online catalogue, digitised images online (also through Picture Australia), various subject guides including a summary guide).

Collecting archives like UMA are very different from government archives where all the records are the records of the government. Issues such as ownership, custody, copyright, privacy, access are more complex with private records and especially with older material that may have been brought in without consideration of these issues. Digitising, indexing and volunteers were all discussed and that age old question of how much time to allot to reference queries was also on the table. I found myself slipping back into government speak by saying it was a 'question of priorities, resources, goals, objectives and so on' and at one point I almost asked to see their strategic plan. This morning I am wondering if researchers should look at an archives' strategic plan - are researchers the focus or at least one of the major focuses or are they further down the priority list?

The other key area was how to make the archives more visible and known and this is where I got on my social media treadmill and advocated following Twitter and participating in things like #followanarchive and #askanarchivist day. I raved on about blogging too and how archives can highlight parts of their collection and how more and more genealogists are writing and reading blogs and reading online e-newsletters. I also suggested photos on Flickr or even podcasts in YouTube giving State Records NSW as an example of an archive actively using social media to keep researchers informed. Podcasts, webinars, wikis and by the time I mentioned nings I felt I was losing them, so I pointed out that it was possible to just focus on a few rather than all of the available media.

UMA have already agreed to give a talk at the Genealogical Society of Victoria's lunchtime seminars next year and they do have a newsletter The UMA Bulletin (print and online) so it's very much a question of raising the profile and then the invitations to speak will flood in!

I suspect after I left the conversations continued and it will be interesting to see how they progress in future months (are they reading this now?). Should I become a researcher and go looking for my 'wharfie' grandfather in their waterside workers trade union records. The Australian Trade Union Archives (ATUA) website is also worth a look for any unionists in the family. You may not get direct information on the person, but if they were active in a union you may be able to put some context around their working lives.

From my perspective I found the session stimulating and left a bit nostalgic for working in a collecting archive. I was always amazed at some of the collections held in the John Oxley Library, in the State Library of Queensland, the first place I ever worked in the archives/library field. Still, I have my own collecting archive of family history material and probably more scanning than I want to think about, so enough reminiscing and back to work on my own records!

Genealogy notes 16-21 Oct 2011 - Irish updates & writing family history

2011-10-21T17:18:00.000-07:00

Well another week has gone with family and domestic matters interrupting my family history time. Thankfully I am spending the weekend alone and it is cold and grey in Melbourne so I am hoping to get lots done. I do love the family but it is so peaceful not having to jump up every few minutes to find something for them that is in plain sight!

Tuesday I managed some quiet time and spent it visiting various Irish genealogy sites - so much seems to have gone online since I last looked. I was very impressed with the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) will calendars and the fact that those up to 1900 have been digitised and are freely available online. Ancestry have lots of new Irish records and I have been using their Collection Priority filter (but you do need to remember to turn it off!).

FindMyPast Ireland has also been adding records and most notably this weekend they have added Irish prison records (but doesn't include the North). I'm finding the landed estates records most interesting. Another site I use a lot is Roots Ireland and again lots of new additions and I have also been using the Irish records on FamilySearch. Not doing searches on surname etc in the top section of their home page but going into the Browse by Location section and going into the records themselves and then doing the searches.

I find cross checking in all the various online databases useful if I can't find families under expected spellings or variants. Although it does take time. I have found this particularly so when using the various versions of Griffith's Valuation online which has just reminded me of the Ask About Ireland website which I also visited.

I'm looking forward to seeing Chris Paton's new book on Irish internet sites which I believe will be ready for the Unlock the Past history and genealogy cruise with a Scottish/Irish theme in November . Maybe some of my Irish brick walls will tumble on board the cruise ship! If you can't make the cruise, don't forget there are on shore talks all around New Zealand, Burnie in Tasmania, Melbourne and Sydney.

The other major achievement this week was finishing my book reviews of Hazel Edwards How to Write a Non-Boring Family History and Goldie Alexander's Mentoring Your Memoirs and doing a Writing Family History Again blog to include the reviews and to write about my own struggles in this area . By going public with my procrastination, I hope I am committing myself to some real effort in completing at least one of my draft family histories in 2012.

I haven't managed to do any genealogy reading this week although I try to follow key people on Twitter and Google+ so that I am vaguely aware of what has been happening.

Next week I have been invited to the University of Melbourne Archives to talk to the staff about what researchers want and how they might be able to increase usage of the archives. UMA is one of the archives I demonstrate in my talks It's Not All Online and Archives You Should Know but Perhaps Don't. When I first saw the invite I thought I was in trouble for using them and creating a demand for their services but it is the opposite, so looking forward to catching up with old colleagues and friends.

Hopefully it will be quieter next week and I will catch up with everything before I again pack my bag and hit the road for Pambula and the Bega Valley Genealogy Society in two weeks. At least there is never a dull moment!

Genealogy notes 10-15 Oct 2011 - military ancestors & famous explorers

2011-10-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

Wow the whole week went by so fast but when you are staying with friends, it is easy to lose track of time as you are not in your normal environment. Plus you can't be on your laptop 24/7 without looking really unsociable. And to be honest after the big genealogy day on Sunday, I was grateful for the break.

My talk on Wednesday night to the Cobram Genealogical Group on researching military ancestors went well. There is an earlier version of this talk on my website under Resources. Cobram are a small and enthusiastic group who like most regional areas, struggle to keep their libraries open for research. As always it is the same volunteers who put their name down each month to open up and be available to assist others.

The Cobram group is co-located with the Cobram Historical Society (they don't have a website) and they share the old state school building and it was interesting to see some of the items held by the Historical Society. As you would expect, there was a heavy emphasis on old farming equipment especially dairying and of course, school items including an old school desk which was identical to the ones where I went to school. Hard to believe that I was ever that small and could fit into those old desks which were built for two children to share. The building is part of the Cobram Historical Precinct.

Another must visit place on the way to Cobram is the Byramine Homestead which was established in 1842. For those who know their Australian history, Hamilton Hume will be a well known name. Perhaps what is less known, is that he helped his sister in law Elizabeth Hume to establish the run "Yarrawonga Stations" after the death of her husband John Hume. She had nine children so obviously a determined woman.

She designed and had built the house she called Byramine which means rustic retreat. It had a range of safety features including wooden shutters and walls sixteen inches thick to help protect the family from bushrangers and Aboriginals. Husband John had been killed by bushrangers (the Whitton gang) so her desire to be safe in her new home and property is understandable. The home is privately owned although operates as a heritage tourism venture and was last for sale in 2010 and this Weekly Times property notice gives its history.

The final thing I did in Yarrawonga was to collect my father's cuckoo clock from the Clock Museum (it doesn't have its own website). On an earlier visit I had left it there for a clean and tone up as it is one of the few things that I have from my father. He was given the clock by my brother's first in-laws and Dad loved watching the cuckoo come out every hour but I don't think Mum was as enthralled. Certainly she didn't seem to mind giving it to me after Dad died.

The Clock Museum is a fascinating place and there are over 500 antique and novelty clocks on display and it is worth a visit as all clocks are in working order (that's a lot of ticking). It's privately owned and the owner knows everything about clocks which is why I took my cuckoo clock to him for restoration.

I had to be back in Melbourne for the committee meeting of the Victorian Association of Family History Organisations (VAFHO). Lots of things are happening with updates to the website, thinking about speakers for the next Don Grant lecture on Family History Feast day (30 July 2012 so save the date), planning for the next VAFHO conference in 2013 in Ballarat and also looking at a membership drive to get more representation across Victoria.

Back home I had a small mountain of snail mail, mostly bills, but one was an envelope postmarked Ireland and I knew it was my Irish marriage certificates. I ordered two a few weeks ago so with great excitement I opened the envelope to find two certificates but they were the same certificate, not two different ones. I'm not sure what has happened but I will need to contact them and sort it all out.

This weekend is going to be a catch up weekend with everything. It's nice having time away and sitting on an immigration channel bank fishing and watching the birds but now I have emails, newsletters, blogs and some new breakthroughs in my own family history research to follow up. Not to mention preparing my talks for the Unlock the Past genealogy cruise which is now only four weeks away and before that I am travelling to Pambula, NSW for the Bega Valley Genealogy Society annual seminar where I am giving two talks.

Although I have been saying I will take it easier next year, I find I am already committed to a growing number of genealogy events next year. I start out saying NO but then they seem to find my soft spot - I need to find it myself and concrete it over! Still it is nice to be in demand and I probably wouldn't like to see that change.

Genealogy notes 5-9 Oct 2011 genealogy seminars & heritage tourism

2011-10-09T16:15:00.000-07:00

Thursday and Friday we spent travelling through the Yarra Valley and we finally did a wine tasting at Helen's Hill Winery and had a three course lunch at Vines Restaurant (this was all part of my partner's retirement gift from his workmates). We couldn't share our experience as there was no phone coverage (at least not for our provider) and on Thursday night we stayed in a motel (just 2 km outside a nearby town) and I couldn't even access the Telstra network with my laptop modem. It made me realise (yet again) how hard it is for rural/regional people to have the same type of easy access that those in more metropolitan areas enjoy.

The next day we travelled up to Lake Eildon which has spent the last few years with less than 5% water capacity but is now back up to 98% capacity. It is really amazing to see all the water again and hard to believe when you drive over the bridge that there was no water there for years. We weren't the only tourists so hopefully all those businesses will get back to normal, especially with the summer season approaching.

So after two days 'in the wilderness' I was glad to arrive at our friend's place at Yarrawonga and again have access to phone and emails etc. While up this way, we have been exploring some of the food and history trails and on Saturday we went to Tocumwal on the Murray River where I was surprised to learn the town (first established in 1862) was the site of the largest aerodrome in the Southern Hemisphere during World War II. As well as Australians, the base also saw over 7,000 Americans and today it is hard to imagine all that activity and people. I found the photographs and other memorabilia at the Tocumwal Historic Aerodrome Museum fascinating and it is definitely worth the 'gold coin' entry donation.

For car and caravan buffs, Chrystie's Museum is worth a visit and I was particularly interested in the early caravans although there was a whole range of other memorabilia in display cases.

If you want the best strawberry pancakes ever then don't go past the Big Strawberry (yes I can add another 'Big' icon to my list of places visited). I don't think I have ever seen so many varieties of strawberry jam or wines and liquers for that matter. I settled on fig and ginger to take home.

But we are not up here just to see the sights and yesterday I spent talking to members of GMAGS (Goulburn Murray Association of Genealogical Societies). While most people were from local societies (within an hour's drive or so) I did meet one couple who had travelled down from Deniliquin. My three talks on mining ancestors, online newspapers and caring for family archives were all well received with plenty of time for questions after each talk. There was also lots of discussion over morning and afternoon tea and lunch.

As a surprise, I had bought along some lucky door prizes which included some copies of Inside History magazine (which is about to celebrate it's first anniversary) and also some copies of Australian Family Tree Connections and some genealogy journals from the Genealogical Society of Victoria and the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies. Jan Parker was the lucky recipient of a copy of the digital scrapbooking program My Memories. I know Jan is a keen scrapbooker so I will look forward to hearing what she thinks of digital scrapbooking.

When talking about genealogy seminars in rural areas, you simply also have to mention the catering. People brought along plates of food to share and there is nothing better than home cooked slices and cakes. Do it yourself ham or chicken salad rolls for lunch went well with plenty for everyone. There was a $10 charge by GMAGS for the day and this included lunch and the talks so great value.

I again highlighted the value of social media and especially blogging as a way of easily telling their family stories so it will be interesting to see how many explore this option. They started to see the possibilities when I explained the various family connections I have made after distant relatives found my blogs via Google.

I have one more talk at Cobram on Wednesday night - it's on military ancestors so I'm looking forward to that. We should also get the opportunity to explore some more local towns but haven't decided which ones yet. I still have those book reviews to do but its hard to sit here at the laptop when you know there is so much history out there, just waiting to be explored!

Genealogy notes 29 Sep - 4 Oct 2011 value of genealogy conference papers

2011-10-04T21:26:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit quiet but only because I was determined to finish a long standing project. A while back I told the Victorian Association of Family History Societies Organisation (VAFHO) that I was doing a complete listing of all papers presented at their conferences between 1995 and 2010. The details of the project are here, plus a link to the online list. As this is just a diary update I wont' go into all again, but I am glad that it is now completed.

I've also been busy reading my two books for review and I hope to finalise those by the end of this week. Then I will only have the CD publication and the scrapbooking software to review. I like doing reviews but they do take time and they always seem to come at the same time!

Some of my e-newsletters have been Snippets (Queensland Family History Society), Public Record Office Despatch (PROV), Now & Then from State Records NSW, qsa bulletin from Queensland State Archives, Lost Cousins, and the SAG e-newsletter from the Society of Australian Genealogists.

The other major task that's kept me quiet has been updating my three talks for the Goulburn Murray Association of Genealogical Societies (GMAGS) this coming Sunday. I'm looking at Mining Ancestors, Newspapers Online and Caring For Your Family Archives so it will be fairly intensive day with something for everyone.

While up that way I will also be giving a talk on Researching Military Ancestors at the monthly meeting of the Cobram Genealogical Group. I'm a member there and their representative on VAFHO but I don't get up there that often for monthly meetings.

So another busy week coming up.

Genealogy notes 23-28 Sep Business and trade union records

2011-09-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I gave two talks to the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies here in Melbourne. Both talks highlighted how much is not online (based on my book It's Not All Online: A Guide to Genealogy Sources Offline) and as usual the feedback was along the lines of they 'had never thought to look there'. Two of my favourite websites are the Guide to Australian Business Records and the Australian Trade Union Archives. Although most of these types of records are not online, you can use the online catalogues to identify information that might be relevant to your own family history.

I have a few reviews to do at present (even an e-book and digital scrapbooking software so there's two new experiences) which means I have been doing a fair bit of reading this week. Given Melbourne is having a return to cold, wet and windy weather that hasn't been a bad thing. The hard part comes writing up the reviews, although they are all subjects that I am personally interested in. Stay tuned.

The other thing that has kept me busy is scanning family photos and relooking at some of my older research. By using TROVE and in particular the digitised newspapers I can now add more details to my original research. It is so easy to find stories or family notices doing simple keyword searches especially if you have dates and places. Of course once I find relevant entries, I then have to correct the OCR text and I usually add a tag (person's name or place) so that others can then find it even more easily.

When I took an early photo of my parents out of its frame (originally from my grandmother's place after she died) I found another photo behind it of a woman and child, but of course no names or date. The woman has a slight resemblance to my grandmother but I have no idea who it might be. I will take the photo up to Mum's at Christmas and hope she may know who it is.

We continue to declutter our house and make preparations to sell and move further north where it is warm. Although now there is talk we may just live in a caravan for a while before we decide where to buy. That all sounds nice but I can't see where all my family history files are going to live, not to mention my books and other memorabilia. While I am slowly digitising my research of the last 34 years it won't be finished by the end of the year. I can't see myself leaving it in a storage shed somewhere or even in a shipping container. All I can hope is that we will finally agree on where to settle on our next trip up and down the Queensland/New South Wales coast!! Christmas/New Year is going to be interesting.

Genealogy notes 19-22 Sep 2011 Value of Blogging

2011-09-22T00:43:00.000-07:00

There's a lot happening at the moment. After my Judge family breakthrough, see Diary for 15-18 Sep 2011, I have been changing online family trees and entering all my new correct data. I still have to do that with my personal database and of course, go through all my paper files. Still I'm glad I've finally found the real Elizabeth Judge even if she is technically Elizabeth Pollard.

I reviewed my talk Archives You Should Know But Perhaps Don't and updated Powerpoint slides where necessary in preparation for today's talk at the Genealogical Society of Victoria. I received nice feedback and it's good to see genealogists broaden their knowledge outside of the usual national/state archives thinking. Hopefully they will all be on their computers tonight looking at all the various sites. My website Resources page has a number of my talks and handouts with links so that people don't have to write so fast.

We finished up with a discussion about blogs (this was after a show of hands revealed hardly any hands)! I was stressing how good they are to find out what is happening and what other people are doing. Also how blogging your family stories can lead to distant relatives finding you. I gave my Maria Jeffers blog Letters Home My Irish Families example. The comments on that blog include responses from family members descended from the person mentioned in the letters. They had no idea the letters even existed! I hope GSV attendees at least look at some blogs and maybe even try out Blogger themselves. With luck they are reading this now!

I did another guest blog for MyHeritage and that should appear tomorrow and I watched Brad Argent from Ancestry on Mornings with Kerri-Anne on Channel 9 on Wednesday talking about famous Australian celebrities. But I forgot to watch Who Do You Think You Are that night - at 10pm it's a bit late for me. I'll have to get the DVD! It's the second series of the US version and Wikipedia has a nice summary of the WDYTYA US shows, both seasons.

The September e-newsletters I've read since last time include Ancestry, Lost Cousins, National Archives UK, Unlock the Past Crew, FindMyPast UK, and S&N Genealogy News. Sometimes I think I subscribe to too many e-newsletters but they are mostly free (except for my subscription sites) and I usually find something of interest in all of them. I like how you can click on links and follow up items of interest which you can't do if reading paper magazines (I know you can type in URLs but nothing beats instant link). I will confess I do speed read, skim, only look at the pictures etc unless it is specifically on an area of personal interest.

Genealogy notes 15-18 September 2011 Red Herrings & Brickwalls

2011-09-17T19:00:00.000-07:00

I have continued my tidy up of the study and it is so easy to get distracted. I am finding as I look through my family history files and research folders, I want to revisit the research as there is so much more now that is easily accessible online. TROVE is a fantastic resource for finding information on families in Australian newspapers. Of course once you are on TROVE it is not so easy to get off - it's so addictive and because you are turning up little nuggets on the family, why stop?

I've also gone through my Problems folder - questions I couldn't answer, families I couldn't find and so on. I dragged out my Elizabeth Judge question - I had a birth certificate in 1857, a marriage certificate in 1878 but couldn't find her on either the 1861 or 1871 census. I had looked many times, originally on microfilm but more recently in both Ancestry and FindMyPast.

Yesterday was the day I was going to solve it once and for all and I spent the better part of the day just doing that. I also proved my research of 34 years totally wrong and now I have to go back and clean everything up. Not only in my Legacy Family Tree database but also my online databases in Genes Reunited, Ancestry and My Heritage. It is going to take some time but at least now I know the real story. Intrigued - it's all in my Online Research, New Resources, Fresh Eyes.

The other thing I did yesterday was to get back into the 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History blogging series and Week 37 was Earliest Memories. I looked back on my first day of school and if you want to see me in my Grade One uniform click here. I find photographs terrific for helping to retrieve long forgotten memories.

As much as I would like to just sit here gazing outside and watching the birds, I have a family tree to clean up and as my other half points out, the house also needs a bit of a tidy up! He's gone off on his motorbike, so I can't ask him what housework needs doing - it all looks fine to me. So perhaps back to TROVE?

Genealogy notes 8-14 September 2011 Digitised journals & WDYTYA?

2011-09-13T17:48:00.000-07:00

How did five days slip past? I'm on a mission to clean up my study which houses all of my family history material accumulated over the last 34 years. A good friend when she moved from Brisbane to Canberra a couple of years ago said be ruthless. I have moved four times in the last 12 years so I have tried to keep the clutter down but we are facing yet another move and the time to be ruthless is upon me.

One easy win is that many things I printed out or photocopied years ago are now freely available online so I have made the decision to not keep the paper copies - amazing how much paper weighs. Mostly this is BDM indexes, IGI printouts, electoral rolls and so on. The family information is of course already captured in my Legacy Family Tree database.

Another easy win has been giving away my genealogy journals from the two Brisbane based societies. Both the Genealogy Society of Queensland and the Queensland Family History Society have digitised back issues of their journals, respectively Generation (1979-2008) and Queensland Family Historian (1979-2010). I came home from my recent trip to Brisbane with a copy of both and it is a much easier way to search through old journal issues. The only other Australian society that I am aware of which has done this with their journal Descent (1933-2008) is the Society of Australian Genealogists based in Sydney.

However I still can't resist flicking through everything and that is what is taking the time. I also made the mistake of looking at all my boxes of family photographs and after many trips down memory lane, I put all the boxes back in the cupboard or I was never going to get anything done. I have been scanning my photos as well but that also takes time. Don't worry, I won't be getting rid of original copies but it will be good to have backup copies.

I have two more talks in September so I spent some time updating Archives You May Not Know But Should for the Genealogical Society of Victoria and I am also giving that talk to the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies together with It's Not All Online: Where Else Can I Look? To see what else I am doing Oct-Dec 2011 see the Events page on my website.

Some of my online reading so far has included September issues for Genes Reunited, Ancestry.com, Public Record Office Despatch (Victoria), Lost Cousins and my daily doses of Dick Eastman. It is good to see Channel 9 showing the US series of Who Do You Think You Are? on Wednesdays at 10pm (starting tonight so don't miss it). However I do wish it was on a bit earlier - I'm not a tape and watch later person so a late night for me!

Now back to my clean up!

Genealogy notes 5-7 September 2011 A Bit of Everything

2011-09-08T00:32:00.000-07:00

Time flies when you are having fun and it is certainly flying at the moment. I seem to have a small mountain of reading to do - and that's only the paper based reading. This week I have received my quarterly magazines from the Genealogical Society of Victoria and the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies, the September issues of Australian Family Tree Connections (AFTC) and Victorian GUM News (there is a handy index to past newsletters on their website) and Issue 6 of Inside History. All now piled up on top of the 'waiting to read' pile.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier was that I received a complimentary copy of State Records NSW 1788-2011 by Peter J Tyler which was written to celebrate the 50th anniversary of State Records Authority of NSW. This history is also available online free and it is great to see a history of the archives which also incorporates the time before the Authority was established in 1961. It should be an interesting read.

I also received a copy of Goldie Alexander's Mentoring Your Memoir to review and this is a 'how to write and a personal memoir all in one' so I am looking forward to reading that. I'm still very conscious of the fact that one of my 2011genealogy aspirations for this year is to 'publish' one of my draft family histories. Basically the drafts need tidying up, add a few photos, pick a title (hardest part I think) and then decide on published format (probably a bit more involved than that but you know what I mean).

With all that reading temptation, I still had to write Part 11 of my mining ancestor series for AFTC, my guest blog on News from Australia for MyHeritage and I accepted a commission to write for a UK magazine (with a short deadline) so the last few days have been busy writing and I even managed a research report for one of my long term clients.

I also accepted a blog challenge from Geniaus to do My 99 Things Genealogy Meme - Aussie Style which was a lot of fun and did make me think about all the things I have/have not done. Other Australian bloggers (11 when I looked) joined in and Geniaus has compiled all the responses into a single blog. I would also like to see Geniaus add her original post to this list too - then we could all be the Aussie Genealogy Dozen!

7 September saw my 11,000 tweet on Twitter which is amazing. I originally thought I wouldn't benefit from Twitter but now find it really good for up to date genealogy news. In fact I don't think I could manage without it as it also links me to many overseas genealogy friends that I would never have known otherwise.

Anyway if I am going to get any reading done today, I better stop writing now!

Genealogy notes 2-4 September 2011 The Geelong History & Genealogy Expo

2011-09-03T22:54:00.000-07:00

Well the last two days went very quickly as I was at the Unlock the Past history and genealogy expo in Geelong, Victoria. I gave 3 talks, attended lots of other talks, browsed the 70+ exhibitors, caught up with friends and enjoyed myself a lot. My review of the whole expo is here for those who would like to know more.

Today I have been catching up with emails, tweets and blogs as I didn't take my laptop with me - I didn't want to be too distracted from the attractions of the expo and talking with real people in person.

It still surprises me how few Australian genealogists have embraced Twitter and blogs - I keep telling them how much they are missing out on. It will be interesting to see how many take up my invitation to look at my blogs over the next few days or even follow me on Twitter.

I also have to sort out all my notes from the lectures - lots of new ideas and URLs to follow up which might lead to some new family information. The big question is where to start as I want to do everything at once - and that's just what is online!!

Today is Father's Day and my partner and I have been remembering our fathers and sharing stories. It's funny some of the things you remember when prompted by other people's experiences. I hope everyone else is having a good day with their fathers or remembering them as we are. Until next time, happy researching.

Genealogy notes 30-31 Aug & 1 Sep 2011 expos & conferences

2011-09-01T00:26:00.000-07:00

Not sure where time is going lately. Tuesday was a bit of a loss as we spent most of the day going to various medical appointments - nothing like waiting around and finding the same magazines everywhere. Must remember to take some family history journals next time but I always like to think they will be on time!

Wednesday was spent changing some of the slides in my three talks at the Unlock the Past history and genealogy Geelong expo on 2-3 September. Mostly updating website pages but Google has changed its home page quite a bit since I first did my Google tips talk, so I have reworked that. I also made the discovery that my website counter on a couple of my pages (including the Resources page that I refer everyone to) have not been working for some time. It's now all fixed but I have lost the statistics for those pages although I still have the overall stats via Google Analytics.

In the afternoon I had an exploratory look at the Find My Past Ireland website - I keep hoping that I will progress my Irish lines. I found looking at the Forums and the various questions people ask interesting. When I posted my Norwegian interests to a forum a few years ago I received amazing help so I will post my Irish interests next week when I have more time (she says).

Today I have worked on my guest blog for MyHeritage and realised I didn't include last week's in this Diary. Sometimes I do more than I think I have - probably should make notes as I go! Anyway it comes out every Friday. One of the things I mentioned in it was the annual conference of the ACT & NSW Family History Societies Association in Inverell on 16-18 September. I usually try to go but as we have been away so much this year and it is a long drive, I'm going to miss catching up with all my old friends.

The next two days will be in Geelong and I will be blogging the expo as I usually do but that won't be out until Sunday. The Expo looks like it will be a big event with over 70 exhibitors so I may not mention them all. It will probably depend on how many are relevant to my own areas of research. I also hope to catch a few speakers that I haven't heard before so that will be good, and on topics I'm interested in. People are coming from all over Victoria so I will also catch up with friends as well. It will be genealogy heaven!

Genealogy notes 27-29 August 2011 Victorian Seminars & Fairs

2011-08-28T23:46:00.000-07:00

It's been a hectic few days. As I indicated last time, on Saturday I attended the VAFHO AGM and Seminar at PROV and it was a great afternoon, but it was a shame that not more people attended as the talks were really good. The AGM was no surprise with the existing committee being voted back in for another year.

Charlie Farrugia's talk on Victorian Wards was really interesting and it is surprising just how much is available on these children who were 'convicted and neglected' to use Charlie's words. There is even an index (1864-1893) on microfiche published by the Australian Institute for Genealogical Studies which makes access easier, if you have access to the microfiche (amazing how we start to want to see everything online). There is also PROVguide 60 Adoption, Wardship and Related Records which gives a lot of information on the topic.

Ada Ackerly's talk highlighted all the fantastic information that might be held on individuals in departmental correspondence files, equity files, non probate files and so on. However most of these types of records have no overall index and you need to look at individual year indexes which is why the records are not used as much as they should be. Ada has done quite a lot of indexing on various series and these are available at PROV in the reading room.

Sunday we left home early to get to the Maryborough Family History Group Fair and we took the heritage route through old mining towns such as Creswick, Clunes and Talbot and all the wattle along the roadside looked fantastic. Although it might explain why I feel like I have a touch of hay fever today.

The Fair was good and there were numerous historical societies and other groups with their records all on hand to assist people with their family history queries. Three speakers, John Tully on Researching the Goldfields, myself on Archives You Probably Don't Know but Should and Anne Howlett from Creative Memories on Heritage Scrapbooking also provided attendees with lots of information and answered lots of questions. It was good to catch up with my many friends and colleagues in central Victoria.

Today has been spent catching up on emails, tweets and blogs and some of the enewsletters I have read today include Eneclann with the latest Irish history and genealogy news; several days worth of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter; and I have been catching up on profiles on GeniMates, a blog series on 'genealogists from all over the place'.

The other major task for today was to finally finish my two Congress papers for the 13th Australasian genealogy and heraldry congress next March. I have made more changes again today and I am starting to seriously think I am procrastinating! Tomorrow is the deadline so it will definitely all be over then. The issue, I think, is that the paper is due now, six months before the Congress and as we all know, things change quite rapidly in the genealogy environment. There is scope to have a handout with any changes but the handout won't appear in the Congress proceedings. I'll have a final read tonight then hit the Send button!

Checking my diary reminds me that the Unlock the Past Victorian history and genealogy expo at Geelong is this coming Friday and Saturday so there goes another weekend devoted to genealogy, not that I mind! As usual I will try and tweet from the venue and do an overall blog of the event.

Now domestic duties call - I have to go and cook dinner!

Genealogy notes 24-26 August 2011 Non Stop Genealogy

2011-08-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

Well I finally got to cross off a few things off my 'to do' list. I wrote my blog on Writing Family History and although it is a bit longer than I originally intended, it covers most of the points I made in my presentation on writing resource guides.

I also made substantial progress on catching up with my emails but there are still a lot of blogs in my Google Reader that I need to at least take a peek at. So many good genealogy bloggers out there! If your new to this take a look at the Unlock the Past list of genealogy blogs for Australia and New Zealand and if you want overseas try Geneabloggers for a mind blowing list of blogs from just about everywhere.

While on the subject of blogs, My Heritage have asked me to do a guest blog on Australian news so that took a bit of time yesterday and should appear on Friday 26 August. I should point out that there is no payment involved, just the opportunity to reach a different audience and to share my knowledge with others.

I have found family relatives through My Heritage as well as Genes Reunited and Ancestry. Advertising family lines online can be a good way to pick up near relatives as well as more distant lines so I have a few generations of my families on each of the three sites. It does cost to be on so many sites but I would have missed linking up with some families if I hadn't. I have opted for the free or least expensive options which still let me link up with others.

I have also been catching up with some of the enewsletters I receive. I always like the Professional Historians Association (PHA) (Qld Branch) enews as I catch up with news of my Queensland friends. When I arrived home earlier this week, in my snail mail there was a copy of Circa, which is the professional journal published by the PHA's (Vic Branch). There are some great articles in that so I am looking forward to curling up and reading it once I have some of the other things out of the way. For information on Professional Historians Associations in other States see the Australian Council of Professional Historians Associations.

qsa-bulletin is enews from the Queensland State Archives and it is great for finding out what new records are available, what has been digitised or indexed, what seminars are on and so on. State Records NSW and Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) also have enewsletters which I receive as my families tended to move around quite a bit.

Today I will be spending time preparing for the Victorian Association of Family History Organisations (VAFHO) AGM and seminar tomorrow at PROV - I am a committee member and have been asked to stand again for the coming year. The two speakers following the AGM are Charlie Farrugia from PROV and Ada Ackerley who is well known for her many indexes of PROV records so both talks should be really good.

I also have to get ready for the Maryborough Family History Group Fair on Sunday as I am giving a talk on Archives You Should Know But Don't and I will also have a display table for the various Unlock the Past publications. It's only a couple of hours drive from our place and is a really historic part of Victoria's mining past so I am looking forward to the trip.

Well my coming weekend is almost non stop genealogy so I hope your weekend is equally blessed with genealogy time and if you are at either PROV or Maryborough Fair do come up and say hello!

Genealogy notes 21-23 August 2011 Rubbish As Memories

2011-08-23T23:21:00.000-07:00

Sunday saw our little family catchup where we shared memories of days gone by and discussed what we might do this coming Christmas, our next family catchup. Afterwards I took the rubbish down to the bins (Mum lives in a complex and the bins had already been taken down to the front for collection the next morning). By random chance I opened the first bin that had been placed on the kerb and it was full of videos. While rummaging through other peoples' bins is not something that I normally do, in this case I couldn't help myself.

One of the titles had caught my eye - 'Joan's 80th birthday'. Joan was my mother's neighbour and she was a very interesting person in her 90s who we had got to know over Christmas/New Year 2009 when I spent quite a few hours with Joan looking into her family history. It was an interesting and well known family so I was able to show Joan various websites and she was so enthusiastic. So why were her videos and other personal items in the rubbish bin?

For various reasons, Joan's family had recently decided that she could no longer live alone, taking care of herself and so she had to leave her townhouse. Unfortunately we never got to say goodbye and by the time we arrived the unit was being cleaned out, ready for lease to someone else. I'm not sure who cleaned the unit out, whether it was the family or someone they paid to come in and do it. Whoever it was simply put a lot of her possessions in the rubbish bin. As we gazed into the bin we could see various aspects of Joan's life and interests just waiting to be taken away. Perhaps the family already had copies of the more important videos and had taken the more significant family items away already. I certainly hope so.

It depressed me, and still does, to think that when we are gone, or no longer able to care for ourselves, that all we hold significant, might simply be thrown into a rubbish bin. It is one of the reasons I wrote Your Family History Archives: A Brief Introduction and why I give a talk based around the book at various genealogy events. It is to remind my fellow genealogists and family historians to think about the future and what will happen to their own research and records at the end of the day.

Monday saw us fly back home to Melbourne and I'm happy to say that the weather here has been really lovely with sunny, blue skies although a little colder than Brisbane. There was a small mountain of mail which we are slowly working our way through, after dealing with all the bills first!

Tuesday was also a catch up day on various domestic chores, including a visit to the dentist and the builders were in. I have finally got around to putting doors on my study so that everyone will no longer see how much 'stuff' I have in there. Having been away for quite a bit since last April, the study needs a big clean up!

The one thing that I did achieve today was to finalise an update to my talk on Archives You May Not Know But Should which I am giving at the Maryborough (Victoria) Family History Fair on Sunday 28 August 2011.

Tomorrow I am going to write my 'writing family history' blog and start to catch up on emails, blogs and tweets I have put on hold over the last few months. I wonder if my life will ever really be 'normal'?

Genealogy notes 18-20 August 2011

2011-08-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

Well the Ekka certainly brought back memories on Thursday - going with my parents as a child and also taking my son when he was little. There are a few changes (Sideshow Alley rides certainly look more scary) but mostly it was the Show as I remembered it. We ended up spending about 8 hours there and saw just about everything. A great day and after a little rain/cloud in the morning it turned into a wonderful winter's day.

Friday I went and collected my grandfathers' replica military medals from National Medals and I am so pleased that I have finally done this. Now I want to write up their stories - Henry Price in WW1 and John Martin Gunderson in WW2. Perhaps that should be a Remembrance Day target as it is closer to November than next April for ANZAC Day.

On Saturday I was pleased to hear from Hazel Edwards who I had heard speak at the Family History Feast at State Library of Victoria in early August. Firstly she advised me that emails were bouncing from my website (Shauna Hicks History Enterprises)which was good to know and is now fixed - but I do wonder what I missed out on for the almost four weeks that I was unaware of the problem. At least in the old days of snail mail, the letterbox managed to hold all your mail even if it did get damp when it rained.

Secondly Hazel informed me of the increased traffic to her website (Hazel Edwards An Australian Author) following my review of Family History Feast and I also mentioned her book How to Write a Non Boring Family History during my Toowoomba talks recently. It is always good to get feedback and to know that people read my blogs and follow up on links from both my blogs and talks. It makes all the hard work of writing blogs and preparing talks all the more worthwhile.

Thirdly it reminded me that I had said in my Researching & Writing History blog that I would blog my 'how to write' talk following the Unlock the Past Researching & Writing History two day seminar in Adelaide back in May. It's now back on my 'to do' list and hopefully in the coming week I will be able to cross it off the list.

As we are heading back to Melbourne on Monday we have been doing some sightseeing around Brisbane and to be honest, the weather has been so great it is a shame to be indoors. Plus the internet connection at Mum's is not the best and it takes so long to do anything!

Today we are having another family gathering as it will probably be Christmas before we are up this way again. Having said that, where did this year go?

I have some exciting talks/events coming up in September and it will be much easier to maintain this Diary once I am back home and no longer in tourist mode. Most events I am speaking at are day trips or only one night away so it will be good to have all my usual research resources around me. It's definitely not all online!

Genealogy notes 14-17 August 2011 Brisbane talks

2011-08-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

Still in Brisbane and catching up with friends and relatives - it's amazing how much time that can take up. Sunday we had a leisurely lunch with my partner's cousin at Redcliffe and it was a beautiful day. Great to see all the boats out sailing and fishing and I can't believe all the development that is happening out that way.

Monday I did something I have always wanted to do - order replica medals of my grandfathers' military service. Mum's father (Henry Price) was in WW1 and Dad's father (John Martin Gunderson) was in WW2 which highlights a generation discrepancy that most people don't have. Mum was the last of ten children where as Dad was an only child. Anyway every ANZAC Day I say I wish I had some family medals to wear and talk about to family and friends as an ongoing reminder of their military service. I collect the replica medals on Friday from National Medals.

Monday night was my talk on Researching Mining Ancestors at Southern Suburbs Branch of the Genealogical Society of Queensland. It was their AGM and a cold night (for Brisbane) so it was a relatively small audience but still keen to research their mining ancestors. It was also good to catch up with old friends.

Tuesday I should have written this blog but I was determined to write my two papers for the 2012 Australasian genealogy congress in Adelaide. That was my focus and I knew that if I started looking at emails and blogs I would be distracted. I'm happy to say that I have reasonable drafts for both papers which I will fine tune before submission next week. It looks like a great congress with some interesting speakers and papers so I can't wait!

Wednesday I indulged myself with some research on my partner's family. His mother (Elma Eldridge) was a Queenslander and there are others researching the family and while I have been given the basics of the family tree, some of the detail is missing. So I worked on his mother's direct family as the others are from sibling lines.

Wednesday night I gave my talk to the Queensland Family History Society and an almost full house listened to my suggestions for researching Victorian ancestors. As I am a Foundation member of QFHS it is always good to see other Foundation members at meetings and remember how we all met back in 1979 to establish the Society. I only start to feel old (older) when I see other people and how they have changed over the years and I know that I have also changed but internally I don't think I have.

Tomorrow I am going to the Ekka (Brisbane Exhibition/Royal Queensland Show) and that will definitely bring back memories as I haven't been in decades. I hope the weather holds and the crowds/queues aren't too big - I'm not as young as I used to be!!

Genealogy notes 10-13 August 2011 Toowoomba seminar

2011-08-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog back in July, I should have probably called it a travel and genealogy diary as I seem to have done nothing but travel since then. It's been hectic over the last few days with 10-11 August spent up at Coolum Beach on the Sunshine Coast catching up with friends. The weather has been absolutely wonderful, blue skies and very warm for winter and it is easy to see why Queensland is the Sunshine State.

Perhaps the highlight was the sunset cruise on the Noosa River on board the Noosa Queen where they take you up river to the mouth of Lake Cooroibah and you arrive just as the sun sets in a fiery red ball on the other side of the lake. A must see event and our photos don't do it justice, although the one on their website is pretty close to what we saw. The bird life is also amazing and it is all so quiet with just a few fishermen here and there and a houseboat or two. You arrive back at Noosa Marina just in time to see thousands and thousands of flying foxes (bats) fly out of the trees and head inland for a night of feasting. Another amazing sight and there was almost a full moon which added a touch of spookiness.

After our relaxing two days at Coolum we had to head over to Toowoomba and rather than take the highways, we went via Kilcoy, Esk and Crow's Nest, all haunts of mine during the 70s. It was nice to see that not a lot of change has occurred and driving past Ravensbourne National Park brought back many memories of a time before family history.

Toowoomba was still largely as I remember it, Picnic Point is still there and the main streets in the CBD are all the same but some of the roundabouts and one way streets tricked us up a bit. Roadworks and detours were another hazard. On the Friday night we did something I haven't done in over 30 years - we went to the incredible seafood buffet at Weis Restaurant at the Top of the Range.

Walking inside was a real trip back in time and it is better than ever I think. Our table was just near the fire in one of the main dining rooms and it was only a short walk to the next room where the buffet was set up. Nothing frozen there and everything we tried was delicious and the dessert table has to be seen to be believed. It is also as popular as ever as we were at the early sitting and most tables were occupied. I want to go back again!!

Saturday was the reason we were in Toowoomba in the first place. I was giving three talks and John Graham from the Ryerson Index was giving two talks in an all day family history seminar organised by the Toowoomba City Council Library. It attracted 76 people which is about the limit of the room but people didn't seem to mind the closeness. It was good to see the folks from the Toowoomba & Darling Downs Family History Society there and I hope they picked up a few new members.

My talks were all well received ( a beginner's talk, genealogy on the cheap and a brick walls talk) and I have put copies of the slides on the Resources page of my website as attendees were writing notes down furiously and finding it hard to keep up with all the new ideas and suggestions. I had heard John's basic talks before (one on the Ryerson index and the other on the value of country newspapers) but I am not sure if he has added new information or I just didn't take it in the first time. You can now link from the Ryerson website to digitised newspapers by going to the Request a Lookup link. Fantastic.

Copies of my books all sold well and we soon sold out as we could only carry so many up from Melbourne. They are available online from Gould Genealogy, look under the link for Unlock the Past publications. It's odd but they don't have an author search facility. I think the Library organisers were all pleased with the day and I suspect there will be many attendees online today trying out the new sites.

Three museums also worth a visit in Toowoomba are the Cobb & Co Museum, the Highfields Pioneer Village and the Southern Cross Museum which is part of your ticket to the Village. Just leave plenty of time to see everything.

On the way back to Brisbane we stopped at the Big Orange (another one of my favourite places from the past) and brought some really fresh and cheap fruit and vegetables). We are at Mum's for another week so have lots of time to eat everything we bought, although we may have been a bit over enthusiastic.

After a very big day I was in bed by 8.30pm on a Saturday night! There's a big genealogy week coming up so stay tuned.

Genealogy notes 8-9 August Australian Census Night

2011-08-08T21:16:00.000-07:00

Last diary entry included reference to a family get together where we would be showing old videos of ourselves and our kids which we had recently converted to DVD so that we could share them with other family members. It's amazing how much we can all change even in just a few short years. There was lots of laughter as we looked back on how much we had changed and Christmas lunches we remembered but not the details of what we wore, what we ate and the gifts we received. It was a great afternoon and we will now make copies for everyone.

Today is the 2011 Australian census night and as we are currently staying at Mum's we will have to complete it here. I have been nominated the census 'person' so I will have the job of filling in the answers to the 60 questions, three times over.While I suspect I know most of the answers, I will still have to ask the others for some information. And yes, we will be saying Yes to Question 60 which is about keeping a cover of our return for future generations.

The other major genealogy task for today is to complete my talk on mining ancestors for the monthly meeting of the Southern Suburbs branch of the Genealogical Society of Queensland which is next Monday. On the following Wednesday I am giving another talk, this time on Victorian Resources for Family History to the Queensland Family History Society at their monthly meeting. I have already finalised that talk as it is based on an earlier talk I gave to the Society of Australian Genealogists in Sydney in May.

I am all organised for my three talks at the Toowoomba City Library on Saturday so that is good. I hate last minute panics and like to have all talks completed in advance so that I can just tweak them if necessary. It has been so warm here in Brisbane that I am almost looking forward to Toowoomba's cooler climate.

I'm starting to get requests for genealogy talks next year and can't believe how quickly this year has gone. I suspect this year I accepted too many requests as I seem to have hardly ever been home which is one reason why it has gone quickly. Next year should be a slower so that I can actually work on my own family history, but then I seem to say that every year!

Genealogy notes 5-7 August 2011 Everything Irish

2011-08-06T18:49:00.000-07:00

The weather in Brisbane is absolutely perfect, you wouldn't even know it was winter. We haven't even put a cardigan on since we arrived and on our morning and afternoon walks along Enoggera Creek we even manage to work up a sweat! Going back to Melbourne is going to be hard.

Friday was a e-reading day (in between family interruptions) and I caught up with Dick Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter (mostly US), QFHS Snippets (Queensland Family History Society), Lost Cousins: Putting Relatives in Touch (mostly UK), Professional Historians Association Queensland, Proformat News (Adelaide Proformat, South Australia), newsletters from Ancestry.com.au, and Genes Reunited and I still have more catching up to do. Now that I have started to put all e-newsletters into a single folder for reading it is easier for me to see just how many I actually receive - it's a bit of an eye opener.

Saturday was the Genealogical Society of Queensland annual seminar Ireland: Unlocking the Mystery so it was an early start to get to the Queen Alexandra Home at Coorparoo. Amazingly I still remember the way from Mum's place. First speaker was an old friend from Canberra Cora Num talking on Irish Research on the Internet which is a talk she gave on the Unlock the Past genealogy cruise but I missed it as numbers were limited and I wasn't quick enough. As usual she has a handout on her website (click on the gopher) which is just as well as she mentioned lots of sites I was familiar with but also some I wasn't aware of. So lots of follow up research on my Irish families is now on the To Do List.

I was second speaker with my talk The Colonial Irish Loved a Beer or Two and Pauline Williams was next talking about Irish Resources at the GSQ. Lunch followed and I must say the catering was fantastic at both morning tea and lunch - I don't think anyone went hungry.

After lunch Richard Reid's talk was From the First Fleet to the Rose of Tralee - The National Museum of Australia's Irish in Australian exhibition. His talk provided some of the background to the Just Not Ned: A True History of the Irish in Australia exhibition which recently closed at the National Museum of Australia (lots of Irish family history tips on this site too). Richard's anecdotes about some of the Irish objects in the exhibition and some of the issues associated with curating an exhibition of that size made for a very interesting talk. Having seen the exhibition myself in Canberra it brought back memories or added a new dimension to what I had been lucky enough to see.

Final speaker of the day was Jennifer Harrison on Releasing Irish Convicts which was an overall view of a life of an Irish convict and at each stage (crime, arrest, gaol, transportation, etc) Jennifer gave examples of the types of records which might be available to provide more details. By constructing a timeline like this it is easy to see where the gaps are and then focus your research to close those gaps.

It was good to see Queensland State Archives represented there, although they were the only exhibitor apart from the GSQ.

The seminar was a good way for me to catch up with friends and even some relatives and the GSQ's book sales table seemed to do a roaring trade. I didn't win the raffle or the lucky door prizes but then I never do. Still you have to be in it to win it.

This morning I am catching up with my emails, tweets, and blog reading (see Unlock the Past's list of blogs in Australia and New Zealand for some interesting reading). This afternoon we are having a family gathering at my brother's place which will be good as I haven't seen his kids for a while and my son and his girlfriend will also be there. Almost like Christmas in August and there will be seafood too! Must remember to take the camera and unknown to everyone we have DVD copies of our old videos when everyone was so much younger. There will be a few laughs and it's good to be home.

Genealogy notes 2-4 August 2011 - Too Much To Read

2011-08-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

My last entry was all about catching up with my genealogy reading but things didn't go quite to plan. I am now in Brisbane but at least with e-newsletters and e-books they can travel with me easily! So still planning to catch up with all that e-reading.

I'm speaking at four events while up in Queensland which is exciting as I will also get to see many old friends as well. The first event is on Saturday with the annual Genealogical Society of Queensland's seminar. The theme this year is Ireland: Unlocking the Mystery and it is fully booked. Lots of people have Irish ancestors so I'm not that surprised.

It should be a great day with speakers Cora Num with Irish Research on the Internet; myself with The Colonial Irish Loved a Beer or Two; Pauline Williams on Irish Resources at GSQ; Richard Reid curator of the Not Just Ned: A True History of the Irish in Australia exhibition at the National Museum of Australia (topic not defined) and Jennifer Harrison on Irish Convicts.

I will write more about the other events in future diary entries but you can see the list of events on my website.

Last night some of my Twitter friends and I were tweeting about 'the reading pile' beside the bed, or is that more than one pile which then seemed to turn into a bookcase, again with a 'to read' tag. I must say I identified with the issue as I often buy magazines or books at genealogy events and then don't get the chance to read them before I buy even more. And that's not counting the e-newsletters and e-books I have waiting to read on the laptop! Does every genealogist have this problem of too much to read or is it just us??

Genealogy notes 30 July - 1 August

2011-08-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how fast time goes when you are busy and travelling around. Saturday was the Irish seminar organised by the Wodonga Family History Society. My talk on the Colonial Irish Liked a Beer or Two was well received and I managed to sell a few of my books too. Jeff Brownrigg's two talks on Australian Irish Lives was also good and he accompanied his presentation with music and songs and even had the audience singing along. Both Jeff and I were presented with a local produce goodies bag which was nice.

Sunday was spent travelling back to Melbourne and catching up with domestic chores - friends came over to dinner that night (impromptu) but it meant no time for logging on and catching up with emails and tweets.

Monday I left home early so that I could go to the State Library of Victoria for Family History Feast 2011- an annual event during National Family History Week. It was a great day of genealogy talks and catching up with friends - my review gives details of the various presentations.

I'm hoping the next few days will let me catch up with all my genealogy reading - I now have quite a few e-newsletters waiting as well as blogs I like to follow. The other thing I must do tomorrow is my next instalment on mining ancestors for Australian Family Tree Connections. Another busy genealogy day ahead!

Genealogy notes 27-29 July 2011

2011-07-28T16:52:00.000-07:00

We're still travelling and after Canberra we went to our friend's farm in Yarrawonga in northern Victoria where we have been lucky to see the births of some of their new lambs. Also amazing just how many white cockatoos are now in the area along with a few pink galahs.

The head cold I developed in Mount Gambier went to my chest so the last couple of days I haven't even felt like reading my emails or tweeting so I have quite a bit of catching up to do. But our friends have also been taking us round the tourist places and how could I say no to a visit to Rutherglen and some of the old, famous wineries in this area, not to mention the cheese tasting place at All Saints Winery. Today we are off to the Corowa chocolate factory and maybe another winery or two. It's a great gourmet area and I have bought olives, cheeses, spices, sauces etc.

My friend is an avid genealogist too so we have been having some great conversations and I had the chance to see the book she put together after a recent family reunion. I really must finish all my family history 'drafts' - there can always be a second edition!

We have even done a draft strategic plan for discussion at the VAFHO committee meeting next week. I will miss it unfortunately as by then I will be in Brisbane.

But for now I am getting reading for the Irish seminar tomorrow organised by the Wodonga Family History Society. My talk is The Colonial Irish Loved a Beer or Two and the other speaker Professor Geoff Brownrigg is giving two talks on Australian Irish Lives. It should be a great day and Wodonga is always a great audience.

Tomorrow will be a big genealogy day and I am hoping to learn lots to assist researching my own Irish ancestors - I have four great great grandparents who came out to Queensland in the 1860s and 1870s. Stay tuned.

Genealogy notes 24-26 July 2011 Not Just Ned & Tobruk 1941

2011-07-26T01:33:00.000-07:00

We've done a lot of driving over the last few days - after the Unlock the Past history and genealogy expo in Mount Gambier we drove back to Melbourne on the Sunday for a quick change of clothes etc. I managed to finish my review of the expo and then on the Monday we drove up to Canberra. Why a visit to Canberra?

Well this is the last week of the Not Just Ned: A True History of the Irish in Australia exhibition and I have been wanting to see it but we just haven't been able to get to Canberra. Also on at the moment is the Rats of Tobruk 1941 exhibition at the Australian War Memorial, another Canberra exhibition we wanted to see.

We are both nursing head colds from Mount Gambier, so after an early night we were keen to get to the exhibitions but the day started badly. I discovered that somehow I had chipped my front tooth and despite my partner telling me no one would notice, we both knew they would. Fixing it will have to wait until we return to Melbourne.

Our second bit of bad news was a phone call telling us our beloved pet had died unexpectedly in the night and despite wanting to rush home, we knew that would not change anything. So after much tears, we went to the Irish exhibition late morning although I didn't phone my friends at the Museum as I felt I just couldn't talk to anyone at present. We will make another longer visit to Canberra and catch up with friends then.

Anyway the Not Just Ned exhibition at the National Museum of Australia is really spectacular and it is amazing to see what they have brought together for the exhibition which takes at least two hours to walk around. At the end there is a room where you can look at books and computers to trace your own Irish ancestry. Members of the Heraldry & Genealogy Society of Canberra volunteer there on Friday afternoons. I bought the catalogue so I could read more at leisure. Finally there are very useful Irish family history tips on the NMA website.

After that we drove over to the Australian War Memorial and visited the Rats of Tobruk 1941 exhibition, another very worth while exhibition. My uncle was at Tobruk and my partner's father was too so there was a personal interest for both of us. After that we toured the WW2 area of the AWM and managed to also see the light and sound show Striking in the Dark, based around the bombing of Berlin. There are excellent family history resources on the AWM's website and I couldn't resist temptation in the AWM Shop buying Peter Fitzsimon's book Tobruk.

Having seen both exhibitions I now have a list of things I want to follow up on my own Irish and military ancestors - genealogy really is a never ending story!

Genealogy notes 23 July 2011 genealogy expos continued

2011-07-24T00:04:00.000-07:00

Today was Day 2 of the Unlock the Past history and genealogy expo in Mount Gambier and it was a very cold and wet day. However, there were still enthusiastic attendees arriving as the doors opened and most stayed until the end lecture. I heard lots of positive comments and perhaps the most negative comment over the length of the expo was the cold!

I attended a number of talks and also gave two presentations - my tribute to TROVE and It's Not All Online, the title of one of my books. I was really pleased with the feedback and one lady said that she was amazed at all the things I had suggested for broadening out family history research and thinking laterally. Which is of course, the whole point of all my talks.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am doing a review of the Expo on my own website so will go into more detail in that. With luck and some hard work, it should be finished either later today or tomorrow. I have returned home with a rather severe head cold which makes thinking harder than usual!!

At the end of the day, my cold was really starting to take hold so we declined offers of dinner with other UTP speakers, settled back with a pizza and were in bed by 8pm. So much for the high life on tour with a genealogy expo. Watch out for the Expo blog due soon.

Genealogy notes 22 July 2011 - genealogy expos

2011-07-22T17:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Day One of the Unlock the Past South Australian and Victorian Border history and genealogy Mount Gambier expo so it was a very big genealogy day. I will be writing up a review of the Expo at the end of Day 2 so I won't go into too much detail now. It will appear on my SHHE Genie Rambles blog.

The venue is a very large school basketball centre which is ideal as all the exhibitors have lots of room and there are even breakout tables on the side. So my first duty was to wander around all the exhibitors and it is a great mix of history, heritage and genealogy with lots of old photos, memorabilia and records and publications to search. The show bag has brochures from most of the exhibitors.

I had two talks during the day - first was my Asylums talk and second was my Google talk - both were well attended and I had lots of questions afterwards. I have another two talks on Day Two.

While I was doing a bit of Tweeting, I was given a handwriting query to solve. It was an entry in the NSW Coroner's Records available on Ancestry.com.au. I couldn't make it out from the photocopy the researcher had but as I have a personal subscription to Ancestry I logged on to see the original entry. It was a long entry of death and the words were all run together - I made out a few more of the words but one word was still elusive.

I asked a few of the other Unlock the Past team but we were all stumped. I then saved the image as a photo and increased the magnification beyond the 200% in Ancestry and that allowed me to easily see what the last word was. It is so easy once you know - the last phrase was 'severe temporary mental aberration' and it was 'temporary' which was the hardest part to decipher. It's always a buzz when you can help someone out.

I attended a few other talks and also did an interview with the local television but I don't think we made the 6pm news. At the end of the day there was a group dinner and an evening musical show with Brenton Manser and the Vanguard. As we didn't get back to the motel until late I didn't have time to write my usual daily blog of an expo. For Mount Gambier it will be a single blog completed after Day Two.

It is now Day Two and I am a little cold here trying to type this blog as the stadium has not yet warmed up. I'm sure today is going to be as good as yesterday. Stay tuned.

Genealogy notes 19-21 July 2011

2011-07-21T15:33:00.000-07:00

Time flies and some days genealogy doesn't get a look in. We have spent the last couple of days on the road between Adelaide and Mount Gambier in South Australia. After leaving the family in Adelaide we went back to Hahndorf to have a better look around as it was so wet and foggy when we first went there. There is a real sense of history and tradition there and while having lunch we were able to read about all the first families in the area.

Then it was off to Mount Gambier via Monarto and Naracoorte - both excellent places to spend a few hours or more. Monarto is the South Australian open range zoo committed to extinct or facing extinction animals. We were privileged to see a baby bison which gives a new meaning to cute on a large scale. It is a huge place and a bus takes you to the various areas for a closer look. I couldn't help comparing it to the Werribee Zoo which is the Victorian equivalent and although Werribee is much smaller, I think it has more animals and more of them freely wandering around together.

After Monarto it was a visit to the Naracoorte Caves which is now on the World Heritage List and as it was school holidays, quite a few families and kids as well on some of the cave tours we did. I first went there in 1982 before a lot of the infrastructure which is now in place to protect the caves so I noticed some differences but still a fascinating place. If you want to visit all the caves open to the public you probably need more than a day. I think it was that early visit that encouraged me to to archaeology as a mature age student at University of Queensland a few years later.

We finally made it to Mount Gambier just in time to pick up fellow Unlock the Past expo speakers Carole and Kerry from the airport and we all paid a visit to the venue to get ready for the opening tomorrow morning. All the exhibit tables already set up looked interesting and there is a wide range of talks and speakers so it looks set for another great SA & VIC Border expo. As usual I will try and tweet and do a daily expo blog. Stay tuned.

Genealogy notes 18 July 2011 Brick wall research

2011-07-18T18:23:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness young ones like afternoon naps - so hard to do anything on a laptop when you are playing games, chasing rabbits round the yard or out shopping! Still it is an experience you wouldn't trade for anything.

In my down time I continued having a look at our friend's brick wall that I wrote about the other day. I wasn't sure what the New Zealand connection was but decided to try Papers Past as both the married name and the maiden name are relatively uncommon. Interestingly I picked up some references to her athletic achievements that were reprinted from Sydney papers. The surprise was one of the articles talking about her fiancée and how they were going to be married the following year. The article was from 1919 but she obviously didn't end up marrying him. I wonder why not? Instead she married a man 13 years older than her in 1923, the same year she had their only child.

I then tried TROVE for Australian newspapers but the only additional information came from a funeral notice for her brother who died in 1949 - she is listed as one of the mourners in the family notice. This is long after she is thought to have died - did her brothers and sisters just list her because they weren't sure where she was or did they know she was still alive but not with her husband and child?

I also had some success in both Ancestry and FindMyPast in that I found the young family leaving Australia in 1924 for London (her husband was born in Devon) and then I found them coming back in 1927 - without these indexes and digitised images online it wouldn't be possible to do searches like this. So now I know that they were still together in 1927 and in Australia.

I tried to find out a bit more about the husband and noted that he had enlisted for war service in 1939 although he was 53 and from the immigration records I knew he had been in the British Navy possibly during WWI but that needs more looking into. The National Archives of Australia has digitised the series Service Cards for Petty Officers and Men 1911-1970 and I was able to look at the record myself. He listed as his next of kin his wife and an address for her as well as another woman (a friend) and address for her. Did he know where his wife was or was that just a last known address for her? Was there no divorce? Lots of questions which I will have to talk over with our friends when we get back to Melbourne.

With brick walls it really is a matter of just trying to fill in the missing bits and pieces of information. I find that doing timelines for people can be useful as it readily shows all the available facts not only about the person you are looking for but also those around them. Sometimes if you investigate other family members you will find that elusive bit of information on the one you really seek.

Tomorrow is a kindy day so hoping for a bit more genealogy time but then it would also be good to get out and see some of Adelaide as well. It's hard being a tourist too, so many things I want to do and see!

Genealogy notes 17 July 2011

2011-07-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

Sunday was a family day and we don't get many of them as we live away from all our families. However, as we are visiting Adelaide we managed to have brunch with one son and then the rest of the day with another son and his family. Grandchildren seem to grow up very quickly even though we were only here last May!

However eventually they go to bed and I managed to check emails, tweets and Google+ before heading to bed myself. Some of my favourite e-newsletters arrived including UK Lost Cousins, Queensland Family History Society's Snippets and National Archives of Australia's Your Memento.

It was good to see a comment on my Summer blog post for 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History but I also saw that there were two posts on it in Google+ because I also posted notice of the blog there. I'm not sure that, from a recordkeeping perspective, that it is good to have comments on a blog separated - my archival instincts say that all comments should be together so that in the future you can see what the response was. But now that I am thinking about it, people often comment via Twitter and Facebook so perhaps it is a bit muddled anyway. Need to think about that a bit more.

Not sure how much genealogy I'll get to do over the next few days while staying with family - probably more taking photos and videos to capture living family members I suspect, but then that all becomes part of the family history too!

Genealogy notes 15-16 July 2011

2011-07-16T15:02:00.000-07:00

Fridays are my blog writing days and as a participant in the Geneabloggers blog series 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History I found myself doing Week 28 Summer - and my contribution is here. The more you think about these weekly questions the more you remember so it can be quite hard limiting your recollections to a few paragraphs.

There were some updates on websites that I regularly monitor which was exciting. The first was One Place Studies which had an update for Hampshire and while none of my places were listed, I did notice that there was a one place study for West Grimstead in Wiltshire which is very close to East Grimstead where my ancestors were from. Some people put a lot of time and effort into these one place studies and if your ancestors happen to come from the same place, it can be very worthwhile.

The second site I am now really watching is Deceased Online as they are adding in Northamptonshire burial and cremation records and I have a long standing brick wall in that county so any new records online excites me.

Finally Ancestry.com.au have added more Australian immigration records to their site, especially for Western Australia and Tasmania. I only have one ancestor now that I don't have the immigration record for which is not too bad. However, it would be nice to finally learn the name of the ship she came out on.

Saturday was a day of travel (and the reason why this blog is a little late). We drove from Melbourne up to historic Ballarat in the heart of the Victorian gold fields and on to Ararat for lunch. I always like to stop here as an ancestor died in the Ararat asylum in 1873 and the historic asylum, later gaol still stands imposingly on the hill above the city.

Afternoon tea was at Dimboola not to far from the turn off to Jeparit, the childhood home of Sir Robert Menzies. I only know this obscure fact because when I lived in Canberra and worked for the National Archives of Australia I was part of the team who worked on the Australia's Prime Ministers website.

We stopped for the night in historic Hahndorf and Sunday morning will be spent having a look around. It is years since I was last here. The nice thing about travelling is that you get to see historic places and we always visit museums and historical societies and learn more about the history of the area and the people who lived there. When it is an area associated with our own families it is even more interesting.

Genealogy notes 14 July 2011

2011-07-14T20:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a strange sort of day, did a bit of searching on our friend's brick wall that I mentioned last time - mostly rechecking sources that they have already covered. But sometimes a second pair of eyes helps or you use a different search strategy or different spelling variations. Some of the sources I covered included:
Ancestry.com.au trying to pick up a date of death, or mention on an electoral roll
FindMyPast.com.au again looking for electoral rolls
Victorian BDM's - I always check the individual State indexes as well as the Ancestry version - with the online indexes you have to pay unless you have access to the indexes on CD
TROVE - Australian newspaper searching on both married and maiden names, of course if she entered into a de facto relationship or simply changed her name we will never find her!
PapersPast - another newspaper search but this time in New Zealand in case the earthquake story is correct
Rootsweb mailing list archives - I always like to see if anyone else has posted a 'missing person' notice and this did turn up emails from the family but with no success in finding her.

While I was finding references to the family, there was nothing pointing me to where she had gone or when she had died. I decided to park the problem and let ideas come to me. It was about then that the postman arrived bearing the 5th issue of Inside History, a relatively new Australian genealogy magazine. So I decided to break for a cup of tea but that stretched into lunch as I settled down for a good read.

After lunch it was a nice walk down to the library in the 'rare' sunshine and then packing up my talks and bits and pieces for the Unlock the Past South Australian and Victorian Border Expo 22-23 July. We are having a few days in Adelaide before heading back to Mount Gambier for the expo - it's a chance to see the family while we are relatively close or closer!

I'm finding that I'm spending even more time on emails and social media with the advent of Google+ as I get notifications on new connections, when I start looking at the genealogy stream (or other streams) I get sidetracked, much like Twitter sidetracks me with interesting new links and genealogy news. I'm starting to think it is all like television, it it's on, I watch it and don't do anything I should be doing. Might start up a time log but then I will worry about what I might be missing!

Genealogy notes 13 July 2011 National Family History Week 2011

2011-07-13T18:22:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned over the last few days I am busy updating existing talks and doing new talks - in fact I am giving 11 talks over the next six weeks! See my schedule for more details.

Why so much happening around this particular time? Well it is winter in Australia and if we didn't have genealogy events to go to, we probably wouldn't venture out of our homes - not that winter here is anything like it is overseas. But more importantly, winter is the time when we have our National Family History Week - to be more exact it's 29 July to 8 August.

This is an initiative of the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations (AFFHO) and their other big initiative every three years is a genealogy congress and the next one is 28-31 March 2012 in Adelaide with a theme of Your Ancestors in Their Social Context. There is a great line up of speakers and talks so it is definitely not one to miss.

But back to National Family History Week - anyone can add an event but unfortunately not everyone lists their events here. Still, depending on what State or Territory you live in, you can easily find events of interest. Here in Victoria one event I have attended every year is Family History Feast at the State Library of Victoria. Scrolling through the list of events in Victoria shows that there is a great variety of talks and not just in Melbourne which is great.

So check out your State and see what you can attend for National Family History Week and if your organisation is having an event and it's not listed, encourage them to add it. All too often I hear people say they would have attended something if only they had known about it. So let's all publicise National Family History Week in 2011.

Yesterday my other half came home after visiting friends with a rather detailed family history chart in his hands. His friends have a genealogy brickwall and he assured them that I might be able to help solve it. He has great faith in my abilities and I must admit I do like a challenge - however this one is where the wife leaves the family, never to be seen again. Already my mind is thinking of all the possibilities and to complicate it further it has both Australia and New Zealand links. Wish me luck!

Genealogy notes 12 July 2011 DNA genealogy

2011-07-12T17:18:00.000-07:00

Another day working on talks for my Brisbane/Toowoomba trip in August. I'm happy to say that all talks are drafted and I'm now in the review stage to make sure they run to time, make sense and give attendees information to further their own research. Without knowing an audience, you have to try and cater for everyone from basic beginners to those who may have considerable experience.

Amongst my emails yesterday was an updated report from 23andMe which is a DNA company which specialises in genetic testing for health and provides an insight into various health risks through maternal DNA. I have also had people contact me to see if we are related because of DNA strands matching up, although this is more 4th or 5th cousin relationships. So far there have been no definite connections. This is an area that I have been exploring more this year and I will probably do a DNA test with one of the companies that is more into family history rather than health issues.

I also need to read more about the subject as well and recently purchased a book DNA For Genealogists by Kerry Farmer to help me understand more. I have heard Kerry's talk on DNA at an Unlock the Past history and genealogy expo but it is a lot to take in so the book will build on that (I hope). Science was never one of my strong subjects at school.

Another interesting email was from Unlock the Past and a draft brochure for their War Comes To Australia: WWII 70th anniversary tour to commemorate the bombing of Darwin in 1942. I have been asked to give a talk on Tracing Military Ancestors as part of the tour which is 17-22 Feb 2012. There will be two seminars as part of the tour and other speakers are Brad Manera and Dr Tom Lewis OAM. It should be an exciting time to be in Darwin next year.

I still receive mail from the postman and while not as much as via email, it is still exciting to open up the mailbox and see letters and journals. Yesterday I received my latest copy of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria's journal and newsletter. You can also see the latter on their website, even if you aren't a member and it is a good read with lots of information on research in Victoria and what is happening with affiliated historical societies. The Society has a lot of information, indexes and databases online and anyone with Victorian ancestors may find it worthwhile to search for their names and places.

We are leaving for Adelaide on Saturday and I have so many things I want to do before then. To do lists are something that I'm good at but they do have a problem of growing faster than I can tick them off. The next six weeks are incredibly busy and I'm looking forward to some down time in September. Fingers crossed!

Genealogy notes 11 July 2011

2011-07-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

Monday was mostly taken up with finalising my talks for Brisbane and Toowoomba in August. Whenever I visit Brisbane to see family, the local genealogy societies often ask me to give talks at their monthly meetings. This is always a good opportunity to catch up with old friends so if I can fit these meetings in, I do.

On Monday 15 August 2011 I will be speaking at the Southern Suburbs branch of the Genealogical Society of Queensland and I have known some of them for over 30 years which is quite amazing. The talk is on mining ancestors and most people in Queensland usually have one or more mining ancestors. As this is such a huge topic, the hardest part of doing this talk is keeping it to 45 minutes!

Since December 2010 I have been writing a monthly article on mining ancestors for Australian Family Tree Connections and the feedback has been really good. As well as helping people with their own research, the mining series has also put me in touch with a few of my own long lost cousins who have recognised photographs I used to illustrate the articles. Also one gentleman in a mining area where my great grandfather died even went to the remote cemetery and took photos for me. So it really does pay to advertise your family research.

The other talk I worked on was a revision of my Victorian ancestors talk which I last gave in May in Sydney for the Society of Australian Genealogists. The weekend I gave the talk was also the weekend that Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) changed its website but I still had to go with my existing slides as I had no idea what the new site looked like until the following Monday.

As well as updating the PROV slides, I also had to update the home pages of a few other sites to make them current again. It is amazing how often home pages change with new content or new looks or whatever. The Victorian talk is being given to the Queensland Family History Society at their Wednesday meeting on 17 August 2011. I am a founding member of that society (1979) so again I know quite a few of them although more recent members only know me from my periodic visits.

Preparing talks takes longer than people suspect (I think) so I didn't do too much more than check for any urgent or exciting emails and to check Twitter and Facebook similarly. I did look at all my Google+ invitations and realised that there was more than one person per invitation email so I ended up adding dozens of people to my circles, mostly other genealogists. I really need to get my head around using this for genealogy at least.

Tomorrow I hope to finalise my last Toowoomba talk and then it will be a review of all talks, print paper copies just in case something goes totally wrong with the technology and to back them up on two USB sticks. I try to be prepared for everything but there is always Murphy's Law!

I'm starting to get excited about all the talks and events in the remainder of July and August so check the list of events on my website and see if I will be visiting a place near you soon.

Genealogy notes 9-10 July 2011 Royal Australian Armoured Corps Tank Museum

2011-07-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

It was as I expected - a weekend with no genealogy as we were visiting a friend's farm and staying overnight. In some ways a technology free weekend is quite nice and it is good to know I can go 48 hours without turning the laptop on. However, I am now wading my way through various emails, tweets, Facebook and Google+ invitations.

But there is one thing that I do want to report on. We finally managed a visit to the Royal Australian Armoured Corps Tank Museum at Puckapunyal on the way home. We had gone there previously on the spur of the moment when passing, but it is not open every weekend and we hadn't picked an open weekend. This time, as it was school holidays, it was open.

Museums don't always reflect what the name suggests and this is no exception. Of course there are many, many tanks (over 70 of them) to wander around and look at. In fact, I hadn't realised just how many different kinds there were or the differences between British, German, Japanese and American tanks until you see them all lined up. Each tank had it's history and statistics on a display board which was good for people like me who know nothing about tanks. There was an icy wind blowing and rain threatening so we didn't spend all that long wandering around the huge, open sheds which give some cover to the tanks.

I found it more interesting in the interior museum which paid tribute to every war since the Boer War. There were lots of photos, medals, uniforms, weapons, with various stories and tributes in display cases. I took some photos but the museum's website has a very good 3D map which allows you to do almost a virtual tour.

Visiting these kinds of museums can help us to understand our own military research better. For example, my ancestors fought it the Boer War in Light Horse Regiments and while I knew that meant they rode horses, I had not consciously thought how they transported the horses. There is a Light Horse memorial at the Museum which is a railway carriage and when you go up to have a look inside there is a fake horse inside a horse stall. It's obvious when you think about it, but it wasn't till I explored that Light Horse memorial that I realised exactly what it meant for soldiers to not only have to transport themselves and their gear but they also had to look after their horses.

It's a great place to visit and if you don't live in Victoria, do the website tour and look for other military museums - who knows what you will learn and perhaps even better, it will be of interest to your own family history.

Genealogy notes 8 July 2011

2011-07-08T00:49:00.000-07:00

Amazing how fast Fridays seem to come around. On Fridays I like to write my contribution to the Geneabloggers blogging theme 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History and this weeks topic was Vacations. Questions to spur memories included where did you go, favourite places, are they still there and if not, how have things changed. My reminiscences were all around the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast as we lived in Brisbane when I was growing up.

There are always great conferences going on but sometimes the fees are on the high side (now that I'm semi-retired), especially if there are only a few sessions that you are interested in. This is particularly true in sister professions. For example, I have been looking at the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers (ANZSI) conference program - it will be held in Brighton, Victoria 12-14 September 2011. I'm not an indexer but have an interest in indexing and in the past I have given papers at their conferences. It's over three days and of course, all the sessions I want to see or participate in are over all three days otherwise a one day registration would be the way to go. The other problem is that two of the sessions that most interest me are on at the same time. Decisions!

I always enjoy reading Heritage Tasmania e-news, and the June issue has a range of interesting stories. Also caught up with the June issue of the qsa-bulletin from the Queensland State Archives. I like to sign up for the free e-newsletters as they keep me up to date with new indexes, new records, seminars and so on. Back issues are also online. I have subscriptions for quite a few of the archives where I have family interests.

My weekend diary may be a combined effort as we will be travelling. My partner says I can't do genealogy 24/7 but I think he might be wrong! I suspect I could or at least give it a real good try.

Genealogy notes 7 July 2011

2011-07-07T04:01:00.000-07:00

Freezing cold day in Melbourne today and unfortunately I had to be out and about so limited genealogy time. Received an email a few days ago from the Toowoomba Regional Council Libraries about a seminar they are hosting on 13 August. I am giving three talks and John Graham will be giving two talks on Country Newspapers and The Ryerson Index to contemporary death notices and obituaries in Australian newspapers. John is a fellow Unlock the Past team presenter and I always enjoy his talks.

The Library has done a great poster and information flyer to promote the seminar and it was a timely reminder to me to revisit the talks they had requested. When I looked at my talk Brief Introduction to Family History I found it was last given in 2009 so I had a lot of updating to do today. It is always hard when doing these introductory talks to know what level to pitch the talk at - there will obviously be some really new people but also likely to have some experienced people too.

The other two talks I am giving are Family History on the Cheap and this is a talk I keep up to date all the time as it is so popular (and it is the title of one of my books available from Gould Genealogy & History) and Warning Warning: Tips & Tricks to Avoid Common Family History Mistakes which is based on some of my own learnings over the years.

As always I check my various emails, Facebook and Twitter accounts and answer any personal queries and try to add my own views where applicable. On the days when I don't get a lot of time to check Tweets or Facebook I often feel that I have missed heaps of you beaut things but you can't be on it 24/7. Do others feel like that if they don't check Twitter or Facebook on a reasonably regular basis?

More people have added me to their Google+ circles but I really haven't had time to do much more than skim some of the comments people have made. It's on the to do list.

A new website (for me) that I came across today was The Workhouse: The Story of an Institution and it is a very detailed look at every aspect associated with workhouses. I am sure that at least one of my ancestors were in a workhouse at some point in time although I have never found any there during a census. I loved the recipe for the workhouse Christmas pudding for 300 - it used 144 eggs along with other usual ingredients but I'm not too sure about the 13 lbs of carrots (seems an odd ingredient in a pudding). There are some really great photographs and the detailed text means that you should give yourself some time to fully explore this interesting site.

The rest of the family have gone to bed and if I don't follow soon, I will freeze (we turn the heating off at night) - went down to 4 degrees here last night and more of the same is expected tonight. Can't wait to go home to Queensland in August, if only for 3 weeks!

Genealogy notes 6 July 2011

2011-07-06T05:16:00.000-07:00

Well today didn't go to plan. Melbourne was freezing and got worse as the day went on. I can't function in the cold - must be my Queensland blood!

My goal today was to finalise my Colonial Irish talk for the Wodonga Family History Society and the Genealogical Society of Queensland seminars I am speaking at in the next few weeks. The talks feature various anecdotes from my own Irish ancestors - I am 25% Irish (Counties Cavan, Armagh and Wicklow).

Most of my Irish research was done back in the late 1970s and early 1980s and then I put it into the too hard basket. So it has been quite a while since I dragged my Irish families out of the filing cabinet. To illustrate my talks I had planned to show various documents highlighting my ancestors' exploits while under the influence of alcohol. The talk is actually called The Colonial Irish Liked A Beer or Two: Checking Out The Evidence.

My first shock was that the photocopies of various government records that I had done in the early 1980s had faded - badly - but then that is nearly 30 years ago. The next shock was that some of the documents had been stapled and the staples had rusted - badly. The final shock was that there was information in the documents that was really relevant to me today but obviously I either had not realised its significance back then or I had not read the documents carefully enough at the time. In my own defence, I suspect I know more now than I did back then.

However, what this all means is that instead of just finalising my talk, I ended up spending the day removing rusty staples, scanning what are now poor photocopies and rereading and rethinking my Irish family research. The day just went past in a blur.

The sad part is I think I probably should do this with all my paper files - and I have been doing it with some files but more as time permits rather than as any dedicated project. It is probably the type of task we should all do on a regular basis, especially if we have been researching for decades and have multiple filing cabinets of information.

It's now past my bedtime but I plan to read Inherit Issue No 47 June 2011 which is the free e-newsletter from the Heritage Council of Victoria and they have some interesting new stories on the built environment on the Culture Victoria website. Lots of interesting things on that website that may be relevant to family historians researching in Victoria.

The other e-newsletter I plan to read tonight is from the National Trust of Australia (Victoria branch). In their June newsletter there are lots of suggestions for the school holidays, offers for members and one that particularly intrigues me is Spookspotters' Twilight Ghost Tours at Como House.

Tomorrow is supposed to be even colder than today but I do have to go out so most of the day will be out and about. I've also got a lot of genealogy tasks on my to do list - focus will be my mantra tomorrow!

Genealogy notes 5 July 2011 - Irish genealogy

2011-07-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

Today in Melbourne was wet and windy with the odd earthquake to make it interesting. I had planned on going out and doing a few errands but changed my mind and spent most of the day looking at Irish records and websites.

Some of the sites I spent time on included the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and it must be a while since I last looked because they have a lot of indexes I hadn't tried before. I had some good family finds in the Will Calendars and some I need to look into further. Another site, and an old favourite now digitised, is Samuel Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland 1837 which I used to learn about various places my family were from.

I revisited Griffith's Valuation of Ireland 1848-1864, now also online (I'll soon forget how to even use a microfiche at this rate) which is searchable on the Ask About Ireland website. There are all sorts of interesting links from this website so there went a 'bit of time'.

I also tried to pin down some of my Irish ancestors deaths using the FamilySearch Irish Civil Registration Indexes 1845-1958 with some success. The Roots Ireland database was also useful in tying a few loose ends down but it is amazing how those Euros add up (but still cheaper than some of the prices we pay for Australian certificates).

It's great that the 1901 and 1911 Irish census records are free but most of my Irish ancestors were out here early and their parents deceased by 1901. I really need to find out more about collateral lines.

Periodically I used Google Maps to help me locate various places and to see that they were all in the same area. Genuki was also useful in helping me to locate what was available for the various counties I am interested in.

Although I had a good afternoon researching on the various sites, I can't help wishing for a one stop shop! I am also conscious that there are more Irish sites that I didn't visit today. So I am going to have an early night and read Cora Num's Irish Research on the Internet - it's supposed to be raining again tomorrow so I might as well prepare for another Irish research day!!

Genealogy Notes 4 July 2011

2011-07-04T00:50:00.000-07:00

Monday has been a very satisfying day as I have ignored my usual procrastination and written two short genealogy pieces. The first was for the Ballarat & District Genealogical Society's journal Ballarat Link based on a talk I gave the Society in May on Online Trends in Family History. Their website is one of my favourites as it has so many interesting links and not just to Victorian sites so it is worth a visit. Another plus is that you can see back issues of the Link online for free although not all recent ones are there.

The second piece of writing was an Ask an Expert report for Inside History, a relatively new family history magazine now available in Australia. I had done the research last month but unfortunately I was unable to break down the enquirer's brick wall. Still I had some fun looking at BDMs for Tasmania and Victoria (available on CD) and I always enjoy searching the Archives Office of Tasmania's website and online indexes. For this enquiry I also tried the Genealogical Society of Victoria's members only database Genealogical Index of Names (GIN) which has over 3 million names mostly from Victorian sources. Just personally, I think it needs another name as whenever I tell people I like GIN, they think I am going to have a drink!!

By this stage it was time for a well earned break so I checked my emails and did some tweeting. I have received more Google+ circle invitations and have reciprocated. Haven't set up any of my own yet.

One thing I do like to do at the beginning of the week is to check Randy Seaver's Best of the Genea Blogs which is a round up of the best genealogy blogs for the week. It does have an American focus but most of the blogs have a global relevance anyway. I find this a quick and easy way to make sure I do see some of the more important/relevant genealogy blogs. I also follow Randy on Twitter @rjseaver.

Another free e-newsletter I like to read is Lost Cousins and the latest issue turned up in my email today. There was news on the latest additions to subscription sites such as Ancestry and FindMyPast as well as information on the Black Sheep Index which I hadn't seen before. So by the time I read the newsletter and check any links of interest to my own research, there's more time gone (but not wasted). That's the reason why I start the day with the things I have to do as I know I will be tempted elsewhere before the day is over.

Finally I had an interesting and exciting invitation to participate in a new exhibition which I readily excepted so closer to the event I will be able to tell you all about it. I wonder what tomorrow will bring - at least genealogy is never dull and boring!

Genealogy notes 3 July 2011

2011-07-03T00:30:00.000-07:00

Today's Sunday and it is usually a quiet day spent catching up on bits and pieces. I like to also look at the week ahead and see what I should be doing, and of course what I would like to be doing. I find that if I don't set myself little goals along the way I don't get as much done as I originally set out to do.

Fast approaching is the Unlock the Past History and Genealogy Expo in Mount Gambier on 23-24 July and I have been updating my expo talks. It really is amazing how often some websites change and I don't mean just cosmetic changes, I mean new content including indexes and digitised records.What this means is that instead of finalising my revised talks, I am led astray into searching for my own families. So this week a key goal is to finish the revisions on all four talks.

Just a week later on 30 July I am speaking at the Wodonga Family History Society annual seminar and they have an exciting Irish themed day. My talk is titled The Irish Colonials Loved a Beer or Two: Checking Out the Evidence and it is based (loosely) on my own Irish ancestors and for Wodonga I have some Victorian examples as well. I am giving a repeat of the talk in Brisbane on 6 August at the Genealogical Society of Queensland's annual seminar Ireland: Unlocking the Mystery but will use Queensland examples instead. So another key goal is to finish both versions of this new talk.

Another weekly goal I like to set myself (if I'm not travelling too much) is to participate in the blog challenge 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History. Next week's topic is Vacations and that should be really easy to write about - with this series I have been trying to capture memories from my childhood and teenage years. Last week's topic was Songs and what was the No 1 hit the year you were born. Read my Songs contribution here.

I spent a bit more time today reading up on Google+ and thanks to some tweets on Twitter from @SocialMediaGen I found some interesting links to follow up.

Another catch up job today was to visit Genealogy Wise which is a genealogy social network I have been a member of for quite a while. I'm a member of nine groups in Genealogy Wise and I like to see what's been happening over the past week - it's not something that I get to do on a daily basis and of course, some groups (like my Surname groups) don't have a lot of activity. Perhaps the group I am most involved with is Australian Genealogists with 320 members. Like most social networking sites it is free to join and it is a great way to communicate with like minded people.

Today's visit to Genealogy Wise reminded me that I haven't been keeping up with a blog called GeniMates which profiles various people involved in genealogy both in Australia and overseas. There were quite a few profiles that I had missed (sometimes I pick them up in Twitter too) so I spent the time reading about people I have come to know both in person and online. It quite often leads me to following new people on Twitter or new blogs I want to read. For example, I hadn't come across Amanda Epperson or her Scottish Emigration Blog until I read Amanda's profile on GeniMates - I then spent time reading some of her blog entries. See how easy it is to get sidetracked - now you know why I need to set goals and deadlines!!

They say genealogy is never ending, I'm starting to suspect that is also true for social media and genealogy but I wouldn't change it. I learn so much every day and find other people and their work really inspiring. However, I still live in the real world and the family is expecting dinner and I want to watch Masterchef in peace, so signing off for now to become a domestic goddess!

Genealogy notes 2 July 2011

2011-07-01T23:12:00.000-07:00

I'm really pleased with the encouragement I have received so far on this new blog idea - it's nice to have friends.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday was that I accepted an invitation to participate in Google+ (without really knowing much about it). Today I have people putting me into circles and I was really pleased to see Twitter friend @CaroleRiley tweeting an article on the Pros and Cons of Google+ so I am a little wiser. Like all social media it takes a little while to get the hang of it (at least for me), so I'll take it slow and steady.

No time for research today but I have been reading some e-newsletters. It was good to see a tribute to Don Grant in Eastman's Daily Online Genealogy Newsletter and this has to be one of my favourite newsletters for keeping up to date on what is happening with genealogy around the world. There is a free standard edition and for a very modest annual fee you can access his 'plus' articles which are always good value.

Another one of my favourite e-newsletters arrived and that is Snippets from the Queensland Family History Society - it is monthly and while parts of it are only relevant if you live in Brisbane, there is usually a great selection of news and links to follow up. I was a founding member of QFHS so it is a great way for me to keep up with what is happening in my home town. It is sent to members but the last six issues are available online for free so non members can still read it.

Another genealogy society e-newsletter I like reading is from the Society of Australian Genealogists - I did their Diploma of Family Historical Studies back in the early 1990s and I have always maintained contact with them since. You don't need to be a member to receive the newsletter so you can subscribe or simply read past newsletters online.

It's probably a good idea to see if the society in an area you are researching has a free e-newsletter because it is a great way to find out what's new in that area - we can't afford to join all the societies where our ancestors lived. Of course you should also be a member of the society near where you live so that you can take advantage of their library, meet other knowledgeable members, attend talks, seminars and so on. Here in Melbourne I am a member of the Genealogical Society of Victoria and the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies.

Perhaps the most exciting genealogy event for me today was receiving an email from a person who read the latest article in my Looking For Mining Ancestors series which is published in Australian Family Tree Connections. I was writing about my great grandfather Thomas Price who died at a very obscure mine called Wee McGregor at Hightville in far western Queensland. Prior to moving out there, he was a Baptist Sunday school teacher in Charters Towers. This person's mother was one of his students and he is fondly mentioned in some of her personal records from that time which she kept and are now in her family's possession. How amazing!

It just goes to show the more you write and publish information on your ancestors, the more chance you have of making contact with other family members or people who have information on them. I should probably start up a dedicated blog to my ancestors but there are so many of them and only one of me!

I was worried that I might not be able to keep up the content for this blog but so far I think my problem is going to be how to keep it contained to a reasonable length!

Genealogy notes 1 July 2011

2011-07-01T01:53:00.000-07:00

It's the first day of the new financial year, and having spent 35 years working in government, I am used to thinking of my year from July to June. Rather than start another paper diary, I am taking the new step of doing it online via this blog. The first challenge was trying to think of a name for my daily notes to myself and I suspect future challenges will be finding the time to enter my notes.

My day usually starts with a check of my emails and this morning there was the sad news of the death of Don Grant, a well known genealogist in Victoria and former staff member at Public Record Office Victoria. I first met Don many years ago and he was always inspirational to other researchers. The Victorian Association of Family History Organisations in 1997 named their annual lecture after Don and sadly he will miss the next one in August during National Family History Week. A list of the Don Grant Family History Lectures and presenters is on their website.

I am participating in the 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History blogging challenge and after an absence of a few weeks, I submitted my Week 26 blog today on Songs and what they mean to me.

Next on my to do list was to use the National Library of Australia's E-resources to look at some overseas newspapers. For some reason I didn't have any luck connecting with the Irish newspaper archives via their link but I did get to do some searching in the 19th Century British Library newspapers. However I didn't find what I was looking for but did get sidetracked into reading about what was happening in Belfast, Ireland during 1841.

Of course the day wouldn't be complete without checking out Twitter every so often - I can't believe how many good links and ideas for genealogy that I pick up via Twitter. Not to mention the contacts and conversations with friends all over the world via that social media. It's like emails now - very hard to not check them every so often.

I like to try and read e-newsletters as I receive them but that is not always possible. Just read my Professional Historians Association (Queensland) e-Bulletin - the AGM is coming up in August, along with membership renewals and there is lots of interesting news. It is one of my primary links to friends and colleagues in Queensland since I moved south in 1999.

Today has been a big day for my genealogy - I don't normally have that much time to do research. Plus I have mastered a new skill - setting up this blog!