Genealogy notes 27-29 August 2011 Victorian Seminars & Fairs

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!