Townsville seminar, Orange conference, UTP guides & other news: Genealogy Notes 1-14 Sep 2017

At the end of August everyone says to me you must be glad that National Family History Month is now over, all that spare time. I wish! Actually the first two weeks of September are usually super busy as I am notifying sponsors and prize winners, following up any issues and writing up a report for AFFHO on the month. There was an AFFHO meeting (via Skype) last night and I'm almost finished the report. Then starts the planning for NFHM 2018!

Display tables kept everyone busy!

Another NFHM  activity was writing up a report on the closing event held with the Family History Association of North Queensland in Townsville. It was a great weekend with a full day of talks on the Saturday (Louise Coakley from Cairns was the other speaker) and we both attended the DNA special interest group meeting on the Sunday. Read my report on the weekend here. I still have to write up the family history aspect of the trip as Mum's Price family lived in Townsville and Charters Towers. The visit to the Army Museum North Queensland in the Jezzine Barracks precinct was really good but I will save the details for the blog post, coming soon.

There is no rest for the weekend because next week I will be off to Orange, NSW for the annual conference of the ACT & NSW Association of Family History Societies. The theme is Your Family Story: Telling, Recording and Preserving and it is an interesting program on the Saturday and Sunday with workshops (now all fully booked) on the Friday as well as a Family History Fair. One of my mother's uncles was born in Orange, NSW so I am looking forward to visiting a place my family once lived.

Eric's new guide

I love getting parcels of books or magazines (ebooks/emags are never quite as exciting). One small parcel contained four new research guides from Unlock the Past. I read Carol Baxter's To Trace of Not to Trace: a family history overview for the curious on the plane to Townsville, and Rosemary Kopittke's My Heritage ...My Story on the way home. I heard Rosemary's talk on select features of MyHeritage on the Unlock the Past PNG cruise in July so I was keen to learn more. The other two guides are Eric Kopittke's Introduction to German Family History Research for Australians which should be very popular and Chris Paton's 2nd edition of Discover Scottish Land Records. All can be purchased online from Gould Genealogy & History.

Another exciting mail delivery was a copy of the Who Do You Think You Are magazine, August 2017 which had my article on Australian Gold Rush Ancestors. An article always looks more interesting when laid out by editors and my text turned into a five page spread. So far only one Australian friend has congratulated me on the piece, but perhaps it is not widely read here. I have never seen it in my local newsagent but perhaps I will look next time I visit Brisbane.

My grandfather Henry Price was in the Kennedy Regiment
lots on them at Jezzine Barracks Townsville

I've been waiting for an English marriage certificate since 24 August - it is so frustrating that it takes so long to be mailed out when I can order a Queensland or Victorian certificate and see it 60 seconds after I have paid for it. If some BDM registries can do it, why not all of them? Still in the good old days I had to wait months so I guess there is some improvement. Just have to learn patience all over again.

This coming week will see yet another desk clean up - everything seems to go everywhere when I am busy and travelling. Little piles to work through when I have time!

Have a fantastic week searching and until next time, have fun too.

Townsville Cemeteries & Other News - Genealogy Notes 24 - 31 Dec 2015

Well the last week of 2015 went quickly in the blur of Christmas, Boxing Day and the lead up to New Year's Eve. Not a lot of genealogy happened but I did receive some contact from distant cousins on different family lines. One had found my website and blogs on the Jeffers family from Portadown, Armagh and the other my Finn family via Facebook.

Perhaps my most fantastic genealogy discovery in all of 2015 was the family bible of my GGG grandmother Sarah Fegan nee Cane. I only got to see this wonderful treasure because a distant cousin on a collateral line had read my blog posts on the Finn and Fegan families of County Wicklow, Ireland. We met, exchanged information and I held this bible in my hands and felt a connection to someone who had only been a name with basic information on my family tree. It was a fantastic moment.

I have lost count now of the number of times I have made contact with people I suspect I could never have tracked down (at least not easily) simply because they have done a Google search. It really is fantastic but I know lots of people who have no online social media presence. Imagine how much we could discover if everyone blogged their stories or posted interests on social media.

The other wonderful thing about Facebook for genealogy is that 'friends' post links to new resources or to things they have discovered which can be of relevance to my own research. Just this week the link for the Townsville cemeteries was in a Facebook post by the Queensland Family History Society and my mother's family were from Charters Towers and then Townsville. Mum's sister Alice died in 1920 as an infant but I was never sure which city and as it was not a direct line I had not purchased her birth or death certificates. A quick check of the Belgian Gardens cemetery list revealed that Alice Dorothy Price was buried there and that she was only seven months old at the time of her death.

A bonus was that she was buried with her aunt Elizabeth Ann Price who had died at the age of 26 years. I had purchased Elizabeth's death certificate as I was curious to see what she had died of. Therefore I knew she was buried in Belgian Gardens but not that she shared a grave with the niece she never lived to see. There were other Price family members there and I was able to add new information on collateral lines. It was good to revisit this family and I probably would not have done it without the Facebook prompt.

I finally wrapped up my personal genealogy blog challenge 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2015 - it was a hard decision to combine the final nine topics but I want to start 2016 fresh. Read Final Post to discover the remaining topics. Thanks to everyone who followed this blog challenge and commented with their own tips and sources.

 I love this time of year as my hibiscus blooms really well, although it has been very dry. The incredibly windy conditions, coupled with the dry spell, means that we have lost quite a few palm fronds so there is a bit of garden work coming up this weekend. I also need to repot my orchids after their beautiful blooms in 2015, they seem to have doubled in size since I last looked.

Early morning or late afternoon jobs which mean that I can settle down in the heat of the day to catch up on my reading of e-journals. When one of my subscription journals comes in, I download and save to read another time. I'm usually busy doing something else to read them immediately.

But so often I forget to go back and read - it is not like the physical pile of journals, magazines and books which is a constant reminder to catch up. I need a better system to work out what my e-reading priorities are - perhaps if I do a list as they come in and then cross the issue off when I have read it? Does anyone have a system that works?

I have avoided any new resolutions or aspirations for 2016 as 2015 was so full of unexpected events that totally hijacked my genealogy intentions, as well as every other aspect of my life. At this stage I am going to go with the flow and embrace the opportunities as they come up and thanks to my social media presence, I suspect I will be very busy with lots of great genealogy discoveries in 2016.

May everyone have a fantastic genealogy adventure in 2016. Until next time.

Genealogy notes 24 Sep - 3 Oct 2012 Townsville genealogy expo

Nearly two weeks since my last Diary post and it's been full on as usual. We have been moving around different caravan parks on the Sunshine Coast while we look at houses and so far we haven't seen anything that totally meets all our criteria. It is amazingly time consuming - first finding ones we want to look at and then travelling to them etc etc. Still we can't live in a caravan forever, can we? At least not with his toys and my family history!

The only genealogy in my life at present was the Unlock the Past Townsville genealogy expo which to me was exhausting and disappointing. Exhausting because it was a long trip. We had to travel down from Tewantin to Burpengary where we left the caravan and then we had to travel on to Brisbane. Max dropped me off at the airport and then continued down to the Gold Coast and northern NSW where he was catching up with friends. On boarding I caught up with Alan Phillips and he kindly let me have his window seat which was great as it allowed me to have a close up look at my Carnegie ancestors land at Toorbul which is still largely undeveloped. It was great seeing it from the air.

The trip to Townsville was only two hours and we were met at the airport by Rosemary and Eric and a hire car to take us to our motel. Dinner that night was a blast from my past as we went to the Townsville Sizzler - these were a favourite family eating place while I was growing up and Mum still likes me to take her to the Mitchelton Sizzler for lunch when I visit. They were advertising a Pale Yak ale which I thought was a new Queensland beer but it turned out to be a Victorian ale; still it went well with my fisherman's platter.

It was an early start the next morning as we had to get set up before the doors opened at 9.00 am and about 70 people were expected. As usual people were early and started swarming around the display tables and talking to other people. I was the first speaker at 9.30 am with my It's Not All Online talk and just before I started I realised there was no microphone. While someone went to get that sorted, I started my talk to keep to the timetable. A few minutes later the microphone arrived and I swapped over and that's when my problems started.

The microphone kept fading in and out and the audience including the organisers all believed it was me not holding the microphone correctly so I had a number of people come up and tell me to hold it this way, people continually telling me they couldn't hear me and the organisers clearly indicating from the back of the room that they were blaming me for the poor quality of my presentation. BUT I knew it wasn't me as I have given lots of talks over the last 30 plus years without those problems. All of these interruptions also impacted on my delivery of the talk as it broke the flow of my thoughts. Afterwards during the break I was subjected to a lecture on professionalism, other comments I won't repeat here and how if people pay good money, they expect to get someone who knows how to give good talks and hold a microphone. Needless to say I was hurt, disappointed, angry, frustrated and at a loss as to what was wrong.

While I was outside trying to calm myself back down, someone suggested that it was the battery in the microphone that was at fault. He was spot on and when the battery was replaced both Eric and Rosemary were able to do their talks with no microphone issues at all. Eric's talk was on locating German ancestors and each time I hear it, I think with Irish examples and resources it could easily be a talk on locating Irish ancestors. Rosemary's talk was on the new Findmypast.com.au site which seems to change almost every day so I picked up some more hints on how best to use the new website which has heaps more records in it too.

After lunch it was my turn again with my making the most of Google talk and it was with some trepidation that I picked up the microphone again. I held up the faulty battery and explained that this had been the culprit in the first session and that we wouldn't have the same issues this time and thankfully we didn't. So the audience and the organisers could see that I did know how to give a good talk. Although some people did come up and apologise for their earlier comments it still doesn't really take away the hurt of the words in the first place. Other people also apologised for the actions/comments of the rest of the audience and still others actually said that they liked both my talks and got a lot from them. So there were some good moments too.

Rosemary finished the day with her talk on Scotland's People. The exhibitors were Unlock the Past and the range of UTP publications continues to expand and they were also demonstrating the Flip Pal mobile scanner which seemed to be very popular with people. The Family History Association of North Queensland had a display table as did the Townsville City Council library. It was held at the Townsville RSL which meant that it was easy to get something to eat at lunchtime.

After the talks were over, we quickly packed up and Alan dropped Rosemary, Eric and I at the airport for our flight back to Brisbane. They kindly dropped me off at Mum's for the night and the next day Max joined us. I also got to catch up with my son and his girl friend over breakfast, they are house hunting too so we commiserated with each other on how hard it is to find what you want in the area you want at the price you want to pay. My brother came over at lunch time so that was good and we had a quiet evening with Mum.

Next day it was back up to Burpengary to get the caravan and we are currently in a caravan park on the Maroochy river, another nice area of the Sunshine Coast. We leave here on Saturday to head back down south for the Deniliquin genealogy muster, talks in Wagga Wagga at their monthly meeting and Milton/Ulladulla and then the Cornish Cultural Celebration in Nowra. I'm giving talks at all four events so I'm hoping for no more microphone dramas!

As the next few weeks are almost non stop travelling these Diary entries may be less regular but I will try and report on each event as I go. I keep telling myself that life will be normal from the start of November when we will be based permanently in Queensland but I suspect in reality it won't be until we have a house and everything is unpacked and easily found! Until next time.