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

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

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

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.