Genealogy notes 4-9 Aug 2013 NFHM seminars & talks

Last Sunday I headed to Brisbane airport for what proved to be a hectic few days in Melbourne and Canberra. I'm glad I made the effort to attend the 10th anniversary of Family History Feast at the State Library of Victoria and it was a great opportunity to catch up with my Victorian genealogy friends and colleagues. I have written a  review of the day and it's significance to me on my website and if you haven't already seen it, you should read my Family History Feast Melbourne Aug 2013 blog. Why should you click on that link? The day had a military theme and all five talks were great and there are lots of links to follow up from the talks.

While in Melbourne I also took the opportunity to catch up with friends and dinner first night was in that iconic British pub The Elephant & the Wheelbarrow in Bourke Street and the second night was at Cookie after happy hour drinks at The Moat. One thing about Melbourne there is no shortage of good places to eat and drink and the weather was reasonably kind and not too cold and wet.

Then it was off to Canberra where I was the NFHM guest speaker at the Heraldry & Genealogy Society of Canberra. Before the meeting I was shown there new (to me) premises at Cook and I was very impressed with all the rooms and meeting areas. Almost made me wish I still lived there but then I remembered how cold it was outside! My talk was on Google Tools and as well as talking about various tools, I highlighted some of the changes to searching recently. I do miss the use of the ~tilde facility and I have trouble finding things that I once found easily and now that I know the various filters are under Search Tools that helps too. But I do wish websites didn't change all the time - I never seem to be able to find things again or perhaps I just need to practice more! As usual I placed a copy of the presentation on the Resources page of my website, scroll down to Presentations.

While in Canberra I managed dinner with friends at Timmy's Kitchen one night and the next night at Taste of Himalaya, both at Manuka and within easy walking distance of my motel which had copies of the National Library of Australia's quarterly magazine The Library in the foyer. Great idea to bring the NLA to the attention of tourists and other travellers. But if you can't get to Canberra, you can still download The Library for free here.

I also managed lunch at Belluci's at Manuak with a long time friend who is convenor of this year's Australian Society of Archivists conference which is in Canberra on 15-17 October. I'm planning to go to the 2013 conference and it was great to chat about the program and speakers plus the social events that are great for networking. I've missed the last couple of ASA conferences so I'm really looking forward to catching up with old friends and colleagues.

My primary reason for being in Canberra was to attend the National Archives of Australia's advisory committee for the centenary of World War One. I arrived early so that I could check out their two current exhibitions Design 29: Creating a Capital (all about the selection of Griffin plans for Canberra) and Banned which is a fascinating look at books that have been banned in Australia. I knew about the more well known ones but I was surprised at how many were detective stories or looked to be detective stories judging by cover and title.

The advisory meeting provided an update on NAA's planned new website Discovering ANZACS (previously titled Australians at War) which is now a joint project between them and Archives New Zealand. That's a very exciting project and I can't wait to see that launched. There were reports from others including an update on Australian War Memorial projects and the convenor mentioned Inside History Magazines' project to have a database of all WW1 centenary projects - it's called World War Onelink. I managed a plug for National Family History Month as well and I think we definitely need to have a military theme next year.

Then of course it was back to the airport for the long trip home made even longer by delays at Brisbane airport which meant we didn't leave Canberra on time. While wandering around the Qantas lounge waiting to board, I found Issue 3 of the National Museum of Australia's magazine The Museum. It's a glossy publication which show cases their various collections and exhibitions and I must find time to visit there again on a future visit to Canberra. Most times I seem to fly in and fly out! Good news - it's online and some of the articles are free too - click here.

Anyway after finally given the go ahead to board and depart Canberra, Brisbane airport was still having delays and we must have been ordered to fly on past Brisbane as we continued heading north and as we passed Redcliffe I got a bit excited. We were going to fly over Bribie Island and I could see the different suburbs, the canals and the bridge but then we turned and flew back down over Moreton Island before heading into Brisbane. I obviously wasn't meant to get home early as someone forgot me and I sat around the arrivals/departures pick up area for quite a while. After a long day I eventually made it back  home to Bribie.

Today is another one of those glorious sunny, warm, blue sky winter days and I'm going to go for a nice walk and if the pool's warm enough I might even have a swim! Although I do need to sort out all the info I bought back and follow up on all those good research ideas - I wonder when the next rainy day is? Continue to enjoy National Family History Month and I hope you are having as much genealogy fun as I am! Until next time.

Genealogy notes 27 Jul - 3 Aug 2013 National Family History Month

I live a normally busy if not hectic lifestyle but this last week has completely tuckered me out! It's only the third day of National Family History Month and I'm exhausted but it's a fantastic feeling. I've put up so many new events on the NFHM web calendar although we still don't have anything happening in the Northern Territory yet. Hopefully that might change as the month progresses.

I was also busy finalising everything for the launch which was on Thursday in Brisbane. It was a fantastic day - we travelled to Brisbane early so that we could collect Kerrie Gray, President of the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations (AFFHO) from the airport on our way through to the National Archives of Australia, Brisbane Office for the launch. I've done a blog post on the various speakers and also gave an account of the changes to NFHM 2013. The winners of the 2013 Nick Vine Hall awards are also included and don't miss all the news from National Archives of Australia. You can read about the launch and speaker talks here. NFHM is quite different from previous years and I think that we have more events than ever before but I haven't had time to count them.

The last few days have seen me give three radio interviews about NFHM - one with Christy-Lee Macqueen, Mornings Presenter with ABC North West, one with Ed Cowlishaw on Riverland Today with ABC Riverland and Mallee and one with Natasha Mitchell on the program Life Matters on ABC National. That was an interesting one hour session titled Framed: the family portrait. There is something a bit nerve wracking about doing live to air interviews - I always have the fear that the questions will be tricky or that I will have a complete mind freeze. But they all went well and I was amazed at how many people actually heard the shows, especially the Life Matters session. I'm not a big radio person myself but others obviously are.

I'm now about to pack for my trip down south. First stop tomorrow is Melbourne where I will be attending Family History Feast at the State Library of Victoria. This will be a bit of a trip down memory lane as it is the 10th anniversary since Anne Burrows (SLV), Anne Piggott (NAA) and myself (then PROV) started what has become a must attend event in NFHM. This year is another full house which is fantastic and myself and the two Annes will celebrate over dinner that night. Really looking forward to catching up with them.

From Melbourne I'm heading up to Canberra (another one of my old homes) to be the NFHM speaker at the August meeting of the Heraldry and Genealogy Society of Canberra (HAGSOC). I'm having dinner with a few of my old HAGSOC friends before the talk so I will have to stick to one glass of wine with dinner or there won't be a talk! On Wednesday I'm catching up with an old colleague from NAA and on Thursday it's a meeting of the NAA's advisory committee for the centenary of WW1 which should be interesting. I love hearing about all the projects on the go for next year.

Somehow I will try and blog these events while I'm on the road and I know I did say that I would be doing blog posts on my 31 activities for researchers and 31 activities for genealogy/family history societies during NFHM but there may be a bit of a delay. Once I'm back on Bribie Island I'll be able to catch up again.

It's been great to see all my social media friends promoting NFHM and I really think that by the end of August everyone will know what genealogy and family history is all about. Thanks everyone. I'm also learning new skills and managed to put up some photos of the launch on the NFHM Facebook page and the number of Likes has gone up to 434 which is still a long way short of the 1000 Likes I would like before the end of August. The NFHM sponsors have all been fantastic in helping to promote the month too.

Have I done any of my own genealogy in the last week? Not a lot but one thing that was interesting is that I visited the genEbooks website (one of the NFHM sponsors) and noticed that they have a free ebook each month. So I registered which is a simple process, selected the free ebook and proceeded to check out and within a minute or so I had received the ebook via email. I also did a survey for the Unlock the Past genealogy cruises and by leaving my name I received a 50% discount on an ebook before 31 August. So when I come back I will take up that offer but sadly it will probably just go into my virtual pile of ebooks to read. The good thing is that they don't gather dust like the pile of real books I have to read!

Breaking news from AFFHO! Our Australasian Really Useful Information Leaflet is now available. This is a free, 20 page initiative of the UK based Federation of Family History Societies in association with Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations and the Society of  Australian Genealogists.

Well I have to go and finish packing and this afternoon I've been invited to a Tupperware party and I don't think I've been to one of those in over 20 years if not longer.It's a gorgeous day here on Bribie Island and I also have to water all my new herbs, flowers and other plants as they are predicting even warmer, dry days while I'm away. I'm trying not to think of those much cooler temperatures in Melbourne and Canberra!

Enjoy the next week of NFHM and remember to keep checking the web calendar as events might still be added as the month progresses! Happy researching.

Genealogy notes 20-26 July 2013 National Family History Month talks & travels

It is hard to believe that National Family History Month (NFHM) is now only a week away but obviously I'm not the only one who leaves things to the last minute. I have been kept super busy all week adding new events to every state except unfortunately the Northern Territory. I haven't found anyone up there doing anything yet. Check out the web calendar on the NFHM website for events near you.

As well as that, I have finalised my 31 activities for researchers and 31 activities for genealogy/family history societies for NFHM and the details and lists are on my the Resources page of my website. The lists are a prompt for people to undertake a range of family history related activities throughout August to further their own research and knowledge. I will also be blogging about each activity (when I get the time) to give you further ideas as well, not to mention progress my own family research. You can do as few or as many activities as you want. I would love to see others blogging about any or all of the activities over the month. Don't forget to let me know how you go.

Last night I was Inside History Magazine's guest on their regular Thursday night Q&A on their Facebook page and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to promote National Family History Month. I was kept busy over the hour answering various questions about the month and the type of events that are being held. Inside History Magazine is one of NFHM's key sponsors and their sponsorship is appreciated.

As it is now just over a week till I head south, I've also been busy working on my talk for HAGSOC in Canberra.I'm totally reworking my Google Tools talk - I started out just changing a few slides and then went on to the major revamp. There are just so many things I could focus on and keeping to within the time frame is always a challenge. I'm also doing the same for my talk It's Not All Online which is at the Bribie Island Library on 30 August.

I've been doing a massive tidy up and toss out/give away in the study again. A lot of the material is out of date or superseded by changes in technology and online access but I do find it hard to part with old genealogy magazines. The temptation is to start rereading the old UK genealogy magazines but at least now there are all organised again by title and date instead of still inside the removal boxes. Of course it also means that I end up with more things on my to do list as I follow up hints in the magazines.

On the domestic front I've managed another couple of swims as the water temperature is hovering around 22 degrees and it has been warm and sunny and it really is hard to believe it is the middle of winter. The choko vine from next door continues to fruit almost overnight and we simply can't eat or give away that many chokoes. So I came up with the brilliant idea of doing choko pickles which is another first for me. Not something high on my bucket list but the desire to make my own pickles has always been there. Surprisingly they are absolutely delicious and the neighbours liked them so much, they have put in an order for my mango chutney when the mangoes come back into season! I wonder if any of my female ancestors were into doing pickles and chutneys? It must come from somewhere.

Today is a bit wet and drizzly so we are off to the pictures to see the Lone Ranger. I used to love the Lone Ranger and Tonto as a kid so it will be interesting to see what they've done with the story line. Next time I write NFHM will be upon us. Happy days!