Genealogy notes 22 Nov 2011 - Day 2 on board Volemdam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.