Tuesday, January 26, 2010

On this day - 26th January - Australia Day

What a great idea from Shelley at Twigs of Yore to post family events that occured on 26th January on her blog. Carole Riley of Carole's Canvas followed up with a similar post. Whilst Shelley had two 26 January events Carole had five from the 17th to the 21st centuries. I felt that I just had to join this Australia Day blogging event.

Carole gave instructions on the TMG Sydney blog on how to glean this information from The Master Genealogist software that I also use. This seemed like hard work so I looked at my online website for which I use TNG. How easy it was! From the site menu I selected Dates and - Hey Presto - there was a list of the 26 January happenings in my database.

None of my direct ancestors figure in the list produced. The closest is for my great-grandmother's brother, Michael Kealy who, on 26 Jan 1867, left his native Ireland on the Light Brigade and arriving on 21 May 1867 to start a new life in Australia with his brother. My great-grandmother, Mary Kealy, followed her brothers to Australia in 1877.

Conditions in Australia must have been agreeable for Michael as he fathered a family of 13 in Australia .

Australia Day - January 26th

My ancestors who made the journey from The British Isles to the great southern land in the 19th century probably dreamed, like Dorothea Mackellar, of "field and coppice". We, their ancestors, rejoice in our life in "the sunburnt country" and thank those ancestors for making a treacherous journey by sea to the "wide brown land". We love "the lucky country".

I thank The Wallerawang Branch Library Blog for giving me the idea of posting Mackellar's classic ode to my blog for Australia Day.


My Country
By Dorothea Mackellar
(1885-1968, written in 1904)
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Updated Free BDM Website

This messgae came through on a listserv today - keep up the good work, Gordon.

"Website updated today- extra 290 plus NEW ENTRIES
Total entries now 15458
Please keep donating those certificates and thanks to all thus far

Website: http://ausbdm.ucoz.org/"

Local Studies: Calendar Celebrates 150 Years of Local Government

150 years of Local Government History in Orange, NSW.

Local Studies: Calendar Celebrates 150 Years of Local Government

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Passwords: please try harder | Technology | guardian.co.uk


Image: http://lifehacker.com/5453721/no-time-like-the-present-to-choose-strong-passwords?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+lifehacker%2Ffull+(Lifehacker)&utm_content=Google+Reader

Are you complacent with passwords? Is yours easy to crack?

Passwords: please try harder | Technology | guardian.co.uk

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Harveys (and variants) in Australia

If you have some Harveys (or Harvie, Harvy, Herve, Hervey) you may be interested in this list extracted from the Australian Vital Records Index on the Harvey Genealogist site.



Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Lonely no more

This diagram from The Perennial Lone Wolf Librarian's Weblog started me thinking about how the development of the internet, email and web 2.0 applications has changed genealogy from a rather lonely pursuit to a collaborative activity.

When I started out in the late 1980's I spoke to people in the family to gather the data that was in their heads then I headed off to libraries to search printed resources,microfiche and microfilms. I also made contact with a few people I found in Pioneer registers from various areas in Australia. Some of these people responded by post and sent photocopies of certificates and handwritten trees. Most of the information in these handwritten trees was not sourced; verifying sources meant trips to libraries and genealogical societies and much searching of indexes on microfiche, visits to cemeteries etc.

I embraced technology in the late 1980's when I started entering my data into a basic database. I was then able to share printed reports with new found cousins but I needed to go to the library (luckily I worked in one) to make photocopies of certificates as I did not have access to scanners and copiers at home.

Fast Forward twenty years to today and, thanks to advances in technology, I have a smorgasbord of tools with which to communicate and a broad range of virtual genealogy friends with whom I can share information, news and tips and discuss the trials and tribulations of ancestor hunting.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Air raid shelters, Balmain

Air raid shelters, Balmain: "

Sunlight Oil and Soapworks (later Unilever) Balmain, c1928


Betty Sparnon grew up in Balmain and writes “we often played in the old air raid shelter near Unilever and I recently met another child of Balmain who remembers an air raid shelter under a factory opposite the Dry Dock Hotel. How can we find out more about these shelters?”


We searched our collection but haven’t uncovered anything that would assist Betty. If you have any information on air raid shelters around Balmain, contact us at localhistory@lmc.nsw.gov.au and we will pass this information on to Betty.


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