A Gold Star Day

Major intersection outside Willandra

 I was so proud of myself this morning, I managed to navigate to the venue for my talk without making one wrong turn. Willandra  the venue, is on a major intersection and not directly accessible from the road. Thanks to the handy map supplied by Maureen Copley from The Ryde District Historical Society I made no blunders and arrived in a stressfree state to give my talk.

On arrival I expressed interest in this historic building so Historical Society President, Janet Eastment, gave me a quick tour and overview of the history of the building. I was excited to have this chance as for many years I drove past this building on my way to and from work. Now my curiosity has been sated.

My purpose this morning was to talk to the Ryde Family History Group about effective Google searching and, for me, it was a most delightful and satisfying experience. Group members were bright and chirpy and willing to contribute to the dialogue by asking questions and adding information.Thank you for being such a wonderful audience I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent with you.

Some of the lovely people at Ryde

At the conclusion of my talk I was presented with one of the group's publications "Women of Ryde" which contains biographies of prominent women from the Ryde area. Details of the Society's publications can be found here: http://www.rydehistory.org/html/our_published_books.html.

After a cuppa and chat I wandered out into the garden where I gave my camera a bit of exercise before heading home. Following are few pictures of Willandra.

View towards the Parramatta River, originally Willandra had a much larger plot of land

As I love taking pictures of doors I snapped Willandra's to add to my collection

Willandra owned by Ryde Council is home to the Ryde Historical Society and the Art Society

I've got a ticket to Ryde

The Bambino will be taking me on a ride to Ryde this Saturday where I will be presenting my Geneagoogling talk and sharing some strategies for more effective searching. My host will be The Family History Study Group at The Ryde District Historical Society.

I had been in contact with this group several months ago and a few weeks ago thought I should get started on my presentation. I fired up the computer and began tailoring my Geneablogging talk for Ryde. Something made me go back to Ryde's original email invitation where I found that I had been asked to talk on Geneagoogling. Oops, I'm so glad I found my error before I had done too much tweaking to my Geneablogging talk.

Geneagoogling is now ready to go and I look forward to sharing a few tips with the folk at Ryde

The group is housed in a beautiful historic building, Willandra, that is perched on a hillside with views over the Parramatta River and towards Sydney Harbour. For many years I drove past this building on the way to and from work and hoped that one day I would get to take a peek beyond its doors.

Genealogy has given me a Ticket to Ryde.