Week 30 (July 22-28): Boats

The prompt for #52Ancestors Week 30 is 'Boats" - and I do love boats.  Whether it is a cruise ship, harbor cruises or the small paddle steamers of my home town, I love boats and being on the water.

Over the past several years I have been lucky to have managed to combine my love of boats with genealogy, and attend a few of the wonderful Genealogy Cruises arranged by the lovely people at Gould Genealogy.  With a variety of talks held while the ship is at sea plus full access to all the shore trips at the various ports and all the ship's activities and amenities available, they have been wonderful holidays and my only regret is I was not able to go on more of their cruises.

Not only have these floating conferences offered a range of learning opportunities, they have also been a great way to meet fellow genealogists and share my favourite hobby with others.  The conference part of the cruise has always provided me with friendly faces to chat with and eat with and has been a bonus for a solo traveller.

Family History Month

We are rapidly approaching August, which is National Family History Month in Australia, and I am gearing up at the library for a series of Family History talks and 1 to 1 help sessions.

During the month I will be visiting each of our library branches to run sessions, focusing on Ancestry Library Edition, which is available free through our library service, and hints and tips for your family history research.

I will also be running a number of 1 to 1 help sessions, where people can book a time to sit with me and I will try to help with their research brick walls.  I love these sessions as they always raise some intriguing stories, and while I can't guarantee success it is always a thrill to locate a missing fact that helps someone further their research.

There are many other events taking place during August around the country, and quite a few are listed on the AFFHO (Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations) website.

So take a look around at what is happening during August for Family History Month.

Week 29 (July 15-21): Automobiles

 Following on from 'Planes' and 'Trains', this week's #52Ancestors prompt is 'Automobiles', which brings to mind stories of my parents' wedding in 1967, which featured my father's beloved Chev Biscayne.

The Biscayne was one of the few cars my father owned during his lifetime, and was definitely his favourite.  Driven mainly for trips from the sheep station on the Darling River when my parents lived into Mildura or down to Melbourne, it was also the wedding car when my parents married.

Proudly decorated for the event, by the end of the reception it had, to my father's dismay, been liberally 'decorated' with toilet paper and eggs and was driven away trailing streamers and tin cans.  It was a story I heard many times during my childhood.

The Biscayne was my father's pride and joy, and he owned it for many years.  I have fond memories of family outings in that car as a young child, before it was eventually replaced with a 1967 Chrysler Valiant, in which my sister and I both learned to drive.

Famiy Tree UK Magazine

The latest issue of Family Tree UK magazine is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue :  

• Dear Paul - Paul Chiddicks looks at the intriguing anomalies we might come across when examining our ancestors’ marriage records…
• Transcription Corner - more frustrating and humorous howlers for you to both grimace and smile at.
• Ancient DNA for Genealogy
• Garages, Sheds and family treasures
• Read All About It! - the rich world of newspaper archives
• Sleuthing the Siblings - Gill Shaw digs into the details of the five adoptive cousins of her relation Catherine Mary
• Uncover the clues and pass the stories on…
• Clustering : The secret to unlocking our DNA matches
• Getting Started with family history
• The Plague Years
• Photo-dating study hints
• The Undesirables : the law that locked away a generatio
• Voices of our GENERATION • Diane Lindsay muses on the myriad meanings of ‘voice’
• And more...

Week 28 (July 7-14): Trains

The prompt for Week 28 is 'Trains', and it brings back an early memory of travelling with my grandmother on holidays as a child.

Back when I was in primary school, it was a common occurrence during school holidays for my parents to send my sister or I - usually at different times - down to Melbourne to stay with our maternal grandmother, a journey of some 200km.

While staying with our grandmother at her home in Brighton, we would often take a day or two of the visit to walk to the train station and travel to Frankston where my mother's older sister lived.  I don't recall ever staying with them as a separate holiday, it was always during my visit with my grandmother.

My clearest memory of the journey is the excitement of seeing the ocean from the train, kneeling on the seat to exclaim over quick glimpses and then the glorious surprise of rounding a bend to see the ocean stretched out beside the tracks, with no houses obscuring the view for a stretch of several hundred metres.

Living so far inland, I can still recall the excitement of my first clear view of the ocean from the train window, stretching away for miles to the distant horizon.  

It was not just seeing the ocean that I loved.  Many times during my holidays with my grandmother, we would purchase a train ticket and spend the whole day riding the trains around the city, getting off and on at random stops to explore different Melbourne suburbs. 

 Late in the day we would often ride the train all the way in to Flinders Street station in the city centre, the board a tram to take us home (the tram stop being much closer to my grandmother's house), buying fish and chips at a little store near her house to eat for a late supper.  

These holidays were a highlight of my year and I will always remember the excitement of riding the trains with my grandmother.

Traces Magazine

Edition 27 of Australian history and genealogy magazine Traces is now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines.

Inside this month's issue: 

• Heritage news
• The Bush Inn, New Norfolk, Tasmania
• Rescuing the past from the wreckage : the 50th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy
• How the car changed Australia
• Wakka Wakka resistance in the Burnett River Basin
• Newsreels : a record of daily life
• Do you have a story to share?
• The name behind the frame
• Murder or misadventure on the Moana?
• A long-lost relative found
• Speaking of Dulcie
• The wild ways of Adelaide Ironside
• The flapper
• A labour of love
• And more...
  

Week 27 (July 1-7): Planes

The #52Ancestors prompt of 'Planes' put me in mind of my uncle David Pummeroy, who served in World War 2 as a pilot.  While I had previously looked for his Air Force record on the Australian National Archives website, until recently they had not yet been digitised.  

To my joy, his record is now available.  It contains a total of 52 pages and I plan to examine it in more detail this weekend.

William David Russell Pummeroy was born in Brighton on 6 September 1925, the eldest son of Gladys Daisy (Clark) and William Henry Pummeroy.  He was always known as David, probably to distinguish himself from his father.  David enlisted in the RAAF on 8 October 1943 in Melbourne, just a month after his 18th birthday, having previously worked as an apprentice Gas Fitter.

David started his RAAF career as an Aircraftman Class 2 (Aircrew), rising to the rank of Sergeant (Airman Pilot) in 1944 and finally Flight Sergeant (Airman Pilot) in 1945.  He would be discharged from the RAAF on 28 March 1946.

As a civilian David would go on to work as a pilot for first TAA and then Qantas, flying planes all over the world, and eventually retiring as a Senior Flight Instructor.  

Interestingly, despite his long career as a civilian pilot, his parents were not great travellers.  His father William Henry Pummeroy never flew with his son, and his mother only flew with him once.  In the 1970s David's mother, my grandmother Gladys Daisy Pummeroy, flew from Melbourne to Townsville to visit her youngest son.  She was in her early 70s at the time, and it was the only time she ever boarded a plane.