Wimmera stories launch

Eleanor & Paula admire the displays

Three stories relating to the Wimmera region were launched at an event in Murtoa on Saturday.

The launch was part of the Murtoa Lions Club's Afternoon Tea function - a high tea to celebrate the beauty of years gone by, where guests were invited to come dressed in the vintage theme.

There were also lessons on correct dinner-table etiquette, antique appraisals and displays of object d'art, family handicrafts and heirlooms.

A cooperative venture with Culture Victoria, Heritage Victoria and the Library, the stories are now live on the Culture Victoria site.

Culture Victoria is an organisation dedicated to digitising and making available our cultural assets. The Culture Victoria site provides access to Victorian cultural collections through stories that showcase the richness and diversity of Victoria, and via a collections search facility across the websites and databases of Victorian acquisitive organisations and collections.

Malcolm editing the story images

Documentary film-maker Malcolm McKinnon, has been working with the local organisations involved with each story, creating a number of still photographs and short video, to be coupled with historic images to produce social histories on the local environment.

More on each story in the following posts.

 

Cold cases

Have been working with a couple of local Historical Societies recently on some collaborative projects.
The Western Victorian Association of Historical Societies is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary, and members were searching for a number of missing copies of their journal the 'Western Historian', fortunately the Library was able to photocopy the relevant editions from our collection.

At the same time a number of people are researching a couple of unsolved murders, and are finding the digitised Australian Historic Newspapers on Trove invaluable.

And the unsolved murders? 

• Firstly 'The Maryvale Murders' occurred in 1874, when Maria Cook with her young daughter Louisa, and an unknown man & dog were killed near the Sheepwash Reserve on Maryvale Station
• Second 'The Gymbowen Mystery', where ex-schoolteacher, and recently married Mary Tierney was poisoned via strychnine in 1905
• Finally a case with a verdict of suicide, but which "reeked with suspicion" according to the coroner - the death of 'the Gypsy Queen' Olga Toohey aka Olga Johan, at the Apsley Racecourse in 1931.

 Anyone with information on these cases is welcome to add their knowledge to the file.

Independent type

It was the end of an era, when Allan Lockwood died on Monday night. Allan was the last surviving son of newspaper pioneer Alfred Lockwood. Alfred purchased the West Wimmera Mail newspaper in Natimuk in 1899, and all his six sons grew up working and assisting with all aspects of producing the paper.

Allan, the youngest, was 13 when his father took him out of school to work on the paper (he was folding, wrapping & delivering papers while still at school) at the end of 1935. As an unpaid full-time employee, he set type, reported on meetings, operated the machines with his brothers. Allan joined the Army in 1942, and was at Noonamah when the Japanese bombed Darwin. Allan married Winifred Uebergang on 22nd April 1944.

Keith sharing a joke with Allan, 2009

After the war he returned to the newspaper in 1946. Alfred retired at the end of 1950, aged 83, and Allan and brother Frank took over, until the West Wimmera Mail and Natimuk Advertiser merged with the Horsham Times to form the Wimmera Mail Times in September 1959. The Wimmera Mail Times was established with Frank as manager, and Allan as its editor.
Allan continued at the Mail Times until his retirement in 1985, after which he and Win traveled, and Allan turned his hand to writing a variety of biographies and local histories.
They had eight children - Greg, Bruce, Peter, Keith, Rosemary, twins Miriam & Marion, and Kerry. The family lived in Natimuk, where Allan died on Monday 11th, aged 90 years. His funeral will be at St Paul's Lutheran Church in Natimuk on Tuesday at 10:30am.

Field Days @ Longerenong

The Library will be at the Wimmera Machinery Field Days at Longerenong on Tuesday 5th, Wednesday 6th, and Thursday 7th, where there will be an exhibit of some of Andrew Chapman's photographs, which relate to farming.
Come and see the Library's site in the Moore Pavillion.