75th Anniversary (6: 1944)

 

 

Day 6: 1944 

This year saw a number of local airmen in the news -Don Dripps lost over Berlin, Ronald Scott of Murtoa killed in America, Bert Smith of Horsham a Squadron Leader of Sunderlands, Ted Turk shot down above New Guinea, Len Netherway from Quantong ditched in the sea...

 

On the Home Front, the situation was dire with a shortage of chocolate. The advert below imploring everyone to reserve Freddo frogs for children.

75th Anniversary (5: 1943)

 Day 5: 1943 - The tide of war is starting to turn, as the Japanese advance across the Pacific is countered - with ships & troops and with intelligence (ie. that led to the downing of Yamamoto's plane).

 Locally reports of soldiers - Missing, Wounded, & Killed in Action continued, including men from little hamlets like Brimpaen, Minimay and Booroopki (Booroopki residents erected a gum tree WWI Avenue of Honour & still have an Anzac Day service at the Avenue each year).

 Locally too, residents were able to view one of the midget submarines that were sunk in Sydney Harbour. The Japanese sub exhibition toured New South Wales, Victoria & South Australia. 

 

75th Anniversary (4: 1942)

 

In 1942 the war focus moves from the European & Middle East campaigns to the Pacific and the war on our doorstep. 

 

 

 Australians feel threatened as midget submarines are encountered at Sydney, the Japanese land on our next-door-neighbours, and bomb the Australian mainland at Darwin & Broome.Politicians consider the very real danger of an invasion and how the country would deal with it.

 

 

Locally the newspaper articles include lists of missing, wounded, killed & captured local service men & women.

 

 

and how people are coping on the home front - an advert from Langlands the department store in Horsham with details of rationing & restricted goods.

 

 

75th Anniversary (3: 1941)

 

Day 3: 1941 - The war on the political front saw Jeparit's Robert Menzies resign as Prime Minister. 

 The siege for the Rats of Tobruk began and lasted for most of the year. 

Bomb damage to Ward 10, Tobruk Hospital

Japan entered the war as an Axis power following its surprise attack on Pearl Harbour. 

On the home front, the paper saw many entries concerning locals in the different theatres of battle.

  

   

The original Longerenong College building, which burned down in January 1940. The Agricultural College was established in 1889. >>

75th Anniversary (2:1940)

 

Day 2 of our commemoration of the end of World War 2, focusing today on 1940.

Firstly with a list of the events around the world during the year.

 

 And two articles from the Wimmera Mail Times illustrating the depth of feeling in the community.

 

In March initial excitement was high as the town farewelled the first of its volunteers, by June however, the Mayor Cr. Wilmoth was disappointed with turnouts.

 

75th Anniversary (1:1939)

 

With the 75th anniversary of the end of World War 2 approaching - on 15th August with VP Day (Victory in the Pacific). We will be commemorating the event with a week of stories, sourced from “Wimmera diggers at war 1939-1945”compiled by Tania Barber from the pages of the Wimmera Mail Times. 

Each day will feature a story or event from a year during the war.

Day 1: Commencing with the recruitment of soldiers in 1939 – a photograph of some members of the 1st Armored Car Regiment camped at the Horsham Showgrounds in October 1939.

 

 

  The ‘1st Armored Car Regiment’ was formed prior to the war, with the regimental colours of gold, red, brown & green. It had the Territorial Title of ‘The Wimmera Regiment’ and the regimental badge depicted an armoured car in a scroll with the motto "Celere Exploratu" (swiftly/quickly/rapidly explore/investigate) inscribed.

 

Location, location

A short film by Matthew Bird has captured a number local iconic locations around the Wimmera and Mallee.
'Parallaxis' is an abstract 16-minute psychological sci-fi film, with 2 'future characters' (played by Ashleigh McLellan and Lilian Steiner) who move across the landscape pushing & controlling large cylindrical instruments that survey & map the terrain.

Bosisto's Eucalyptus Distillery ruins

The terrain in question is recognisable as the site of Bosisto's eucalyptus distillery at Antwerp, the wind farm at Murra Warra, the Stick Shed at Murtoa, and Lake Tyrrell at Sea Lake.

Passageway, Stick Shed

The film follows two augmented humans as they "investigate their possible archaic genealogy in a Wimmera past. Arriving temporarily and somewhat unexpectedly in the now, the inquisitive duo put their surveillance face-halos to work: observing, recording, archiving ephemeral moments and navigational discoveries as they speed through the landscape. Their biomechanically engineered apparatus are cross-fed into the telemetry of the full-body gyrocompass each visitor operates. Systems in systems, wheels within wheels, spin-axis atop spin-axis, each revolution another attempt to locate and momentarily fix a collective bearing in space and time".

Ancestors Trove

Since words like “pandemic” and “coronavirus” became part of everyday parlance, Australians have sought solace in researching their family histories in increasing numbers.

Tapping into this desire to know more, the National Library of Australia announced a new series of Family History for Dummies online tutorials as the international and local shutdowns took effect. The NLA found the sessions booked out within minutes. Normally around 100 people sign up for online classes. In April, they had 356, and around a third of those lived in regional Australia.

Ancestry.com's main focus is on the internationally lucrative family history genre fuelled by such reality TV documentaries as ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ (which ancestry.com sponsors). They said during April & May there was a 78% increase in the use of the word "ancestry" across Facebook, Twitter & other social media.

It does show there has been this massive shift during lockdown of Australians keen to find out more about their own families. Time spent 'in iso' with little else to do, is clearly a factor.

The stereotype is that family history is something you do when you’ve retired, but a personal interest in family history can also be inspired by certain life events -  the birth of a child, death of a parent or another close loved one.

Researching your own family history has never been easier or more accessible. Cemetery records, gravestones, birth certificates — you can find so much now at home on a computer.

Administered by the National Library of Australia, Trove should be considered as a starting point. It celebrated its 10th birthday at the end of June with a much-improved, user-friendly redesign.

Described as ‘Australia’s online cultural and research portal’, it is really the free go-to-shop for anyone interested in finding out a particular fact about Australia’s past, be that in newspapers on a photo, listed in a gazette...

The new version contains 6.4 billion records of Australian history, culture and research, painstakingly gleaned from 140 other libraries, museums, archives and media organisations.

However, the updated Trove is more accessible than ever, particularly for Indigenous Australians, with more than 200 Indigenous languages on the site and a filter which prevents anyone from seeing culturally disturbing photos or documents without clicking approval.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned by looking at the lives of our ancestors during an epidemic or pandemic.

Based on The Age article: Pandemic prompts growth in familytree digging

Lizzie's dreads

The ABC have posted an old Landline segment on 'Big Lizzie'.

 
Big Lizzie was built by Frank Bottrill, in Richmond, in 1915, with a 60hp Blackstone water-cooled crude oil engine and fitted with Bottrill's Dreadnought wheel, patented in 1906. Lizzie worked in the Mallee clearing fruit blocks, and traveled down through the Wimmera to Glendinning near Balmoral in 1924.
There she ended her days on a share-farm, pieces sold off and forgotten.
Then in the 1970s came the task of finding the fate of the huge chunk of machinery, and returning it to the Mallee and to Red Cliffs.