Mapping your history

Family History with Maps at the State Library of Victoria on Tuesday 11th October 2-3pm. It is a free event but bookings are required. Attendees are to meet in the Library's grand front foyer.

The State Library has a large impressive collection of historic maps (over 110,000 maps – enough to carpet metropolitan Melbourne). Victoria is divided into administrative districts - counties, parishes and townships. The maps of these districts record the transfer of land from government to private ownership, each plan shows the boundaries of occupied, reserved or privately owned land, the names of first grantees, and the purchase dates.
 Parish plans provide an indication of the size and shape of local settlements and the location of major buildings, roads, railways and other built structures, as well as natural features such as rivers, lakes and mountains. They sometimes include notes on local vegetation types, and even the quality and colour of local soils. They may also show the location of houses, businesses, schools, churches and other local landmarks.The State Library has around 8500 country, parish and township plans, produced between 1837 and 1986.
Learn about the map resources in the State Library's collection, and how you can use them to enrich your family and local history research.

Big Weekend

Murtoa's Big Weekend is coming up on 1st & 2nd October.

The highlight will undoubtedly be the iconic Stick Shed.

The unique structure has been stabilised and is now deemed safe to allow the public access to the interior again.

The entire shed will be open on Sunday, and members of the public will be free to wander amongst the full extent of the vast area of bush-cut mountain ash poles.

Technically the weekend kicks off with the 127th Murtoa Show, the Art Exhibition and the Gala Opening of the Weekend on the Friday.

Other attractions of the Big Weekend include the Monster Street Market, and the Saturday night "film" movies.
On Sunday its the running of the Murtoa Cup, the Writers Breakfast, and Poets by the Pier, and of course the opening of the Stick Shed from 10am to 4pm.
On both days there are the Dunmunkle Sumpoiler's vintage rally at the Inland Freezing Works, and the Water Tower Museum & Concordia College which is showing the "Shearing of the rams" DVD.

Money for history

The Local History Grants Program provides grants of up to $12,000 to community organisations to support the cost of any project that preserves, records or publishes Victorian local history. The program is administered by Public Record Office Victoria and will distribute $350,000 to projects in the 2011-12 financial year.

Applications are now open and close on Friday 11 November 2011.

A free information session about the Grants program and the application process will be held at the Public Records Office/Victorian Archives Centre, 99 Shiel St North Melbourne at 10am on Wednesday 14 September 2011. Bookings are not necessary.

  http://prov.vic.gov.au/community-programs/grants-awards/local-history-grants