This blog provides information, stories, links and events relating to and promoting the history of the Wimmera district.
Any additional information, via Comments, is welcomed.



Wednesday 24 May 2017

Apprehended


Dimboola Police had an interesting find recently, during a clean-up of an old storage area at the police station. They found the station’s original Charge Book, dating back to 1880, and a Forage Book dating back to 1939.
Entries from 1886, Dimboola Banner
The Charge Book provides an excellent snapshot of early law enforcement in the Dimboola area and, considering its age, is in remarkably good condition.

The Forage Book contains receipts for horse food provided to the police horses that were housed in stables which used to be in what is now the rear yard of the residence next door to the station. 

Dimboola Police Station in Lloyd St, Google Maps
Dimboola Station Commander, Acting Senior Sergeant Darren Sadler, said that they realised very quickly that they’d stumbled upon a “gem”.

“When we started looking through the old Charge Book, we instantly realised we had found something of historical significance. A phone call to the Victoria Police Museum confirmed we had a located a bit of a gem.”

On Monday the 15th of May, Acting Senior Sergeant Sadler, Leading Senior Constable Neil Zippel and Leading Senior Constable Cal Myers officially handed over the items to the Curator of the Victoria Police Museum in Melbourne, where they will eventually go on public display.

Pictured above: Leading Senior Constable Zippel, Acting Senior Sergeant Sadler, and Leading Senior Constable Myers, Dimboola Banner.
 The Charge Book is now of an age where it can be publicly shared. Each page has been photographed, and plans are now in progress to share the contents with the local community.
Copied from the 'Dimboola Banner' 22nd May 2017

Sunday 21 May 2017

Great celebrations

Great Western are set to celebrate a grand date, as the school celebrates its 150th anniversary.
Great Western Primary School opened as a Common School in February 1867 in a new single-room brick building with a shingle roof on Lot 4, Section 7 of the town. 
80 pupils were crammed on long benches in the Common School
In 1872, the Education Act (1872) was introduced and Common Schools were re-titled State Schools, and Great Western became Great Western State School No. 860. The Act provided for free, compulsory and secular education for all Victorian children to 15 years. 
 A new single-room wooden school building fronting Stephenson Street was built, and opened in May 1881. 
The Church of England purchased the Common School building in 1883, and used it as a church, library, Sunday school and church hall. 
 An Infant room was added in 1923. At the centenary celebrations in August 1967 a pond, wall feature & obelisk were constructed on the south corner. In 1977 a 2 classroom unit was transported onto the site.
The celebrations commence on the 13th October, with a Dinner on 14th, and a parade of vehicles through the ages - from horse-drawn carts to vintage cars.
The School 150th Committee are looking to attract former students and teachers to the weekend and have started a Facebook page 

Wednesday 10 May 2017

Trove tips

Australian’s are spoilt by having Australian historical newspapers available their fingertips and online through Trove. Not also forgetting that it’s all totally free as well.
 Can you believe that there are over 200 million articles already on the National Library of Australia’s Trove Newspapers site, and that figure grows every month, with new papers being added.
It is a vast resource which is used not only by tens of thousands of Australian genealogists, historians, students and academics on a daily basis, but also by many overseas who are researching something about Australia, or someone who was in Australia.
But how do you search? Type in a name and see what comes up? Well, there’s more to it than that.
When searching newspapers you have to think of how things would be written in the newspaper at the time, which can be quite different to general search websites. So here are some tips for you.
  1. When searching for a birth, don’t just look for the person’s name, as they often aren’t mentioned. (ie. On the 23rd June, at Hobart, Mr and Mrs E. Smith of a daughter)
  2. When searching use initials, not just their full name – or an abbreviation (ie. Wm instead of William)
  3. When looking for a wife, look for “Mrs W. Baker” (as in wife of Mr William Baker) rather than her own name of Elizabeth
  4. Use place name together with a surname to help narrow down your search
  5. Or as an alternative to using a place name, use an occupation and surname
  6. Remember to use different spellings of names, as every name has variants
  7. Remember some places changed name, so look for a previous place name (ie. Friezland in Brisbane was renamed to Kuridala in 1916; or Tweedvale in South Australia became Lobethal etc)
  8. If you are looking for immigration details and can’t find a shipping list, look for an obituary. Many say when they arrived, and often what ship they came in on
  9. When looking at newspapers don’t dismiss newspapers from other states, because the news may well have been reported elsewhere (and sometimes has better information) than the ones you’re looking at
  10. When looking for a death, don’t dismiss papers that occur years after the death as they may be mentioned in a “In Memoriam” entry
  11. You’ve done a search, and it’s come up with 1000s of entries, too many to go through every one, use the “Refine Your Results” options on the left hand side of the page. So you can choose a state, choose a paper, choose an entry type, narrow down by decade
  12. When looking at the paper and date range, it doesn’t mean that ‘every’ issue between that range has been scanned yet. So check what’s actually covered by browsing
  13. Also one more point is that the text of the newspapers has been scanned and OCRd (Optical Character Recognition). So how well it reads (and can be found by searching), depends on the quality of the original. Sometimes it’s best to browse, rather than simply rely on searching as you will pick things up that the search didn’t.
  14. Check out their Advanced Search options 

Copied from Genealogy & History News

Thursday 4 May 2017

Lines on the map

The question was asked - how well do you know your Australian history?
Obviously there were bits that I wasn't aware of -
The proclamation of 'North Australia' in 1846 led to a slice of New South Wales being sandwiched between Western and South Australia (the state of South Australia was proclaimed in December 1836). The South Australian border did not move and become a common border till 1860, when the line moved from 129 degrees to 132 degrees.
The 1846 'North Australia' colony was established by Queen Victoria and an Act of the British Parliament in February, on advice from then Colonial Secretary Gladstone. It was destined to be settled by pardoned and reformed British and Australian convicts. The proposal was opposed by the NSW government who saw it as re-introducing transportation. The proclamation was revoked in November by the Queen when Earl Grey became Colonial Secretary.
The history is showcased in this GIF from the FindMyPast people, fascinating!
Places like Darwin have changed allegiances about 6-7 times.