Lilian's Tree

 It is great to see in-person conferences returning and the past weekend I attended the Royal Australian Historical Society's Conference, with the Theme being, Windows into Local History.  Held at the Campbelltown Catholic Club, it was two full days of learning, plus pre-conference drinks, on the Friday night and the Conference dinner on the Saturday night. I stayed at the hotel, next to the venue, which was great. As we arrived, we were given a 'goody' bag and book. The bag contained our program for the two days, information leaflets on places of interest and a note pad and pen. Seating was at round tables, and I joined with a group of friends. The day was divided into sessions, each with a theme and two or three speakers. Session A - Welcome and Keynote Address. Session B - Windows into Local History: Views on Campbelltown's Past. Session C - Windows into Local History: Opening Classrooms to Community Stories. Saturday ended with tours of the local area and dinner. Se...

 My September research was to read the War Diaries for the unit my Dad served in. Well I am but they make for hard reading, that I have to leave them and only read in small batches. This is going to continue for the rest of the year. I have both the Unit Diary and Charles Bean's diary as well. The Unit Diary is very factual, while the Bean one give you the whole picture. I decided that I needed to some fun research, so picked my grandparents line and looked for any new information on the branches. Did a death search on the various sites and found some new deaths. Also did a Ryerson search for the death/funeral notices and had some success there as well. September also saw me start a seven week writing course with The Novel Guys. I'm finding it very helpful as we are given homework, which is reviewed by Nathan and the group and feed-back is given. The only downside is that it's from England and while 8.00pm UK time is good for them, it's 5.00am here for me. Luckily for m...