ALEXANDRINA LIBRARY SERVICES
news
August 2009 by Dawn Juers
No 61
Well the sun has shone on a couple of days so perhaps the worst of winter is over. Postcards have arrived from both Peter Barclay & Bill Cox and they are revelling in the sunny climes of Queensland. I remember my trip last year and would like to be back there again.
This month 6-16th has been the 150th Commemoration of the wreck of the ‘Admella’ which ran aground at Carpenter Rocks SE with the loss of 89 lives on 6th August 1857.
I have a personal connection with Capt Ben Germein (1824-1893), who at the time was lighthouse keeper at Carpenter Rocks. He was the younger brother of my Great Great Grandfather Capt John Germein (1812-1879). Both men were sons of John & Christina nee Easton. For more on the story of the ‘Admella’ go to http://www.admella.org.au/story.aspx
Did you know?
On the 2nd of this month the Port Elliot Council Chamber building was 130years old.
Back in 1945, Point Sturt Church of Christ had the longest record of continuous service and celebrated its 90th anniversary in November 1945. Does anyone know whether it is still standing and celebrating church services? If it is, it would be 154years in existence.
(Southern Argus 30/11/1995)
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Graham Jaunay in his newsletter “Proformat News” advises that the former Norwood District BDM duplicate certificates (held at Campbelltown Library) are currently unavailable until 2010 due to renovations in the Library.
also
SA Police Historical Society Collection is not open to researchers. All requests for information have to be by mail and a spokesman advises that the turn around now exceeds five weeks. Their address is Box 1539 GPO, Adelaide 5001
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When you think of the Art Gallery of SA you tend to think of paintings but in 1922 they started collecting photographs. In 2004 they acquired the RJ Noye Collection of early South Australia. It is quite tedious to open all the pictures, often quoted as –
“Studio portrait of standing bride with seated groom” or
“HMS Grappler” – on request
“Scene at Goolwa Jetty” – on request
One picture I was able to look at was “Cadell Street, Goolwa” (showing a good photo of the Goolwa Hotel) by George Burnell 1830-1894.
The website is http://collection.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/Collection/Australian/S_A_Photo/
Another reminder to get your (and mine) ‘Letters of A Nation’ into Australia Post 200th year Celebration by 26th September. National Archives of Australia has teamed up with Australia Post to encourage the sharing and preservation of letters. Letters can be entered through the website www.auspost.com.au/200years
Only copies of letters should be submitted. Originals should be retained by the owners.
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Placenames Australia Newsletter (March 2009) has an article on “Britain’s Snigger-worthy Placenames”. In the scale of embarrassing placenames “Crapstone” ranks pretty high.
Resident, Stewart Pearce, when ordering things by phone tends to take the proactive approach. He lays it out straight “ It’s spelled crap!” says Pearce who has lived in the town for decades.
(I’m sure Australia must have a few snigger-worthy names of our own!)
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A remarkable public project is sealing the cracks in our written history. Newspapers are being digitally copied and keyword searched. National Library of Australia even invited members of the public to participate in ironing out the wrinkles in the digital text – and they did. Once word began to spread – the trickle became a flood. To understand how they became involved it is necessary to grasp the basics of OCR.
OCR takes a page of scanned text, breaks it down into columns, paragraphs, words, then characters x and y co-ordinates on the page, then compares them with a set of patterned images.
Apparently volunteers all over the country are sitting at their computers and tidying text prepared by optical character recognition (OCR). Some volunteers have done 100,000 entries. I found it very addictive.
Try it out on http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home
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When I was at Pt Macdonnell a few months ago they had instigated a heritage paving program. I thought this an idea that our Alexandrina Council may like to follow. People put forward the name of their ancestor to be engraved on a brick in a local park. I put forward the suggestion for Soldier’s Memorial Park. I also recently saw the same idea in a heritage cemetery in Riverton. Most of the headstones were no longer there but the walkway through the garden was edged with bricks engraved with the pioneer’s name.
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An amusing sign above a garden seat alongside a craft shop in Bright, Victoria.
Happy researching
Dawn
Genealogy help is available by appointment on Thursdays, to guide you through your research. Please phone the Library on 8555-7000 to make an appointment. For comments, suggestions or to receive this newsletter – email historyroom2004@yahoo.com.au or phone the Library on 8555-7000.
Back copies of this newsletter can be sourced on the Alexandrina Council website –
http://www.alexandrina.sa.gov.au/site/page/cfm
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