A few weeks ago we welcome the Federation of First Fleeters to the Library to give them an overview of some of the online resources available. You might find it useful too.

One of the principal sources of information when tracing convict ancestors is the State Records Authority of New South Wales. This is the access point to their Guides and Finding Aids and their online indexes. Many of the most popular records are held in microform by libraries such as ours so once you find the reference you can visit the library and examine a copy of the original record. Increasingly State Records is digitising some of these; the most exciting to date is the digitisation of some of the shipping records.

The National Archives of Australia is also an excellent source of information for later arrivals.

The State Library of NSW has developed a series of research guides to help clients work through their vast collections. Of particular interest to family historians are those for convicts and shipping.

The Australian Newspapers service allows access to historic Australian newspapers digitised as part of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program. This database is being added to on a daily basis and includes the Sydney Gazette and the Sydney Morning Herald. Put aside a good few hours to play with this on-line!

The Ryerson Index to contemporary Birth Death and Marriage Records is a great way to track ancestors and their look up service is an example of how family historians help each other. Do not be fooled by the word contemporary as there are a range of dates in here.

Another favourite is the Australian Cemeteries Index, a searchable data base. It initially concentrated on cemeteries in regional NSW but is now expanding Australia wide. One of the really great things about this database is that there are images of many of the headstones so you can see it for yourself and read any additional information.

It is always a plus if you can discover pictorial material relating to your family and where they lived or worked. Many of the sites already listed will have image collections %u213 ie National Library, State Library, State Records, National Archives and local libraries. There are some overlaying search engines such as Picture Australia but many collections are stand alone databases and many more are not digitised at all.

The same goes for maps though NSW Parish maps can be found at the NSW Land and Property Management Authority's website at

The saga of mining at Brown's Creek will be the subject of Orange and District Historical Society's next mining meeting at the Gladstone Hotel on Wednesday, February 24.

Brown's Creek (sometimes called Cowriga Creek) is a significant creek in the Millthorpe-Blayney area. The mine is where the Blayney-Cadia Road crosses the Spring Terrace-Carcoar road. Gold was reputedly discovered in the area by Norwegian Norvis Gotterty in 1867. Other miners soon followed and by 1873 there were three stores, two pubs and a butcher's shop. By 1878 there were 200 miners plus a local farming population. The Brown's Creek Gold Mining Company continued mining until 1888 when problems with water forced the mine's closure.

In 1895 a French company, Compagnie des Mines d'Or, spent £50,000 importing a marine engine from Glasgow and installing a large stamping battery. The company sank a shaft into the old workings which subsequently collapsed and forced the mine to close in 1901. In 1904 open-cut mining began, using cyanide to treat the old tailings. Mining continued until the late 1930s but low grades made it unprofitable. Michael Hickey obtained the leases in 1979 and opened a new shaft and drives. In 1986 he sold the mine to BHP Minerals, which in 1993 sold it to Hargraves resources. A South African company took it over in 1999 but six weeks later, an aquifer was hit, the mine was flooded and abandoned.

It was purchased in 2001 by Australian Native Landscapes, which ingeniously makes use of the site, the water and the limestone and mullock heaps to produce compost, decorative gravels and road base on a large scale.

Guest speaker Trevor Pascoe is a descendant of a family which has had close associations with mining and farming in the district and is currently president of Millthorpe and District Historical Society. He will be joined by John Campbell, who was mining engineer at the site from 1982-87, before moving on to the nearby Junction Reefs mine at Mandurama.

The meeting will take place at the Gladstone Hotel function room at 7 for 7.30pm. There is a small charge of $3 for members of Orange and District Historical Society and $5 for non-members, to cover costs. Light refreshments will be served. If you have any inquiries or would like to attend the meeting, please RSVP to Phil Stevenson on 6362-3257, mobile 0402 412 188 or email ibiswines@bigpond.com

The Fellowship of the First Fleeters will hold a meeting in the Local Studies Room at the Orange City Library on Saturday 20th February 2010 when they will focus on the records held by the Library which can assist in this area of research. Everyone is welcome to attend.

The meeting will commence at 1.45pm and go through until 3.45pm ... and yes, a cup of tea will be provided.

For further information contact Amada or Phil Foster on 63602117 or 0400383173.

If you wish to learn more about the history of the Cherry Blossom Festival and the Apple Country Fair that followed, then come along to the Orange and District Historical Society's next meeting to be held at the Gladstone Hotel, Orange, Wednesday 27 January at 7pm for 7.30pm. For some time the Society has been researching this fascinating festival history and is busy compiling a list of Cherry Blossom Queens. The evening includes supper and cost is $5 for non-members and $3 for members. Please RSVP to Phil Stevenson on 0402 412 188 to attend. Pictured is 1959 Cherry Blossom Queen Miss Marlene Sands.

Post Christmas is an ideal time to do some internet surfing, mince pie and cuppa on hand.

A website is being developed to display passenger lists for those emigrating to other countries such as Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and USA. At last count, some 24 million passengers who sailed from Britain in the decades 1890 to 1960 were online. The site is a work in progress with further information being added.

Visit

to search for your ancestors.

This site is sponsored by findmypast.com. The index comes up free of charge but there is a charge if you want to see a transcript or an image of the list containing specific people.

The millionth page on the Australian Newspaper Digitisation Program

was made publicly available on 14 December 2009, marking a project milestone. The millionth page contained the 10 millionth article. This was a 1901 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. The National Library of Australia has advised that there will be a staggering 40 million articles available by 2011.

Digitisation started in 2007 and 4.4 million pages were targeted for digitisation over 4 years to be complete and publicly accessible as full text articles by June 2010. 3 million of the identified 4.4 million pages have been scanned from microfilm into digital images so far. Of the 3 million scanned pages 1 million have been converted into full text articles by the OCR process and are publicly available. The remaining pages will be made available from now through til June 2010.

The 1 million pages publicly available amounts to 10 million articles with coverage dates of 1803 -1954.

Public users have enhanced the data significantly since August 2008 by correcting 8.13 million lines of text in 368,390 articles. This really improves the searching. Also 5061 comments and 230,384 tags have been added to articles, which will be used for search and retrieval in the 2010 version of Trove.

The first 70 years of the Sydney Morning Herald are now publicly available. 1831-1901. it is important to note that some issues of this title are missing. These are being sourced in hard copy from locations in Australia and will be added to the public service in 2010. So don't worry if you spot a missing issue, the National Library knows about it and it will appear in the service soon.

Wow! What a weekend! We are still buzzing from the passion and enthusiasm everyone showed for family history research. We had a great time welcoming 75 delegates to Orange from Sydney, across the Central West and Queensland. We also thank the Society of Australian Genealogists and Central West Libraries for organising such a fantastic line up of expert speakers. Pictured above is Society of Australian Genealogists vice president Martyn Killion with Central West Libraries Services Manager Jan Richards. Martyn spoke at the seminar about how the Sydney Benevolent Asylum helped out homeless, destitute, pregnant and poor ancestors while Jan reminded us about the amazing range of information available in local libraries from newspapers to photographs, books with local details, newsletters and even Environmental Impact Statements. Read more about the seminar in today's Central Western Daily. http://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/news/local/news/general/out-on-a-limb-to-trace-ancestors/1672817.aspx

Central West Libraries and Orange Family History Group in association with the Society of Australian Genealogists (SAG) is thrilled to be hosting the Lost in Black Sheep Weekend (7 & 8 November, 2009) and welcomes family historians to Orange for this event. We expect more than 70 visitors for the two-day family history weekend being held at the Orange Civic Theatre Forum, Byng Street, Orange. We hope everyone enjoys the range of expert speakers to help further their research and look forward to meeting you. Welcome to Orange.

There's still time to enrol for the Lost in Black Sheep Family History Weekend to be held at the Orange Civic Theatre Forum, Byng Street, Orange on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November 2009. If your ancestors were 'black sheep' - divorced, destitute, or spent time in gaol or an asylum, they probably left behind a wonderful paper trail. Come along for the two day seminar featuring experts on State Records NSW, Divorce Records, Bankruptcy Records, Local Studies and Family History, Corrective Services, Greater Western Area Health Service and take a guided walking tour of Bloomfield Hospital and learn more about its records. Registration: $85 SAG members and Orange Family History Group Members; and $95 non-members includes two-day seminar, lunches & morning & afternoon teas. On the Saturday evening a casual dinner will be held for participants in a local restaurant in Orange. If you'd like to attend the dinner please let us know at the time of booking. Cost will be approx. $50 plus drinks per person, payable on the evening.

For more details and to book your place, please call the Society of Australian genealogists on (02) 9247 3953 or visit www.sag.org.au

Orange & District Historical Society is hosting a meeting about the Mining and Social History of Junction Reefs and Burnt Yards on Tuesday 27th October 2009 at 7pm Gladstone Hotel, Orange. Intereste people are most welcome to come along. Little known today, the dam and gorge on the Belubula river at Junction reefs 50 km south of Orange was the scene of sustained mining for over 100 years. Gold was discovered in 1870 By Martin Sheahan where the Mandurama Ponds creek meets the Belubula river. Companies were formed soon after and the Sheahan family remained associated with one of the mines until 1960. There were numerous other companies and the very fine nature of the gold tested all of their ingenuity in its separation from the parent rock. It was necessary to grind the ore to a very fine state which in turn required a great amount of power. Wood fired steam engines supplied most of this power but some companies made use of the special features of the site namely a good dam site and large drop in the river height to setup hydro and hydro- electric power sources for their crushers and mills. Leaching processes involving first chlorine and then cyanide were also adopted at an early stage. Companies came and went and droughts and depressed prices brought operations to a halt from time to time. The last mining to be done was by Climax Mining ending in the early 1990's but the area is still held under exploration licence.

We have a great line up of speakers; Peter Schmich of Orange will speak on the geology and nature of the gold mineralisation. John Campbell of Carcoar, sho was chemical engineer with Climax mining will speak on the processes used to crush mill and leach the ore. Des Green of Burnt yards /Errowanbang will speak on the villages and land settlement that went with the mines, the surrounding agriculture, and various government closer settlement schemes. The meeting will take place at the Gladstone Hotel function room at 7 for 7.30pm. There is a small charge of $3 for members of Orange and District Historical Society and $5 for non-members, to cover costs. Light refreshments will be served. If you have any inquiries or would like to attend the meeting, please RSVP to Phil Stevenson on 6362-3257.