June 29, 2013

Capturing Memories: Oral History in the Digital Age

ORAL HISTORY EXPERIENCE WEEKEND .. Orange and Central West NSW



      

Oral History Weekend  .. Orange and Central West NSW

Capturing Memories: Oral History in the Digital Age

Saturday 3 August 2013 from 9.30am – 4.30pm
        Introduction to Oral History theory and practice
Sunday 4th August 9.30am – 1pm
        Hands-on practice in interviewing and setting up an oral history project.


Venue: West Room, next door to Orange City Library, 147 Byng Street, Orange Costs: $95 includes lunch, morning and afternoon tea on Saturday, and refreshments on Sunday. Resources notes are included with the workshop fee.

Bookings essential. Call Jasmine Vidler Central West Libraries and Central West Writers’ Centre (CWWC) on 6393 8125 or Orange City Library on 6393 8132.  Email: JVidler@orange.nsw.gov.au   Fax 6393 8100

 
Come along to a practical workshop with Trish Levido, a member of the Oral History Association NSW training team.  Trish has many years’ experience leading workshops for local libraries, historical societies and other community groups.  She is passionate about oral history and had been an interviewer for the Mosman Library for more than 30 years.  Trish has many helpful tips to share with you.

Topics covered include:

• Introduction to oral history and the nature and reliability of memory
• Preparing and structuring an oral history interview
• Documentation: ethical issues, ownership and copyright
• Choosing and using a digital recorder
• Downloading recordings to a computer
• Editing using Audacity (free access editing software)
• Guidelines for preparing an interview summary, logging and transcription
• Saving sound files, burning to disc and transfer to other storage mediums

 
At the Sunday workshop you will be offered an opportunity for hands-on practice in conducting an oral history interview, learn more tips about the free software available for editing and transcribing interviews and ask questions about commencing an oral history project.

The event builds on the Oral History Association Oral History Handbook available for purchase at the workshop discounted to $25, normally $35. 

This project is supported by Arts NSW's Country Arts Support Program, a devolved funding program administered by Regional Arts NSW and Arts Outwest on behalf of the NSW Government.


Full details and registration form

June 27, 2013

Theo Barker Memorial Lecture on Australian film history

Extract from Bathurst Historical Society Monthly Muster reminder.

Friday 16th August - 6pm - Theo Barker Memorial Lecture to be held on the Bathurst campus of the Charles Sturt University in Building S15 in Lecture Theatre 2.23. This free lecture will be delivered by Andrew Pike, OAM, will be delivering the lecture on Australian film history, with a Bathurst and bushranging flavour.

June 16, 2013

Kandos Museum - $12,000 grant

Article in Mudgee Guardian 31/5/13

With the Aboriginal Heritage Grant the Mid-Western Council has just received, the Kandos Museum 
will be able to put together a Dabee Travelling Cultural History Exhibition.
By LAUREN STANFORD
 
    The Kandos Museum received a $12,000 Aboriginal Heritage Grant last week that will enable them to develop a Dabee Travelling Cultural History Exhibition in partnership with the Aboriginal people of Kandos.


    "The grant will help us with site identification, the building of the travelling exhibit on the Dabee people and the creation of a small introductory exhibition at the Kandos Museum,” Colin Jones, Curator at the Kandos Museum said.


    "The project is about recognising family ancestors of the Dabee people. The exhibition itself will identify individual North-Eastern Wiradjuri people and their ancestors that contributed to the creation on Kandos and the culture in the region today," Mr Jones said.


    Lyn Syme, Native Title Cultural Heritage Officer at Moolarben Coal, was instrumental in getting the exhibition off the ground. Ms Syme put forward the initial $12,000 and it was with that money the Kandos Museum was able to apply for the "dollar-for-dollar" Aboriginal Heritage Grant.


    The exhibition will travel around to schools, other museums and cultural centres in order to educate people on the historic significance of the Dabee people in the local area.


    "In the local area, people are under the assumption that there are not any Dabee people left anymore. This exhibition will help show them that this assumption is not at all true,” Ms Syme said.


    The exhibition will include photographs, stories and artefacts and will also include information about the descendants of these Dabee ancestors who were a large part of the Kandos area. Member for Orange Andrew Gee said the grant was one of nine Aboriginal Heritage Grants that were announced by the Minister for Environment, Robyn Parker.


    "I am sure the proposed project will provide a valuable history of the Wiradjuii and Dabee people in the region," he said.


    The grant is part of the NSW Heritage Grants program that provides grants to help bring state and local heritage buildings and places back to life, fund emergency repairs and care for Aboriginal places.

June 10, 2013

Report on the CTC AGM 2013 at Rockley

The 2013 Annual General Meeting for the Central Tablelands Chapter Museums Australia was hosted by the Rockley Mill Museum in Rockley on Saturday 4th May. 

Rockley Mill Museum President Deidre Robertson and husband John hosted a sumptuous morning tea prior to the meeting in their charming bed and breakfast premises, Buddens, originally built as a store in the 1870s and later used as bank premises. 
 
Buddens bed and breakfast

Twenty-one members representing ten of the member groups within the chapter were in attendance at the meeting which was held in the Rockley School of Arts (1890).
 

Rockley School of Arts (1890)

Chapter President Elaine Kaldy welcomed those present and mentioned the sad loss in 2012 of the previous President, Trevor Pascoe of Millthorpe, who had been a driving force in keeping the chapter going. Deidre Robertson of Rockley Mill Museum chaired the election of office bearers which saw the current President (Elaine Kaldy of Millthorpe), Treasurer (Phil Stevenson of Orange) and Secretary (John Broadley of Mudgee) returned; the office Vice-President is yet to be announced.
 

The meeting subsequently approved the adoption of a set of By-Laws for the chapter and the Lithgow Small Arms Factory volunteered to host a workshop in September or October 2013; after much discussion the topic selected for the workshop was “significance assessment”, to be run by Kylie Winkworth. The date for the workshop has now been confirmed for 21st September 2013.
 

After lunch members gave reports on their museum/society activities during the past year. Afterwards the group was taken on a town walk of historic Rockley which included inspections of the Anglican St Peter’s Church and the Catholic St Patrick’s Church, both designed by noted Central West architect Edward Gell, and ultimately the wonderful Rockley Mill Museum.
 



 Deidre Roberson telling the group about the Village walk they had planned.









Many thanks to the Rockley Mill Museum group for hosting an enjoyable day.

John Broadley
Secretary


More photos courtesy John Broadley.

St Peter's Anglican Church Rockley
St Patrick's RC Church Rockley
Rockley Mill Museum

June 8, 2013

Sir Joseph and Dame Mary Cook Seminar - Lithgow


Poster: Ray Christison, President,The City of Greater Lithgow Mining Museum Inc





 Sir Joseph Cook, GCMG (7 December 1860 – 30 July 1947) was an Australian politician and the sixth Prime Minister of Australia.[1] Born as Joseph Cooke and working in the coal mines of Silverdale, Staffordshire during his early life, he emigrated to Lithgow, New South Wales during the late 1880s, and became General-Secretary of the Western Miners Association in 1887.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Cook

June 7, 2013

Significance Statement Writing Workshop - Kandos Museum

  

Significance 2.0: a guide to assessing the significance of collections builds on the solid foundation laid by the first edition of Significance (2001) in defining an adaptable method for determining significance across all collections in Australia. Those who have been guided by this ‘significance method’ since 2001 report that this has translated into better decision-making about their collections in areas like preservation, physical and digital access, and funding support. 

This guide, Significance 2.0 can be viewed/downloaded here.


June 5, 2013

Ben Hall Weekend Festival June 2013 Newsletter



FROM THE NEWSLETTER EDITOR

It is very pleasing to see the list increase with those collectors and historians who will be displaying their collections, or parts thereof, on the Saturday afternoon 28th September in Russell Street in front of the Bathurst Court House. There will be items never displayed before and other items rarely seen outside museums. These displays will be very educational and younger children and students are encouraged to come along with their parents or grandparents.

The New South Wales Mounted Police will be in attendance over the weekend and will be taking part in the re-enactment of the Ben Hall raid on Bathurst.

This is the fourth in the series of e-newsletters with five more to go and by all indications many people are enjoying them.

Alan McRae, FAIHA, President Bathurst District Historical Society 

To view the full newsletter click here.

June 4, 2013

A Moment in Time

Dr Bashir escorts Heidi Wood and Faith Shean to the rocks where the Victorious Crossing Daisy is to be planted.

                  Following its highly successful official opening by the NSW Governor, Her Excellency, Professor Marie Bashir, on 1st June at the Hartley Historic School, is ‘A Moment in Time,’ an exhibition that examines the celebrated crossing of the Blue Mountains by Europeans in 1813, and the consequences of that crossing.

Duncan Wass, Chairman of the Hartley District Progress Association 1813 Sub Committee said “ in settling on the name ‘A Moment in Time’, we have tried to capture the essence of the crossing. It was but a moment in time and this is an exhibition that considers what existed before and what came after”.

Curated by retired professional historian Joan Kent, now a resident in the Hartley Valley, ‘A Moment in Time’ examines much more than the crossing by Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth and their party. It begins with a consideration of the rich and ancient geology of the landscape into which the explorers intruded, where ancient sedimentary rocks lie juxtaposed with igneous granite.

In fact, the opening display in the exhibition is a most remarkable large mollusc or Brachiopod fossil, that has never before been on public display. Discovered in the Hartley Valley, it nestles in, but is removable intact, from the block of Late Devonian grit stone in which it was discovered.

Whilst geology is the opening theme, the exhibition explores many aspects of the crossing story, from the Indigenous Peoples whose country was being traversed, through the explorers and the development of the Bathurst Road, to the first European visitors to Bathurst. It closes with a consideration of the life and achievements of some of the earliest settlers in the Hartley Valley, John and Jane Grant and Pierce and Mary Collitt who settled here in the early 1820s.

“This significant exhibition is a comprehensive, sophisticated, accessible and absorbing presentation of that exciting yet poignant moment when the Europeans vigorously fanned out westwards – it’s a must-see amongst Crossings commemorations” commented noted museums adviser Lynn Collins who has acted as an occasional adviser to the project.

The exhibition will be open to the public on weekends from 18th May to the 16th June, from 10am ‘til 3pm, and by appointment midweek. Party viewing can be arranged at any time by contacting Barbara Johnson on 6355 2017. The exhibition will be held at the historic Hartley School and Hall located just off the Great Western Highway in Mid Hartley Road, Hartley.

‘A Moment in Time’ is just one element of the commemoration activities the Hartley community is undertaking, all promoted under the ‘Hartley Rocks’ logo. Other activities include guided walks and rides along the line of Cox’s 1814 road through the Hartley Valley, and a project to date sign many of the heritage assets located within the valley.

The Cox’s Road walk represents a unique opportunity to walk some of the country traversed by Cox and the explorers, much of which is located on privately owned land and is not normally accessible to the public.

For more photos click here.

For newspaper article click here.

June 3, 2013

Museums & Galleries NSW: Meet Mini Marion!



Museums & Galleries NSW: Meet Mini Marion!: Railway Coal Mine, Lithgow 1929. Courtesy of the Lithgow State Mine. Marion is the brand new guide at the Lithgow State Mine and she&...

June 1, 2013

ASCCA - Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association


ASCCA is the national peak body for seniors and technology

Our mission is to assist clubs to educate seniors in the use of computer technology as a way of enriching their lives and making them more self-reliant.

We bridge the generation gap and assist seniors to find ways to benefit the community through their collective experience and knowledge.

The June 2013 Newsletter can be viewed/downloaded here.