Victorian Government Gazette online archive

Digitised records are among my very favourite online sites I like to visit in my family and local history research. I especially, love to see Australian content online so it was with great pleasure hot on the heels of The National Library’s Australian Newspapers Beta website that the State Library of Victoria has released the Victorian Government Gazette online archive 1836-1997.

http://gazette.slv.vic.gov.au/
Particularly for place name research, this website will be a boon to local history researchers.

To quote the site:

What information is found in the Gazette?

The Victoria Government Gazette is the government's method of notifying the general public of its decisions and activities. It includes a wide range of information from land transactions, insolvency notices, impoundments and patent applications, to shipping and emigration notices, licences, contracts, proclamation of acts, government appointments, and more.

Gazette entries may be anything from a brief notification of a road closure or the address of a registered company to a detailed description of wages to be paid in various industries such as breadmaking, or a 200-page list of everyone who is registered to practice medicine in the Victoria.

About this site

This website includes images of every page of every relevant gazette and government notice produced since 1836. These include:

New South Wales Government Gazette (NSW) 1836 to 1851
Port Phillip Government Notices (PP) January to July 1843
Port Phillip Government Gazette (PP) January 1844 to July 1851
Victoria Government Gazette (VIC) July 1851 to 1997
Please note: No copies are known to exist for the period July-December 1843. Gazette information for this period may be in The Port Phillip Herald newspaper under the 'Melbourne Government Gazette' column.

What you can do on this site

You can:

view each page of each relevant gazette produced since 1836
browse the gazettes by decade, by year, by month and page-by-page
search for and read individual pages or entries by keyword, date or phrase
download and print PDFs of entire gazettes

Local History Grants Program

The latest round of recipients of funding from the Local History Grants Program managed by Public Records Office Victoria have been announced.

Locally, Heidelberg Historical Society have been successful in securing funding for a digitisation program.

The next round of applications opens in September 2009. I encourage members of our local history community to apply for funding for their projects.

Victorian Community History Awards

This week I was asked to represent YPRL, together with representatives of the three library services behind Wikinorthia: documenting life in Melbourne's north, to attend the Victorian Community History Awards 2009 at Parliament House. The site was entered for an award.

Information Victoria sponsors the awards, an annual event that recognises the importance of local and community history. Visit the website to download a list of the current and past winners.

Other local projects submitted for the 2009 awards included:
Nillumbik : Now and then by Marguerite Marshall, photographs by Alan King with Margurite Marshall
Chinese Settlement in Whittlesea by Arthur B.W. Yong
Ivanhoe: from the beginning
Nominations for 2010 are now open.

Visit the Local History Collections

Each municipality has a local history collection for its region. Visit the Banyule collection at Ivanhoe library. This is situated in the local history and family history room on the second level.

Whittlesea's collection is at Mill Park library in the J.W. Payne room named after a local historian and author.

Nillumbik has two collections at its branches at Diamond Valley and Eltham libraries.

What do local history collections have that might help you with your research? Resources vary from one collection to another and a first port of call is the online catalogue. Collections may consist of local newspapers, including newspapers on microfilm, local council minutes, local histories, limited publication family histories and personal reminiscences, information on local schools including in some cases, school annuals, Cemetery records or transcriptions, Photographs, and more.

Items in the collection can only be accessed in the library. Please ask library staff for assistance.

Batman Apple Tree

An interesting article has just been posted to Wikinorthia: documenting life in Melbourne's north on the old apple tree by the banks of the Plenty River in Greensborough known locally as the Batman Apple tree. It is a very old tree, and could be Victoria's oldest apple tree. It is assocaited with John Batman the so called founder of the City of Melbourne

Thanks to local historian Bruce Draper for permission to include his article on Wikinorthia.

Our neighbouring area of Templestowe in the City of Manningham has a heritage of apple growing. Petty's Orchard now operated by Parks Victoria is a great place to visit.