The Royal Australian Historical Society is hoping their two day seminar in Mudgee on Friday and Saturday will give those at the lectures an insight into the wide number of resources available for family and history researchers.
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“One of the things I did in my first lecture was talk about the resources that are available through State Records, and the kind of resources the local library has,” Royal Australian Historical Society vice president Christine Yeates said.
“Mudgee Library is fortunate to have resources published by State Records around 15 years ago called the Archive Resources Kit. It was a selection of the most heavily used and most accessed records that are a great help to those who are not sure where to start.”
“Without history a building is just a building.”
The RAHS seminars are fairly intensive in the amount of specific information dispensed in each lecture, but the real reason the Sydney based organisation had decided to bring a series of seminars to towns across the Blue Mountains was to engage with the Society’s members and prospective members.
“We only exist because we have members. We couldn’t do what we do unless we had our affiliated historical societies and our members who are interested in what we do,” Ms Yeates said.
“All of us share a passion for history but it’s local history and local people that are the backbone to why we have access to the knowledge that we do.”
Mrs Yeates said her focus throughout the seminar was to tell people about the Library’s resources and the resources available through the Royal Australian Historical Society’s website. She mentioned a few of the prominent individuals who took up land in the Mudgee region and how records related back to them.
One of the lectures with a large number of attendees Mrs Yeates said was on heritage listings, and how heritage related to history.
“You can’t have heritage without history,” she said.
“We have to be able to know why something is important, and the history of the town around a building to understand the building itself and I think a lot of people forget about that.
“Without history a building is just a building.”
Throughout the weekend there were lectures on land title records, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, local identities, local bushrangers, making the best use of social media as a research tool, German migration to Australia, and oral history.
