Gunning & District Historical Society

Participants at the Research Workshop, Gunning Library 22 August 2017. Photo courtesy Bronwyn Haynes. A dozen participants, including people from Gunning, Dalton, Collector, and Crookwell, attended the third workshop on local history research at the Gunning Library on Tuesday. This is part of an ongoing series run by the Gunning Library and the Gunning and District Historical Society. In this third workshop, we looked into the history of one's house or property. In this region, there is a rich heritage in Colonial and federation architecture. But discovering that history can be a big job. Participants employed a variety of techniques for discovering the story of their houses, uses the following online resources: Six Maps : Use this site to locate your property or to find the relevant plan numbers. Historical Land Records Viewer (HLRV) : Use this site to search the historical maps of the location of your house. Look for the notations on the old maps and sometimes ...

Old Coonabarabran Cemetery By Leslie Bush Taphophile: a.k.a. tombstone tourist, graver, cemetery hunter – is an expression to describe someone who has a passion for cemeteries, the history of the person, the headstones, the epitaphs, photography and art ( Wikipedia ). Me, I prefer to be called a ‘Graver’. Taphophile sounds a little creepy to me.  Exploring cemeteries involve what my fellow Gravers and I call ‘road trips’. Usually they are in support of a family history search but sometimes when you just want to escape everything, they can be the most tranquil places to be. What attracts me to cemeteries besides researching a particular person for someone else or my tree, is the history they tell of the town, the love that is felt in the monuments and epitaphs, the stories they can tell us of the history of our nation. I am not frightened by those that have passed, it is the living that you have to watch out for.  Half of the fun of road trips is in getting...

Memorial plaques for the Browns and the Wilsons, Dalton Methodist Church The year 1861 proved to be a sorrowful one for many of the residents of Wesley Vale and the Jerrawa Creek area. Along with scarletina (scarlet fever), the rapid spread of diphtheria among the children of the district took a heavy toll on families. Among the local families to suffer the loss of children were Thomas and Sarah Brown of Wesley Vale. Fatally affected also were the children of John and Elizabeth Wilson at Jerrawa Creek. The Dalton Methodist Church has two significant memorial plaques, the one mentioning the Brown family and the other tells the story of the Wilsons. Both families lost children to the diphtheria outbreak in the district- all in the year 1861. John and Elizabeth Wilson Tom Brown, so well-known for his varied and vigorous evangelism from the time he arrived in Wesley Vale in 1847, and his wife Sarah, lost three children in 1861. David aged 14 years, Mary aged 9 and Ebe...

Tense negotiations underway in Dublin between Irish author Margaret Smith and GDHS’s then secretary, Rosemary Spiller, about arrangements for launching her book in Australia.  Gunning and District Historical Society is delighted to assist Anchor Books to launch a new book which sheds light on a little known aspect of Australian and local Gunning history.  Samuel Clayton – Forger, Freemason, Freeman by Irish author Margaret Smith tells the story of an Irish engraver, transported for forgery, and his son Dr Benjamin Clayton.  Both prospered in Australia and played prominent roles in early colonial life.  Their stories deserve to be known. The Claytons, father and son, were successful graziers in the Gunning and Tumut districts.  More than that, their property Baltinglass very near to Gunning village, on the junction of Meadow Creek and the Lachlan River, was the very first successful major wine producer in what is now the Canberra District...

Gunning SES volunteer Michael Coley (left) with Gary Poile from Collector SES. Preface (Ann Darbyshire) Gunning SES volunteer Michael Coley, together with fellow SES volunteers Gary  Poile, Koley Quirk and the late Jim Quirk, all from Collector, was among the first responders to the Thredbo disaster of 30 July 1997.  This is his first hand account of the three tumultuous days during which they assisted with the efforts to deal with disaster during which Stuart Diver was rescued. 18 others were killed. Mike's account is a very personal 'warts and all' recounting of the back breaking work, the tedium, the lack of communication, the harshness of media scrutiny and the inevitable dynamics of different personalities at play - some great - others - well read on...! It provides a compelling background to one small part of the volunteer effort in the face of Thredbo disaster of 20 years ago. Thredbo: A Personal Narrative On Wednesday night, 30 July 19...