Fridays are my blog writing days and as a participant in the Geneabloggers blog series 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History I found myself doing Week 28 Summer - and my contribution is here. The more you think about these weekly questions the more you remember so it can be quite hard limiting your recollections to a few paragraphs.
There were some updates on websites that I regularly monitor which was exciting. The first was One Place Studies which had an update for Hampshire and while none of my places were listed, I did notice that there was a one place study for West Grimstead in Wiltshire which is very close to East Grimstead where my ancestors were from. Some people put a lot of time and effort into these one place studies and if your ancestors happen to come from the same place, it can be very worthwhile.
The second site I am now really watching is Deceased Online as they are adding in Northamptonshire burial and cremation records and I have a long standing brick wall in that county so any new records online excites me.
Finally Ancestry.com.au have added more Australian immigration records to their site, especially for Western Australia and Tasmania. I only have one ancestor now that I don't have the immigration record for which is not too bad. However, it would be nice to finally learn the name of the ship she came out on.
Saturday was a day of travel (and the reason why this blog is a little late). We drove from Melbourne up to historic Ballarat in the heart of the Victorian gold fields and on to Ararat for lunch. I always like to stop here as an ancestor died in the Ararat asylum in 1873 and the historic asylum, later gaol still stands imposingly on the hill above the city.
Afternoon tea was at Dimboola not to far from the turn off to Jeparit, the childhood home of Sir Robert Menzies. I only know this obscure fact because when I lived in Canberra and worked for the National Archives of Australia I was part of the team who worked on the Australia's Prime Ministers website.
We stopped for the night in historic Hahndorf and Sunday morning will be spent having a look around. It is years since I was last here. The nice thing about travelling is that you get to see historic places and we always visit museums and historical societies and learn more about the history of the area and the people who lived there. When it is an area associated with our own families it is even more interesting.