Yesterday was Day One of the Unlock the Past South Australian and Victorian Border history and genealogy Mount Gambier expo so it was a very big genealogy day. I will be writing up a review of the Expo at the end of Day 2 so I won't go into too much detail now. It will appear on my SHHE Genie Rambles blog.
The venue is a very large school basketball centre which is ideal as all the exhibitors have lots of room and there are even breakout tables on the side. So my first duty was to wander around all the exhibitors and it is a great mix of history, heritage and genealogy with lots of old photos, memorabilia and records and publications to search. The show bag has brochures from most of the exhibitors.
I had two talks during the day - first was my Asylums talk and second was my Google talk - both were well attended and I had lots of questions afterwards. I have another two talks on Day Two.
While I was doing a bit of Tweeting, I was given a handwriting query to solve. It was an entry in the NSW Coroner's Records available on Ancestry.com.au. I couldn't make it out from the photocopy the researcher had but as I have a personal subscription to Ancestry I logged on to see the original entry. It was a long entry of death and the words were all run together - I made out a few more of the words but one word was still elusive.
I asked a few of the other Unlock the Past team but we were all stumped. I then saved the image as a photo and increased the magnification beyond the 200% in Ancestry and that allowed me to easily see what the last word was. It is so easy once you know - the last phrase was 'severe temporary mental aberration' and it was 'temporary' which was the hardest part to decipher. It's always a buzz when you can help someone out.
I attended a few other talks and also did an interview with the local television but I don't think we made the 6pm news. At the end of the day there was a group dinner and an evening musical show with Brenton Manser and the Vanguard. As we didn't get back to the motel until late I didn't have time to write my usual daily blog of an expo. For Mount Gambier it will be a single blog completed after Day Two.
It is now Day Two and I am a little cold here trying to type this blog as the stadium has not yet warmed up. I'm sure today is going to be as good as yesterday. Stay tuned.