Author: Anne Young

President’s Report to 2018 AGM of Avoca & District Historical Society Inc.

Edition 289 of “Pyrenees Pioneers”, the ADHS Inc Newsletter, contained a summary of most of our activities during the year, and I see no necessity to repeat that information. I can report that the “Digitisation Fund” now stands at $2,100 of which approximately $1,000 is committed to the 1869 Avoca Mail being uploaded to Trove. Hopefully this will happen before the end of 2018? This leaves approximately $1,100 which we can use as part payment for the “Scanpro” equipment previously mentioned, to replace the almost useless microfilm reader/printer and enable us to utilise the $6,000 we have tied up in microfilm of early newspapers, rate books, etc. To succeed in obtaining grants from various sources to defray most of the cost of the Scanpro, we need to demonstrate that we can fund a significant proportion from our own resources. It would be great if a few of our members could see their way clear to donate $500 each in the next few months.

A dozen or so members of Avoca U3A have been participating in a local history course conducted by myself since early October, and to date 3 of them have become members of ADHS Inc. The first three two-hour sessions were conducted at the Avoca Courthouse; last week’s session was an excursion to Percydale, including Daly’s Cottage; next week will be a tour of Avoca Cemetery, and the following week an excursion to Amphitheatre guided by Mary Dridan.

We welcome to the ranks of the ADHS Inc Committee Dr. Ron Southern, whose qualifications are in History and Archaeology. Several years ago Ron purchased the late Bob Robinson’s property in Vinoca Road, and has been busily renovating it and tidying up the extensive garden. I am delighted to say that Ron has developed a keen interest in the history of Percydale, and volunteered for the job of Curator at Daly’s Cottage. Readers of our Financial Statement in the penultimate edition of the newsletter will have noticed that during the past year we spent almost $2,000 on repairs to that historic edifice.
Thanks to all of the volunteers who have kept the ship afloat during the year; they know who they are!

The Courthouse will be closed from mid-December to the end of January, as has been the case in recent years. The last open day for 2018 will be 12th December, and the first for 2019 will be 6th February.

Tony O’Shea
President.
2nd November, 2018.

President’s Report to Members at the 2017 AGM of Avoca & District Historical Society Inc.

We currently distribute our newsletter to 131 financial members, 4 Life Members, 3 Statutory bodies, 1 local newspaper and 33 other Societies. Fortunately the majority are sent electronically, with the proportion of the total sent that way increasing as time goes by, which reduces our expenses.

Digitisation of the 1869 Avoca Mail has been delayed due to budget cuts experienced by both the SLV and NLA. We have recently been pressing for answers about when it will happen, and is looking like mid-2018. They are no longer microfilming the old newspapers and then scanning to OCR from the film. They scan to OCR direct from the hard copy, and need to get a sufficient quantity in the pipeline to warrant bringing in a contractor with specialised equipment to do a large batch and upload it direct to Trove. They first need the conservation department to assess the quality of the hard copy, and repair any tears or folded pages, and this also takes time and expense. In the meantime ADHS Inc is holding more than $1,000 which has been donated by members for that purpose, and we welcome further donations to the fund.

Anne Young volunteered to take over from Denis Strangman “just in time” and has done a great job of re-jigging it in a now format, with a new URL: <avocahistory.net.au> which is easier to remember that the previous URL. It is operating satisfactorily, with ongoing “tweaking” happening regularly and increasing viewer statistics. We are also seeing an increase in paid research jobs, which keeps us on our toes!

Since being relieved of the responsibility for our website, Denis has been busy downsizing the contents of his residence with a view to moving into a retirement village, and has donated parts of his personal library to ADHS Inc., NLA and various worthy repositories.

We were sorry to learn recently of the death of long-time member Betty Beavis, and have been thanked by a number of members for publishing the eulogy delivered at her funeral in our recent newsletter. She was a great contributor to the collection and researching of our early local history, and publishing the results. ADHS Inc reprinted “Pioneers of the Pyrenees” which is still selling well. We recently had an order for 10 copies from the Avoca Visitor Information Centre.

Several years ago ADHS Inc erected a Memorial Wall in the old section of the Avoca Cemetery, to enable memorialisation of early citizens of the district buried in unmarked graves. This has been popular, with 13 bronze plaques affixed so far, together with a larger one explaining the purpose of the wall. We recently added nearby a 3-metre long aluminium seat with a backrest, facing north, to enable visitors to relax in view of the entire old section, across to the final repose of Henry Knott who donated the ten acre site upon which the cemetery was established in 1858. We ordered the seat on the internet from a supplier in central New South Wales, and it was installed by Simon Davidson and John Burnett at no cost using concrete mix materials donated by Steve & Tracey Gleisner.

The Op Shop / Garage Sale at 182 High Street continues to be our second-largest source of income, thanks to the efforts of Dorothy Robinson, Glenice Allen and Elizabeth Williams, and to Peter Howell’s generosity in allowing us to use the premises rent-free.

TonyO’Shea
17th November, 2017.

As of 16 May 2017 we have a new website.

Many thanks to Denis Strangman who maintained the previous version for about 20 years

Some links have been broken in the migration. We will aim to fix these as soon as possible.

Report by the President  presented to the annual general meeting held on 12 November 2016

President’s Report to ADHS Inc 2016 AGM

In my 2015 Report I made mention of the digitisation of the “Avoca Mail” newspaper, for which this Society paid the National Library of Australia several thousand dollars to prepare and upload the first five years (1863-68) to Trove. This went live eighteen months ago, and has been very well received by many researchers into our local history. From their own resources the NLA also digitised the Avoca Mail from 1870 to 1900 and 1914-1918, plus the Avoca Free Press 1914-1918. Some researchers who have visited the Courthouse in the past year have commented that they did so to follow up on items of interest they had found on Trove. Unfortunately the budget cuts imposed by the Federal Government on the NLA have resulted in an inability to digitise any more years unless we pay for it. We are therefore continuing to seek donations to our Digitisation Fund.

During the past year we have experienced a downturn in the statistics for the numbers of enquirers using the ADHS Inc website. This has been our major source of new members, sales of our publications, and enquiries about paid research to be done by the Society. In consultation with Denis Strangman, our webmaster, we reached the conclusion that the format of the website needed refreshing, and that we needed a back-up person to assist Denis and eventually take on the responsibility of administering the website upon his retirement. Our long-time member Anne Young rose to the challenge, and in recent months has been assiduously working on transferring the content from HTML to WordPress and refreshing the appearance and layout of the data. Anne has been collaborating with Denis and believes that it will be ready to go live any day now. Please look out for it and let us have your feedback about how it can be further improved.

Our Op-Shop/Garage Sale at 182 High Street continues to be our third largest source of income, and we must thank Glenys Allen, Elizabeth Williams and Dorothy Robinson for their efforts in managing that enterprise. We also thank Peter Howell for having agreed to our use of the house rent-free “for at least two years” and we are still there seven years later! It is certainly much less labor-intensive than the old method of running the event at the Court House, and produces more income.

Our newsletter editor, and soon-to-be committee member Margaret Pilgrim recently did a great job on organising the celebration of the Avoca Railway Station’s 140th anniversary. Around 150 persons (including pupils and teachers from the Primary School) attended an event conducted in what was the goods yard of the station. It could not be held at the actual station building because that is fenced off as a construction site, with work in progress. Margaret also mounted a display in the Avoca Visitor Information Centre of photos and artifacts and the story of the Official Opening in 1876.

Edna Jarvis has been a long-time supporter of ADHS Inc in many capacities too numerous to mention, and retires from the Committee today. At the recent Committee Meeting it was
decided to award Edna with a “Certificate of Appreciation” for her efforts.

Tony O’Shea
12/11/2016