The Year 2012 in Review

Jill Ball at Geniaus has asked us to look back at the year, and Accentuate the Positive. Which is easy for us, as it has been a really brilliant year.

Highlights for the year - there are plenty.

We are more than half way through loading just under seven hundred photographs from a 1948-1952 album of major irrigation works based at Heyfield.

We have almost reached our target for fundraising to get the Gippsland Guardian online 1855-1868. This is a Wellington Shire Network project, in which we have taken a large part.

We survived the flooding of the major part of our collection.

We have published a book on milk trucks and tankers, on dairy factories in the adjoining shire, on Maffra shire dairy factories, and other smaller booklets.

We had a successful History Week function.

And we are sure when we look at the blog, there will be heaps more. Blogs are good for things like that.

Thanks to all the crew who work in the Maffra Library on a Thursday afternoon - especially John, Spencer, Carol, Doc, Paula and Ruth. Nothing will beat the number of photos John has scanned this year with the new Flip Pal scanner (where he can still scan  photo in thirty seconds, and it then takes Linda four and  half minutes to process it). Spencer is now bringing all the newspaper clippings under control, so they can be accessed via the catalogue.

Thank you everyone, and we look forward to 2013.

Museum closed until February

Just a reminder that the Museum will be closed until February - when we hope to re-open with a bang.

A limited number of members will be available in the Maffra Library on Thursdays, from 1pm to 3pm on the 10th, 17th and 24th January - 31st January is unclear at this point.

We hope everyone has  peaceful and joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Horses on the Channels

Work goes on apace, uploading the Heyfield Album. If we go on at the present rate of a page a day, it will take about a month to get them all up there. But Christmas might intervene, so it could take a little longer.

In the meantime, check out the Horses Set. Work is getting up to full steam out in the Nambrok-Denison area, in what must be one of the last large engineering projects to use horses on such a scale. 

This is one of the advantages of Flickr - you can load the same photograph to all sorts of sets. If you want to see what replaced the horses, check out the Earth Movers.

More Trucks

Trucks, Trucks, and More Trucks, with Bulldozers, Horses, Tunneling and Floods. To mention just a few delights.

We are working hard on uploading and identifying the Heyfield Album.

As a result, we have now established a Collection at Flickr, where you can decide if you want to see the whole album, just the Motor Vehicles (we think this is an Albion Truck), Earth Moving Equipment (Bulldozers by the Dozen), Horses (Teams of a dozen Horses, anyone?), Floods, the Works Area, etc etc.

There are 191 photos uploaded so far - and we are not yet quite half way through.