Leongatha Genealogical Weekend 2-3 June 2007

June 02, 2007

I reckon that we had a pretty good time at Leongatha. I enjoyed all the talks, which included the Irish women, the Cornish miners' trek from Burra to the Victorian Gold-fields and available records relating to deserted and delinquent children.

For our Wendish session, I tried to deal only with the highlights of Wendish history and culture. I did not see anybody go to sleep!

I don't know what Clay was projecting up on the wall, apart from a moving map of the Bautzen area, but in future we need to prepare power-point presentations, including talk outlines, some maps and some pictures. I noticed that Joel was busy working on a suitable presentation on his computer in his motel room on Saturday evening after the talks. We also spent a few hours talking about our experiences on our various tours of Germany and Lusatia. Glenys was not sure whether to believe our story that we had to pay to enter the toilets and the women, who usually were supervising the male toilets, liked to stick their heads around the corner to check that their male clients were engaged in a number one, if that is what they paid for!

Kevin's talk was interesting, very relevant and contained some personal, family references. He displayed the Australian maps showing the wendish settlements from George Nielsen's book.

Our Sunday tour included an inspection of the Leongatha historical display and the genealogical library in the Mechanics Hall, a tour around the town to see horse troughs, the schools, the experimental farms and early houses. The Wends gave this area a miss but a few Germans went there.

Joel was able to show the Librarians his library cataloguing program. I reckon that they might employ Joel to set up a similar program for their library.

Our thanks to The South Gippsland Genealogical Society who were our wonderful hosts on 2nd and 3rd June 2007 at Leongatha.

Reported by John Noack.

Leongatha Genealogical Weekend 2-3 June 2007

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