Local history treasure hunters will now have a wealth of resources at the Inverell Library, which has provided the Inverell District Family History Group with a new home.
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The group officially moved their operations and huge collection into the space on Tuesday, to a warm welcome from library staff.
“I think we’ve achieved something that will be really wonderful for our whole community,” library manager Sonya Lange said. An internal wall and thousands of books were moved to double the library’s existing local history space.
“It became quite a big project. I spent some time wandering around in the library with pen, paper and tape measure. Whenever I get the tape measure out, my girls start to worry about whatever on earth is happening, because that usually means that we’re going to be moving stuff,” she said.
“It’s both exciting and a big relief. Now we can just move on and do lots of research,” History Group president Kathy McLeod said.
“I must say that the library staff are fantastic to work with. It’s just gelled. It’s been great.”
Inverell mayor Paul Harmon officially welcomed the history group to the library, and joined Ms McLeod in cutting a celebratory cake. A painting of Inverell Station by Beryl Hamilton was given out as a raffle prize, and attendees were treated to morning tea.
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Ms McLeod said the move was about keeping the town’s local history collection in one place, and making it accessible to the public. She said the community would now have more opportunities to mine the group members for their wealth of knowledge.
“We have a wonderful brains trust in these people that come to do the family history. Our members, a lot of them have spent all their lives in Inverell, so they have wonderful knowledge,” she said.
The group assists people from all over Australia and beyond in their research requests. Grey nomads often visit looking for information on their ancestors, and the group receives many email requests from Britain.
“The biggest thing is never be surprised at what you’re going to find, because you just never know. And it doesn’t matter if your family don’t appear to have done anything special - as soon as you start digging, the story of their lives is always interesting and it’s always special,” she said.
“They don’t have to be a big mover and shaker, they don’t have to have done anything perceived as outstanding, just their lives were interesting. And to be able to put that together and put that in context with the history of the time is really interesting.”
Ms McLeod feels Inverell is a town with a rich and diverse history.
“It just seems like it might be agricultural or farming, but we’ve had mining booms as well. We’ve had a lot of different ethnic groups come in at different times. It started off with a lot of the Scots, and then we had Chinese, we had German immigration. There’s been Lebanese, Syrian, Greek, Italian. It’s been really interesting,” she said.