What's Been happening at Cobram Genie Group!

It has been a while since I have written on this blog and feeling like I have to turn over a new leaf and try and add stuff more regularly.

So just a brief run down on what has been happening the last twelve months and what's in store for the future.

Our year has been fairly quiet with speakers in 2014 – Mark Grealy from Archival Access Victoria who spoke about records at PROV and Meg Bate from the GSV who talked on using Social Media in Genealogy in some Sunday sessions we ran

We purchased a few resources in the last year,updating some of our Police and Government gazette collection in Australia. We have made use of our new screen to project on to  with our presentations and our new white board for notices.

Some of our members attended the Deniliquin Genie muster run by the Deniliquin Genealogy Society, where we shared a stall with Yarrawonga Family History Group. It was a lot quieter than the previous one we had attended but there was still some interesting speakers and lots to look at. Some other of our members joined the Cobram Cemetery Trust earlier in the year for a cemetery walk and learnt some history about some of the occupants and their contribution to the local township.

At our recent AGM this year there have only been a few changes in our executive and committee, Nicole Close has remained President, Jan Parker continues as Vice-President while Barbara Coleman is Secretary and Raynor Thomas is Minute-Secretary.  Barbara has also kindly taken over the job as Treasurer as well. Nicole will continue to be Research Officer while Shirley Frappell has volunteered to assist with research. 

Over the last few years our membership has aged and dropped.  We have the competition of “everything being on the web”.   It is also harder for people to come out on a night especially in winter to our meetings. A motion was put forward to change our meetings to occur on a Sunday afternoon.  This was amended to having the meetings on the third Sunday afternoon during the cooler months April to September, while meetings when Daylight Saving time is in place will be on the usual second Wednesday of the month. This means for the months of October, November, December (Christmas breakup), February and March. Sunday meetings will run from 1.30pm in the afternoon when our rooms will also be open to visitors. We also have a Facebook page up and running so keep an eye out for interesting information and links that may pop up.

This year we are having and Susie Zada speaking on a Sunday 7th June on "Victorian Land Titles and Documents - from old to new" at our rooms in Punt Rd, Cobram for a 10.30 registration and a cost of $10.  Refreshments will be served and BYO lunch.  All members and other locals and genealogy enthusiasts are welcome.

In August we will have Family History researcher Joy Roy speaking on "The Lost Irish".  More information to follow.