The Queensland Expo was held in the Brothers Club in sunny Cairns. Definitely a history time there as even the replica ‘HM Bark Endeavour’  decided to visit Cairns this week.

Despite the issues caused by the Chilean volcano and that ever circulating cloud of ash the Expo went ahead, regrettably without  Shauna Hicks, who was a casualty of the large number of  cancelled flights.

Cairns and District Family History Society were well represented and  provided wonderful volunteer assistance throughout the Expo.

The Expo had a full program, despite the ash cloud, with two streams. Carole Riley’s Social Media presentation was well received. Carole then set up  Cairns and District’s FHS new Facebook page showing how easy it was to do and it will keep members informed and promote the society to new members.

Stephanie Ryan from State library Queensland gave an excellent talk on State Library resources which had participants talking about the wide range of resources available.My Newspapers talk got people thinking about how to add life to their family history by putting their family in context of events around them from something as simple as checking the weather on the day of your great-grandparents marriage to community attitudes to national events to what was the cost of bread or rent at that time.

Rosemary’s FindMyPast.co.uk presentation had many eager people wanting to rush to the FindMyPast stand in the exhibitor’s area to check out the 500 000 recently added .Militia records (Yippee! I even found some Quested entries!) among the many other treasures mentioned.

The FamilySearch and Google Your family tree presentations were very well attended with many people coming out saying “I didn’t know you could do that!”

I had a ball in the research Zone answering people’s questions on a wide range of topics and my Internet connection kept pace with the variety of sites I trawled in search of answers. It is always fun doing this as every question is different (and now I know something about Western Samoa!)

Dinner that night was at Brothers and a number of exhibitors, speakers and attendees wound down while still talking family history at a great pace in between serving ourselves from an extensive buffet.
  
Day Two  rolled around with a number of early-bird attendees eager and waiting. Stephanie Ryan did four talks in quick succession with the talk on Trove gaining a large audience. So much is happening on this site that there is always more to  learn.

Mark Cryle did two presentations: Wild Colonial Boys, Eureka, the Fenians, Ned Kelly and others and the Bound for Botany Bay: The Irish in Australia in story and song. I would definitely recommend that if you ever get the chance to hear Mark that you make every attempt to do so.

Kerry Farmer’s Convict talk was well illustrated showing the wide range of documents that can be used to gain more information about your convict from the start of their conviction to their eventual freedom.

After some more Research Zone I went off to do my Death Certificates and Archaic Medical Terms talk and then all too soon the Expo was officially over. The attendees left talking about what they had seen and heard. One comment I heard was, ” I can pick up takeaway on the way home as a treat which will give me time tonight to research.”

All in all a great Expo.

This is an image of my father David Smith a four year old with his father Leslie Smith a few months before Leslie died in World War Two. Family is the Face of Genealogy.

For the inspiration behind this post see Thomas MacEntee at Geneabloggers .

We arrived after a nice drive down from Brisbane. Weather and traffic were kind to us. The venue is the C-Ex the RSL centre which is a large centre with many very interesting photos on the walls of troopships, memorabilia of service persons in various conflicts. One person in our group was quite excited to see a pennant from the Westralia a ship  her father-in-law served upon.

We set up last night and had a lovely meal at the C-ESociety of Australian Genealogistsx and then to bed ready for today. Great range of exhibitors including Unlock the Past ,  Society of Australian Genealogists , Family Search, Find My Past,  Inside History   , the  Coffs Harbour Regional Museum  with a fantastic dress display.

There were many interested family historians around the expo talking with the various exhibitors and at the presentations.

There was an excellent range of presentations and I managed to attend two so far Social Media presented by Carole Riley. An excellent presentation showing how social media such as Twitter, Facebook or Flickr can really enhance your family history and present it to a wider audience. Carole strongly recommended that everyone should at look at blogs and ideally write a blog as this will get your stories out there and it is a great start for your family book.

I also managed to attend a presentation by Heather Garnsey from the Society of Australian Genealogists (SAG) who gave an excellent talk on Treasures at SAG  which made me want to run to do some research there. Heather raised the important point that SAG has been around for many years and was doing transcribing of cemeteries many years ago. This is important as we all know that many headstones are today unreadable, have been removed for “safety’s sake” or unfortunately have been vandalised so are no longer available for us to read.

I have just come back from a talk by Kerry Farmer on DNA for Genealogists. I have to say this is the best DNA talk for genealogists I have heard. In my work I deal with DNA and DNA tests and am quite familiar with the topic. Kerry was able to present what can be quite complicated material in an easy to understand way. I highly recommend you attend her talk if you ever have the chance. In the event you are not able to do this she has just published a book “DNA for Genealogists” which is available from Unlock the Past. I have just purchased this and am very much looking forward to reading it.

Tomorrow is another day and there are more wonderful presentations to come including Regional Newspapers, Researching Women Ancestors by Noeline Kyle, Caring for your Family Archives with Shauna Hicks, German Research with Eric Kopittke and many more.

So if you are free come along and join us NSW Expo at Coffs Harbour

If you can’t get along follow us on Twitter with #NSWExpo