Well, that snuck up on me.  It’s Western District Families’ 4th Blogiversary.

Image courtesy of the Argus Newspaper Collection of Photographs, State Library of Victoria. Image No. H98.101/329 http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/202825

Western District Families’ fourth year was the quietest to date and I don’t like to promise much more in the blog’s fifth year, but I’ll try.  I’m off to a good start with a new tab at the top of the page, “Hamilton’s WW1” and two more planned, another WW1 related and an index of the Passing of the Pioneer obituaries.  The monthly Passing of the Pioneer posts are having a short break while I get the two WW1 projects up and running, but the prospect of having the pioneers indexed is exciting.  It will certainly make my research easier and I hope it will help you too when searching for relatives among the obituaries.

There’s not too much to report on the top five posts for the year, something I’ve done in past years, except the Old Portland Cemetery – Part 1, continued to keep up its popularity. It was good to see the July Passing of the Pioneers post making it into the top five for the year and the post on the Western District enlistments of the 8th Light Horse Regiment B Squadron from January.

Almost all of my posts over the past four years would not be possible without the resource we all love, Trove.  Now there is an opportunity to give something back to Trove with the Inside History/NLA  Pozible campaign to raise funds for the digitisation of the Hamilton Spectator (1860-1913).  My pledge was a win-win  Not only will it boost the Spec’s chances of digitisation which, as a Western District researcher, is huge, but I also get to support Trove, a free resource that maybe we sometimes take for granted. For for me, a visit to an overseas newspaper archive site always reminds me how lucky we are to have Trove.  The Pozible campaign runs until 25 April and with pledges only just reaching the halfway mark, now’s a perfect time to give a bit back to Trove.  Plus it would my make my blogiversary month so much better knowing that at least ten years of the Hamilton Spectator at Trove was just around the corner.  This is the link if you would like to pledge – www.pozible.com/project/191002