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matching beach, themes: 'local stories'
Diverse state (6)
Aboriginal culture (1)
Built environment (2)
Creative life (2)
Immigrants and emigrants (2)
Land and ecology (1)
Local stories (2)
Service and sacrifice (1)
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Postcards: Stories from the Mornington Peninsula
... Postcard: 'The Steam Tram, Back Beach Sorrento', c. 1890.... Over 4,000 trippers were known to arrive on some days. Many would then take the steam or horse-drawn tram to the Ocean Beach....The Sorrento Tramway Company was established in 1889 and enabled passengers from the steamships to enjoy a comfortable ride through town to ocean swimming at the Back Beach. ...Stories of a time in history when holidaying was a grand pastime, and when special and unique places in Victoria began to be appreciated, celebrated and shared in that iconic mode of communication: the picture postcard.
Inspired by postcards in their collections, eight historical societies developed themes to explore the history of the Mornington Peninsula.
This story is based on a touring exhibition which was initiated by the Mornington Peninsula Local History Network and the Mornington Peninsula Shire.
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The Welsh Swagman
... and myself. Good tucker time of work from six to six. No hurry but steady work at reasonable pace. Very fine spot. The Farm runs down to the beach of Hobson Bay (called Corio Bay) I can see the Heads at a distance where all the ships of the world are obliged ...Joseph Jenkins was a Welsh itinerant labourer in late 1800s Victoria.
Exceptional for a labourer at the time, Jenkins had a high level of literacy and kept detailed daily diaries for over 25 years, resulting in one of the most comprehensive accounts of early Victorian working life.
Itinerant labourers of the 1800s, or 'swagmen', have become mythologised in Australian cultural memory, and so these diaries provide a wonderful source of information about the life of a 'swagman'. They also provide a record of the properties and districts Jenkins travelled to, particularly around the Castlemaine and Maldon area.
The diaries were only discovered 70 years after Jenkins' death, in an attic, and were in the possession of Jenkins’s descendants in Wales until recently, when they were acquired by the State Library of Victoria in 1997.