President’s August newsletter

Key Dates

August 5 Monthly Meeting
August 15 Excursion – Noel Sharkey’s Heritage Vehicles Collection
September 2 Monthly Meeting – at the Virginia Todd Hall.
October 7 Monthly Meeting – at the Geelong Club
October 9 to 18 Combined Geelong Heritage Centre & Geelong Historical Society Exhibition at the Geelong Club

Hello fellow society members!

I hope this newsletter finds you well. Flu season is upon us. Keep safe and vaccinated if you can.

Every month has been exciting lately, as you will discover in this newsletter. In July, we didn’t just report on our local history; we were part of it with our partnership with the Geelong Club being formally signed.

The Signing of the Partnership Agreement

*Signing the Agreement with the Geelong Club*

Our Partnership Agreement with the Geelong Club

An Agreement to Collaborate with the Geelong Club was signed on July 17 by Geelong Club President, Glenn King and me. Members of both committees were there to witness the signing. It was also an opportunity for both organisation committees to meet and discuss future collaboration.

October Monthly Meeting at the Geelong Club

A happy conjunction of events will take place at our monthly meeting in October. It will be held at the Geelong Club. Our Agreement to Collaborate with the Geelong Club will not mean that all our monthly meetings will be conducted there. We shall still use the Virginia Todd Hall. However, the Committee has scheduled the October meeting at the Geelong Club to provide our members with the opportunity to visit the Club and tour its facilities. One of our members, Colin Mockett, will provide a guided tour of the building that dates back to 1889.

The meeting is also designed to be a gathering of our Society and Geelong Club members. I will be speaking about the history of our Society, and the Geelong Club president, Glenn King, will be speaking about the history of the Geelong Club.

Our October Exhibition

Members who attend the October meeting will also be able to view our Society’s History exhibition, Voices from the past, at the Club. The venue of the Geelong Club forms part of the Exhibition. It is filled with photographs of Geelong’s past, trophies, honour boards and remarkable architecture dating back to its construction in 1889. Exhibition viewing times will be on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for two consecutive weekends, commencing on Friday, October 9 and concluding on Sunday, October 18. It will be our Society’s first exhibition since the one where we were founded in 1944!

Our members will be the first to see the display. We also hope to secure speakers to deliver talks on Friday mornings each week during that month.

October is History Month in Victoria, and we hope our Exhibition will be well patronised by the general public. Entry will be free! We have linked our exhibition with the Geelong Heritage Centre, and their archivist is assisting us with planning and exhibits. Our relationship with the Geelong Heritage Centre is very close, and we are very grateful for their support and encouragement.

August Excursion

August 15 is our next excursion. It is to visit Noel Sharkey’s Horse-Drawn and other Heritage Vehicles Collection in McCurdy Road, Gheringhap. I hope you will be able to attend this very interesting display. It is an opportunity you will never get again because the collection is for sale, and we will be among the last groups to visit. Attendance commences at 11 am and concludes at 2 pm

Arrangements for the visit are flexible. You will have to make your own travel arrangements. Ideally, you will arrive at 11 am because Noel will speak about the collection and highlight special exhibits. There are indoor tables and seats where you can eat if you bring along a morning tea or lunch.

Thank you to Jennifer Bantow for organising this event.

Our History Exhibition with the Geelong Heritage Centre

Our Exhibition Subcommittee, comprised of Coral, Julia and Denise, met with Tracey from the Geelong Heritage Centre in early July. We hope it will be well received by our members and the general public. On July 20, the Subcommittee and staff from the Geelong Heritage Centre identified and selected articles from our artefacts and combined them with ones we have donated to the Heritage Centre. With Freda’s guidance and assistance, items we have donated to the Geelong Heritage Centre were selected, and items for our forthcoming exhibition were identified.

Our Donations

At our last Committee meeting, we decided to make a considerable donation of our ephemeral artefacts to the Geelong Heritage Centre. In addition, those artefacts that were on loan are now to be classified as donated. They have changed from ‘loaned’ to ‘owned’.

Our Society recognised that their current storage location, lack of adequate catalogue referencing and inaccessibility to the general public and our members are not consistent with the desires of those who originally donated those artefacts. They were donated for the Geelong community to see and appreciate.

I signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Geelong Heritage Centre to formalise the process and to agree on various conditions that protect the ownership and perpetuity of the artefacts to remain in public ownership in Geelong.

On July 20, our artefact caretakers, Freda and Pauline, opened our two storage containers, revealing the many artefacts we have been collecting for decades. Freda, Pauline, and Freda’s late husband, Rob, should be congratulated on how the items have been stored and kept in excellent condition. Our Exhibition subcommittee and Heritage Centre representative were there to view our collection. Everybody was amazed by the valuable collection.

*One of the society’s two archive containers*

Donations Received

Recently, our Society has received several donations that we value greatly. Items received are: • The daily diary of a Commercial Bank Manager in Geelong from 1905 to 1906. • Many important local history reference books. • A complete set of Investigators and Victorian Historical Journals • A financial donation was received from Geelong’s All Ford Day. • 34 glass photograph negatives of the 1919 Gala Day activities. • Building plans and books based on the history of Geelong, Torquay, and the Bellarine.

A huge thank you to all donors for your generosity.

Investigator

AI Investigator – Investigating Investigator by Investigators

Ask any question of the Investigator in just plain language, and you will get an answer.

Remarkable, but true. Our Webmaster, Michael, has used his computing genius to develop a simple text box where you can type a question and get an answer within seconds. It doesn’t just give you an answer; it can tell you where to look in our digitised Investigator collection to obtain more information. After days of testing, we launched our AI Investigator application at our July Monthly Meeting. An information sheet is also produced to assist you, but the process is so simple that you don’t need instructions.

This powerful AI tool reviews all 61 years of the Investigator to provide its response. It can also give you a response in a table format, not just in plain text. It can summarise and list in dot points.

Give it a try. 61 years of stories literally at your fingertips! But curb your enthusiasm to 5 consecutive questions before you take a break.

Well done, Michael, on developing an innovative, unique, and important tool for our members and researchers to maximise the value of our Investigator.

Flipbook Copies

Investigator flipbook copies for September 2025, December 2025, March 2026 and June 2026 can be viewed in the Members’ section of our website under the Publication and The Investigator tabs. Every Investigator flipbook can also be viewed there, starting now.

Payment of Membership Fees and Investigator

I sent out a Membership Fee Reminder with the June issue of the Investigator. We have received many responses. We all need a gentle reminder at times – I know that I do. Investigator magazines will only be distributed to current financial members from September, but non-financial members will continue to receive my Newsletter until March 2027.

Editorial Committee

June’s edition of Investigator and all future editions will be created by the Editorial Team. They have done a wonderful job on the June Edition. I thank them for their attention to detail and the time spent reading drafts. Next month we again see the product of their collective labours.

If you have a story suitable for publication, please send me a copy.

Wool Museum Invitations

We were approached by the Wool Museum to deliver two 15-minute talks to assist them with their Geelong Transport Exhibition in July. I accepted and prepared two talks: on Early Geelong Roads and River Crossings and Motor Vehicles in Geelong to 1925. I was very grateful for the work of David Rowe and his assistance on the Roads presentation.

Lest We Forget – Gladys Seaton

Gladys Seaton was a remarkable woman who never ceased to learn, and she loved the Geelong Historical Society. It was with great sadness that our Society members learned of her passing in 2024. She was a member of our Society for 57 years. All who knew her remarked about her pleasant, friendly personality and quiet disposition.

Gladys loved Geelong’s history and, for many years, was devoted to the Society. Her daughter, Rosalind, recalled that the first Wednesday night of every month was always Gladys’ night out attending our Society meetings. It was a tradition she kept until her final days. Gladys also collected every Investigator magazine, and most were bound. Her devotion to the Society far exceeded these contemporary events.

Our Society records show that Gladys served as a committee member from 1983 to 1985 and as Vice President from 1986 to 1996. Her contribution was in both administration and in providing stories. In terms of her contribution to the Investigator. Gladys had forty-five articles published from 1973 to 2006.

In her youth, Gladys was close friends with other Society icons such as Dr Philip Brown, Bill Morrow, Ruth Hill, Ian Wynd, Peter Alsop and many others who will be mentioned in my Newsletters.

Gladys’ skills of researching and writing had other expressions with the publication of commissioned stories:

• The Ashby Story – A Story of Geelong West, published in 1978 • Model Borough: An Introduction to Old Newtown and Chilwell. published in1983. • Evangelical clergy in the Diocese of Melbourne, c.1875-1900, their strengths and weaknesses. A church history research project submitted towards requirements for the M.Div. (Master of Divinity), Australian College of Theology, published 2005 • Geelong West – 100 Years published 1978 • Gold reef and silver tussock: a history of the shire of Leigh, published 1988

Gladys’ children, Rosalind and Olivia, kindly donated her collection of Investigators and copies of Victoria Historical Journals to our Society. They also gave us a motto that directed the course of Gladys’ life, and it’s a life lesson for us all.