Inside History: WA's Daring 20th Century Bushranger

We're delighted to report the story of our local bushranger Frank Thomas has been featured across five pages in the final hardcopy edition of Inside History magazine (Autumn 2017). You can now view the article as a PDF here.

The Geraldton Family History Society got their hands on a copy in good time and reported on Facebook: "The current and final issue of the Inside History magazine has some fantastic articles. For those of us from Geraldton and the Mid West of WA, A Fugitive from Justice is a must read." (thanks GFHS!)

We'd like to pay tribute to Inside History and the phenomenal job they've done of sharing Australian history, heritage and genealogy over the past few years. We're especially thankful for the multiple opportunities they've given us to reach out to broader and new audiences.

We would also like to thank the great group of volunteers who helped research the bushranger and uncover new information that contributed to the article.

For more on Frank Thomas, check out:

• The online exhibition 10863 Bushranger presented by Act-Belong-Commit
• His entry in the Biographical Dictionary of Coorow, Carnamah and Three Springs

We've been named in Inside History's 2014 Top 50 Blogs!

We're delighted to reveal that our blog has been named in Inside History magazine's Top 50 Blogs for 2014. The Top 50 takes a look at some of the best blogs by Australian and New Zealand institutions, organisations, genealogists and historical societies. We're honoured to make the list for the second time, having also appeared in the inaugural Top 50 in 2012.

To mark the occasion, we've taken a close look at our blog's stats to see what posts have proved the most popular over the past year:

• Moora Public Cemetery: Stories from the Grave
• Memories of the Midland Railway Company of Western Australia
• We've come home with a Museums & Galleries National Award

2013: The Year in Review

In 2013 we were kept on the go running our museum and looking after the historic Macpherson Homestead. Like its predecessor, it's been another very busy year!

Virtual Museum

Early 2013 saw the launch of the expanded Virtual Museum on our website. Exhibits on the Midland Railway, Roads to Government, Business Houses, 10 Macpherson Street, the Carnamah Post Office and Toys made their way online while our existing exhibits on the Macpherson Family and Milk, Cream and Butter were revamped and expanded.

Townsite Centenary

The townsite of Carnamah quietly turned 100 on ANZAC Day in 2013. Its celebration was saved for September when locals, both past and present, came together for the North Midlands Show and centenary celebrations. Our secretary Jill Tilly worked hard over many months to provide a truly incredible exhibition of photographs and advertisements from the past century.


The milestone was also marked with the placement of historic photographs in eight shop-front windows, new interpretative plaques along Macpherson Street and a community-created mosaic table for Henry Parkin Gardens, pictured below.

Education Resources

We crossed new ground in 2013 with a break into the realm of education. The first of our Australian Curriculum education resources were developed to be usable from classrooms with our Virtual Museum or with physical visits to our museum.

The first three resources, created with Ignite Your Audience, can be freely viewed or saved from the Education Resources page of our website.

Virtual Volunteering

In April 2013 we embarked on our project to research, develop, trial, refine and share our concept of virtual volunteering. The project, which is ongoing, has resulted in a new Virtual Volunteering website. This is hosting some of our online volunteering projects and will very shortly host the transcription of the WA Biographical Index cards for the State Library of Western Australia.

We'd like to extend a very special thank you to the people who've given us a helping hand as online volunteers. If that's not you, it could be! It's as simple as heading over to www.virtualvolunteering.com.au, transcribing some text and hitting save!


In the Press!

Early in 2013 the National Museum of Australia released the book Landmarks: A History of Australia in 33 Places. It is based on their Landmarks exhibition in Canberra, and like the exhibition includes a section on Carnamah and its First World War soldier settlement.

One of our images graced the cover of Inside History magazine for its July-August 2013 edition. The illustration comes from the cover of a 1920s promotional notepad for N. W. Reynolds' general store in Carnamah. It can be seen in its original format in our Business Houses virtual exhibit and at our museum.

We were delighted to provide CBH Group with two photographs for the cover of their 2014 calendar. Both images were taken in Carnamah. The newer of the two was the arrival of the first CBH-owned train to stop in Carnamah in 2012. More on the images and this subject matter can be found in our blog post The Story of Bulk Wheat Handling and our virtual exhibit on the Midland Railway.




Sharing is caring...

In 2013 we continued providing assistance to our fellow heritage organisations with our president George Fowler serving as chair of the Mid West chapter of Museums Australia WA. Further afield we shared our knowledge and ideas with presentations at conferences, seminars and meetings down in Perth and as far north as Karratha in the Pilbara of WA.

Andrew S. Bowman went into battle for us at the so-called great debate 'digitisation is the death of history' at Curtin University. Along with David Fricker of the National Archives of Australia, we argued against the motion. Our narrow loss was hotly contested by many of the attendees which is a sure sign that it was indeed a great debate!

Recaps of two of our presentations can be read online:

• So what does digitisation mean for history?
• eHeritage: Attitude, Ethos, Culture + Creativity

We'd like to thank the following for their greatly appreciated support during 2013:

• Government of Western Australia's Social Innovation Grants Program for supporting our Virtual Volunteering project (in progress)
• Shire of Carnamah for their ongoing in-kind support
• Government of Western Australia's Department of Culture and the Arts for supporting the expansion of our Virtual Museum
• The Western Australian History Foundation for supporting our initial Education Resources
• Australian Government's Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities for supporting our project to gather and share local heritage stories (in progress)
• DIY History at the University of Iowa Libraries and Webgrow Website Maintenance for their technical help and assistance
• Ignite Your Audience for their educational wonder :)

Last, but certainly not least, we'd like to thank YOU for stopping by. We appreciate your patronage, whether it be on the ground in Carnamah or virtually via our website, blog, Facebook, Twitter or other social media.

Here's to local history and a productive 2014!

Inside History magazine with a Carnamah cover!

We're honoured to reveal that there's a Carnamah cover on the Jul-Aug 2013 edition of Inside History magazine! The cover's illustration comes from one of the many items digitised to be part of our recently expanded Virtual Museum on our website.

Check out our online Business Houses exhibition to discover the image in its original format.

This is an indirect and exciting outcome of a project funded by the Department of Culture and the Arts aimed at sharing and promoting more of our collection to broader audiences. The project included the creation of six new virtual museum exhibitions on our website:

Midland Railway  ●  Roads to Government  ●  Business Houses

Carnamah Post Office  ●  10 Macpherson Street  ●  Toys

Love in the Age of Convicts

UPDATE: Click here to read the full article 'Love in the Age of Convicts' on the website of Traces magazine.

There's a great story in the Sep-Oct 2012 edition of Inside History magazine that has some wonderful local connections! The story of Joseph Crippin and his family is one of five convicts profiled in a Love in the Age of Convicts feature, which can also be read on the Inside History blog.

One of Joseph's grandsons was Frank Thomas Jnr of Coorow - later known in Coorow and Carnamah as Thomas the Bushranger! His escapades were a nuisance to local farmers and a fear to women. He made headlines when he repeatedly escaped custody. It is interesting to look at his convictions in light of his grandfather's convict past!

Joseph's daughter, who was the bushranger's mother, was Mrs Beulah Thomas. Along with her second husband Beulah was one of the earliest settlers of the Coorow district and for a number of years lived at Coorow House.

Other grandsons of the convict and sons of Beulah include Charles and James Starling, who both worked for the Midland Railway Company in the Coorow, Carnamah and Three Springs districts; and Jack Thomas who farmed for a great many years in Coorow, Gunyidi and then Marchagee.

The connections don't end there! A great grand-daughter of convict Joseph Crippin is Pearl Starling, who spent some of her childhood in Coorow. In 1927 she married Malcolm Macpherson, a great grandson of Duncan and Mary Macpherson who settled in Carnamah in 1868. Her husband Malcolm was the last Macpherson to own the Macpherson Homestead in Carnamah!

Pictured above is the September-October 2012 edition of Inside History which includes the great Love in the Age of Convicts feature. In addition to the Crippin story there's another four very contrasting stories about convicts and their love lives.

UPDATE: Click here to read the full article 'Love in the Age of Convicts' on the website of Traces magazine.

One Year, 40 Posts and in the Top 50

One year ago on 9 May 2011 we launched our blog with its first post entitled The Decision to Blog! We're pleased to mark this year old milestone with our 40th post.

We're also very excited to reveal that we're one of three societies that made it into Inside History magazine's Top 50 Genealogy Blogs, as compiled by Jill Ball.

Over the past year we have shared many things on our blog from Carnamah's Place at the National Museum of Australia (which caused a bit of a stir in WA historical and museum circles!) to progress with our museum with Museum Extension Photos and Window to the Past.

We've been pleased to share some very well received history pieces such as The Story of Bulk Wheat Handling, Thomas the Bushranger and the S.S. Koombana's Connections to the North Midlands.

Sometimes it is nice to simply look at good photos and for this reason we posted the wonderful Coorow Photographs by Dave Curtis, Photographs of Mid West Wildflowers by Cliff Winfield and the more historic Harvest in Winchester in the 1920s.

We've also shared some of our achievements with Musing magazine: Carnamah's dot com, Region of the Month at One Place Studies, Inside History magazine: Calling Carnamah Home and At the Frontier: Virtual Existence & Social Media.

History can be analysed in so many ways and we enjoyed using new technology to bring some new insights with our post Mentions of Carnamah in Australian Newspapers. It was also great to share some history in the making with Capacity Reached at CBH = Wheat on the Ground from when Co-operative Bulk Handling in Carnamah started storing wheat in piles on the ground in late 2011.

We look forward to sharing more over the coming twelve months and hope you will join us in wishing our blog a Happy 1st Birthday!