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The 1998 Exhibition
What a great weekend! More then 600 photos from the Vern McCallum Photo Collection comprehensively filled the Digby Hall over the weekend of 18-19 April, 1998. This selection from the 3,000 plus photos in the collection attracted 300 visitors who came from from Melbourne to Mt Gambier, from Portland to Ballarat, and even one from Canberra (although he is Vern's brother in law, and perhaps shouldn't be counted). The exhibition covered the Western District of Victoria, from the 1860s to the 1950s.
One of the first few visitors showed the value of the Digby weekend. He was an aircraft enthusiast: Vern took him to a photo that had been tentatively identified as taken at Hamilton in 1919. Well, what excitement! After a flurry of phone calls the enthusiast established that this was a De Havilland DH6 that had run out of fuel over Hamilton in 1919 and been damaged when it hit a horse while trying to land in a street. The photo clearly showed the damage to a wing and the tail. Everyone was pleased: the enthusiast could add to the aviation history of Victoria, and Vern had a story that would be added to that photo in future exhibitions.
There were animated discussions about many other photos over the weekend. Who was who in the footy team photo? Where was that sawmill? Did someone's ancestor ever have the licence for that hotel? And just where was the hotel located, anyway?
Several visitors brought in old photos that they permitted Vern to copy. These included two very early and - in our opinion - beautiful photos of Hotspur around the time of the opening of the new bridge. Just bringing more old photos to light, and making them available to a wider audience, made the weekend worthwhile by itself.
Vern was especially grateful to the visitors who helped fill in names on the group photos such as footy teams, rifle clubs and street processions. Knowing the names is important to us all, as a recent experience shows. Vern was approached by a man who had lost all his own photos in a fire. Did Vern have a photo of his mother? Fortunately the mother had been identified on a photo in the collection, so Vern had the thrill of being able to replace an important part of that man's past.
The Family History part of the show was also a hit. Geoff Corner (Vern's brother in law) brought his materials, including a card index containing many early residents of Merino and Digby, and had many requests for information during the two days. Daryl Povey brought his materials up from Ballarat on the Sunday, and was also kept busy. Again, there was the thrill of helping people make connections with their past. There was also the thrill of bringing together relatives who didn't know each other, as happened three times over the weekend. Luckily, they all seemed to get along!
We have plans to expand the Family History part of future shows. Hopefully we will have some "how to" booklets available for sale to those who want to find members of the families, but don't know too much about how to do it. Also, we will be asking local Family History clubs and associations to either come along or at least provide pamphlets.
The photos and the Family History seem to be a good combination. Vern says that photos containing people are always popular, an indication that most visitors are either locals or have local ancestors. We noticed that many visitors had arranged to meet friends and relations in the Hall over the weekend. The Digby Hotel reported crowds for lunch both days, and the Ladies Auxiliary did very well with their afternoon teas; together, a sure indication that visitors had spent hours at the show discussing photographs and families.
In retrospect, we think that what we really organised was a "Family Reunion", where the family was the entire Western District.