User:Bleating

The Australian Central Victorian Goldfields community where I spent most of my first 28 years, and left nearly 51 years ago, (but where, when I return, visit 6 generations in local cemeteries) needs assistance in verifying, clarifying and disseminating its extensive goldfields and later less-populated history. Conflicts between traditional texts and increasingly on-line published original material are gradually revealing that.

Annoyingly, personal health issues now prevent me from being a traditional, easily-accepted, understood and utilised volunteer.This has encouraged me to make what I can of distance involvement possibilities.

I also work with secondary sources, particularly Facebook Pages, as both gleaners of information and distributors. Whilst some discount these latter sources, (often along with Wikipedia), it's surprising what comes along in the way of core original material, leads towards that, and ways to understand local cultures and views.

The Bowenvale (formerly Chinamans Flat)-Timor, Victoria, district, to which 7 of my great great grandparents rushed in the 1850s, has recently become a focus for me, not least because so much of its history has no easily interpretable manifestation in the visual landscape, and because so much has been distorted by later misinterpretation, publication and increasingly emphatic surmisings, a state which most local custodians and minders of historical information find difficult to tackle.

I wish to work to overcome and compensate for these, not least because many researchers seeking additional information on the backgrounds of their ancestors, when they make contact locally, must be persuaded to unlearn false foundation concepts they have acquired by many means, including from university project and municpal publications and webpages, and local "experts".

I am now aware that some Wikipedia contributors don't see unlearning of falsehoods as part of its brief, in spite of the informational efficiency logic of including it. I also realise that the requirements of Wikipedia for style, tone, layout etc. may not be congruent with my ideas for the communication many learners need to simultaneously unlearn and learn. However, let's see what can be done, by myself and others whom I am encouraging to participate, and are currently in the "it's all too hard and unrewarding" camp.

I hope our aims are to always help people to unlearn falsehoods, and to greatly strengthen an understanding of the evidence-based history of the Bowenvale-Timor district, and surrouding colonisations, particulary Maryborough. There is much work to do. ~Bleating~