Perhaps the greatest favour a family historian has ever done this local history researcher is to tell me about trove. An informal group of family historians used to (and probably still do) get together in the local history room at the Rosebud library. While we chatted during my three solid weeks or more of transcribing rate records in August 2010, one of them put me onto trove.

This is a digitised treasure trove of newspapers and other material, courtesy of the National Library of Australia. I have found that the quickest way to access old newspapers is to enter trove NLA,click on trove-home, click on digitised newspapers, and then type in the name you're researching. If the article is specified, such as by me, enter the year, select the month and then the day number. Then select the newspaper name and when it comes up, select the page number.

I have written THE FEMALE DROVER: A HISTORY OF MOOROODUC and DROMANA, ROSEBUD AND MILES AROUND ON TROVE (up to about 150 pages, just a start, but not touched since I started writing journals here) based almost entirely on trove. Just recently, I entered BRINDLE-LEGGE to find out if Arthur Brindle had married a Legge girl (because Melbourne Brindle had stated on his map of Dromana that Harold Legge was his uncle.)

Some surnames make searches on trove very tedious, such as colour names such as White and others of adjectival tendency such as Bright. I never realised there were so many Rosebuds (including "rosebud of health" in advertisements) and if I'm researching the southern peninsula prior to 1914, I always type Kangerong rather than Flinders, for the Shire of Flinders and Kangerong so I won't get Flinders Island, the interstate Shire of Flinders etc. Frustration leads to the development of such time-saving tricks.The Argus is a good paper to select (to refine your search) if you want to eliminate most of the interstate stuff but if you confine your searches entirely to this paper,you could miss personal pars, obituaries etc which usually appear in local papers.

If you wish to copy articles, you must do it using the digitised text. Most of the time this looks like a foreign language and needs to be corrected.While on duty at the Dromana Museum recently, I met a Mr Adams who is working for the Mornington Shire Council under the Cemetery Trust, doing what Neil Mansfield did at the Bulla cemetery; digitising grave photos and information. He showed me a photo of the Stenniken grave at Rye and I mentioned that there was a grave nearby that seemed to be in the wrong cemetery but I couldn't remember the names. (An inspection two days later revealed the names were Sarah Kennedy and her parents, Rachel and Ralph Patterson.)

The Pattersons were mainly involved on the Survey prior to 1864(Safety Beach area east to Bulldog Creek Rd), at Fingal since about 1870 near Pattersons Rd, and, by 1910,again on the Survey north of Wallace's Rd (which Colin McLear said was known originally as Patterson's Lane. I believe the Patterson-Kennedy connection came about in Fingal (where James Kennedy was leasing about 159 acres in the 1870's, or near the junction of Point Leo and Frankston-Flinders Rd in the parish of Balnarring where the Kennedys had land straddling Stony Creek and R.Patterson (not Ralph if I remember my rate research)was also a grantee about a mile away between the latter road and the coast. Why would residents in the parishes of Balnarring/Flinders and Fingal/Kangerong be buried at Rye. Peter Wilson and Ray Cairns answered that question in THE CAIRNS FAMILY OF BONEO. Many marriages took place between the Russell family and the Patterson and Cairns families.

Edward Russell was a shipmate of John Watts and Tom Bennett (1). His mates jumped ship some time after Watts went ashore at Skelly's beach(now called Shelly beach) to obtain fresh water for his ship and met a six year old Skelton girl whom he said he'd marry one day, which he did, and they lived in the cottage which has been moved to the pioneers' garden next to the museum at Sorrento (2).Edward did not desert his ship but when it reached Melbourne, the vista that greeted the crew would have been amazing;a forest on the water! Countless ships were anchored together, their masts swaying like forest trees in a gale and the remaining sailors, except Edward, followed the rush to the diggings(3).

The 17 year old Edward Russell walked for two days to work for J.Purves Snr, probably at Tootgarook, and later worked for the Sullivans, most likely as a lime burner.He drove bullocks to the goldfields for the Skeltons in the 1850's and then built a kiln. This was just north of the corner of Dundas St and Glenvue Rd and Edward and his old shipmate, Tom Bennett,shared a house at the south corner of Napier and Bowen St. This is the Russell
connection with Rye, explaining the Patterson connection. When Blair obtained a grant for the land on which Edward's kiln was situated (1), he farmed further east and obtained a grant for the 103 acre block immediately west of the present Truemans Rd tip site. From here he was quite close to the Cairns and Patterson families to whom he was probably introduced by Edward Williams whose property was just east of Truemans Rd (4).
(1. LIME LAND LEISURE p.147 AND MAPS. 2.THOSE COURAGEOUS HARDY WOMEN. 3.My creation based on the stranded, crewless ships mentioned in so many Victoria and Melbourne histories. 4. Ratebooks and parish maps.

PARDON THE DIVERSION FROM TROVE, BUT THIS INFORMATION MAY NOT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN ELSEWHERE.

In response to my comment about the need to make corrections to the digitised version in trove, Mr Adams explained that the problem was caused by the newspapers being photographed rather than scanned.

Despite the difficulties mentioned, Trove is still a wonderful source!