Barada Kabalbara Yetimarala Native Title

The following information appeared in a Barada Kabalbara Yetimarala Native Title notice in the Courier Mail of March 23-24, 2013.

The Apical Ancestors for this claim are listed as follows :-

1. Lizzy / Kitty / Unnamed Barada woman (mother of Saltbush George Budby, Rosie Barber, Eddie Budby and Albert Brown).

2. Ada / Ina Cotherstone, Daisy Wilson and Alick Smith Snr (and his wife Topsy Barron / Barren).

3. Polly (wife of Robert Noble) and Laura (wife of Duke / George Barker, Teddy Sauney and Adam Bowen.

4. Lizzie (wife of Paddy Flynn).

5. Polly (late in life wife of Thomas Mitchell)

6. Arthur Miles.

7. Kitty (aka Kitty Eaglehawk).

8. Yatton Boney.

9. Maggie (mother of Jack Mack and Gypsy Tyson).

10. Topsy Barron / Barren, Percy Smith and Stanley Smith.

The claim area is roughly bounded by Nebo, Marlborough, Dingo, Emerald and Dysart in Central Queensland. I will add more details later.

Victorian NAA Files

The following Victorian Files are now available digitally on the National achives of Australia web site :-

Series B357 Item 191 Aboriginal Welfare Board field notes Western district genealogies
Series B357 Item 192 Aboriginal Welfare Board field notes - Murray Valley, survey of Aborigines, June 1961, families

These items are a rarity as in the past Item 193 of this series "Aboriginal Welfare Board field notes -Wimmera and Gippsland, genealogies" was originally available digitally then removed.

It will be interesting to see if Items 191 and 192 remain available digitally.

Alyawarra Ethnographic Archive

The Alyawarra Ethnographic Archive - by Woodrow W. Denham was available on the AIATSIS website but although still listed on the Online Collections page is marked as having been taken down for the following reason

"For technical reasons, the Alyawarra Ethnographic Archive has been taken down"

This site was described by Woodrow Denham as follows "This document contains all of my work with the Alyawarra speaking Aborigines of Central Australia conducted since the early 1970s, plus additional work that derived directly or indirectly from the Alyawarra project".

This was the only place on the internet that made available the full material used in an Anthropological study in Australia. It included Pre-Fieldwork material, Journal, Chalmers' Letters, Numeric Files, Genealogical Diagrams, Music Play Lists, Regional Maps, Camp Maps, Residence Plans, Dreaming Maps, Air Photos, Portraits, Prints, Slides, Sketches and Post-Fieldwork material.
  
Hopefully the technical reasons will be overcome and this brilliant site made available again.

Indexing and Retrieval Software

DocFetcher (http://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html) is free document and indexing and retrieval software. I have been using this for a couple of years now and found it ideal. There is also a Portable version which means that I can take my data anywhere on a portable drive and simply plug the drive into a PC and start searching. File types that can be indexed include text, Word, PDF, Excel, HTML and many others

Digital Versions of Early Australian Books

A website worth looking at is www.archive.org . It contains digital copies of numerous early Australian books that have been long out of print and extremely expensive to buy second hand.

Just a few  are listed below :-

Across Australia, Spencer (1912)

The Native Tribes of Central Australia, Spencer and Gillen  (1899)
The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, Spencer and Gillen (1904)
The Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia, Spencer (1914)
Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia Volumes 1, 3& 4, Horn and Spencer (1894)
Journal of the Horn Scientific Exploring Expedition , Winnecke (1894)
The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, Howitt (1904)
Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits Volumes 1-6, Haddon (1901)
Among Cannibals, Lumholtz (1889)

Searchable PDF  versions are available for most.

Aboriginal Ties to the Land

Sarah Martin's report " Aboriginal Cultural Heritage of the Menindee Lakes area Part 1 - Aboriginal Ties to the Land" is available to download  here .

It contains a wealth of genealogical information for this area.

Aurukun Genealogical Data

Another useful site located at the University of California Irvine, School of Social Sciences , Eclectic Anthropology Server is the following

http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/linkages/datasets/p-wik.txt

The data here refers to Aurukun in Queensland and can be used to build genealogical relationships. The raw data can be easily converted into meaningful information using a spreadsheet or database program.

The original data looks like this

    IDSe    Sp    Fa    Mo          DOB RnaName
     6F     34     2     1   04/08/1929  6Peinkinna, May

which can be reconstructed as

Identification Number (ID) 6
Name                       Peinkinna, May               
Sex                        Female
Date of Birth              04/08/1929
Father                     Pootchemunka, Samuel           (ID 2)
Mother                     Pootchemunka, Minoota          (ID 1)
Spouse                     Peinkinna, Donald              (ID 34)

Other genealogical information for Australia is available on this site.