Transcribing council correspondence might seem an odd hobby, but for Werribee amateur historian, Rosemary Harrigan, it couldn’t be more interesting.
“I have a fascination with Werribee’s early history and thoroughly enjoy researching early history,” said Ms Harrigan, who has just transcribed and published an updated version of the Wyndham Shire Letter Book – 1865 to 1869.
“The letter book contains the collection of all shire letters written by the shire secretary Thomas Haynes,” said Ms Harrigan of the letter book which was how official correspondence and records were kept back in the mid-19th century.
“It was a legal requirement and council needed copies for their own benefit to see what they had written to other councils or even their own residents.
The letters were copied and all the letters were bound into a book and that’s what we have today as a record.”
Before Ms Harrigan got to work 18 months ago, it was a record in very poor condition.
“This book being very old was also very neglected and transcribing had its challenges. The pages were very fragile and there was a lot of water damage. Some pages were faded and unreadable. In those days letters were written in ink and the ink has faded over the years,” she said.
The 500 page book had been given to the Werribee Historical Society by Wyndham council and Ms Harrigan set about transcribing its mostly one page letters by typing them into a word document, one by one.
If this sounds tedious, Ms Harrigan said learning about the early days of Wyndham made it anything but.
“That’s what makes it interesting,” she said.
“ The shire of Wyndham was very new having been proclaimed in 1864 and it gives a glimpse into the problems and matters council had to deal with.”
Ms Harrigan said it was striking how similar they were to council issues today.
They’re pretty much the same, rates, bridges, floods, getting government grants. That was a big isssue, council’s never had a enough money just coming in from rates for building big infrastructure.”
Ms Harrigan is now transcribing the shire letter book of 1885 to 1891.
To buy copies of the updated Wyndham Shire Letter Book or view the original, contact the Werribee Historical Society.
