Wandong History Group

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Registered Office: Affleck Street, Wandong, 3758

Telephone: 57871 314

Inaugural office bearers 2012/2013:

President - Karen Christensen

Vice President - David Moran

Secretary - Diana Vidal

Treasurer - Sandra Moran

The Wandong History Group was formed to collate, catalogue and preserve the past history of Wandong and Heathcote Junction for the benefit of future generations.

HISTORY

The Wandong History Group (WHG) evolved when a group of local residents recognised that before it was too late, there was the urgent need to collate, catalogue and preserve the past history of Wandong and Heathcote Junction for the benefit of future generations. Wandong - Heathcote Junction has a unique and interesting settlement and social history that included one of Victoria's largest timber and seasoning operations. Wandong was a hive of activity during the mid-1880s with tramways, a seasoning works, joinery and terra cotta lumber plant, as well as a coffee palace and boarding house, all built around a privately created subdivision owned by Robert Affleck Robertson. The Mt. Disappointment area was also home to prisoners of war who worked in forest camps during World War II. Wandong also laid claim to initiating the first Country Music Festival during the 1970s. Wandong and Heathcote Junction have many unexplored stories yet to be told

The WHG held its first formal meeting on 26 September 2012 when office bearers were elected and at a subsequent meeting it was unanimously decided to apply to be an Incorporated Group. The WHG is a not for profit group and any membership fees, donations, fund raising money will be put toward the collation, cataloguing and preserving our history.

The Wandong History Group has elected to adopt the Model Rules for an Incorporated Association [Associations Incorporation Act 1981]

MEMBERSHIP

Membership fees will be set at Annual General Meetings. Financial members are encouraged to participate in Group activities and in discussion at monthly meetings.

OPERATION

The Wandong History Group initially aims to collate, record and store information on the history of Wandong - Heathcote Junction. It is intended to meet monthly and all residents interested in the great history of our towns would be most welcome to participate.

The Group will meet regularly and consensus decision making will be adopted. Regular history presentations will be conducted for the benefit of residents and visitors.

Committee members for 2014- 2015 are:

President: Karen Christensen

Vice President: David Moran

Secretary: Di Vidal

Treasurer: Sandra Moran

Membership fees were set at $10 single and family $15

HISTORY BULLETINS - follow the links

MAY 2020

HISTORY GROUP

While Covid -19 has kept us isolated and not able to meet we are in the fortunate position that much of the History Groups work can continue as members “Work from home”. While the March “back to Wandong”, event had to be cancelled we hope to bring that event to you later in the year.

Other history group news: The Catholic Church has agreed to the conditions that Heritage Victoria require for us to make another application for funding to have the only Heritage Listed building in Wandong restored. We are now working through that process, gaining the necessary permissions, quotes and mountains of paperwork required for the application. If successful we would be looking at commencing the works in early 2021.

Unfortunately, we received news that our application for funding to move the hut from Range Avenue was not successful, while disappointing we have another grant application pending that hopefully will have a better result.

While the future is still uncertain in these days of lockdown we are still planning for an October event to commemo-rate the ending of WW2, this year marks the 75th anniversary of the armistice and we are looking to hold an event to coincide with our usual History Week event. We are working on more soldier profiles like those used in the Walk through the Wars, we would love to extend this to all our soldiers, but lack of good images and the cost is prohibi-tive. However, by the time the ones we are working on are completed we will have a great collection of our soldiers for future events.

Meanwhile other members are working on projects, Lynne has been looking at school enrolments and contacting families through Ancestry and has uncovered some great information. Dave and Sandra are going through micro fiche files of old rate and water board records and are coming up with some excellent information.

I have been working on the various grants that we have in hand also on a couple of future publications and doing some work on cataloguing our collection. We are life in lockdown but the work continues.

Stay safe, Karen

Attention, Businesses and Local groups

The Wandong History Group is putting together a pack of local information to help both new and old residents learn a little about our history and what services, businesses and groups operate in the area. If your business or group would like to be involved with this please contact the Wandong History Group via email wandonghistorygroup4@gmail.com or phone 57871314