Trove’s collection of old newspapers
At the end of every novel, I have written a tribute to the wonderful volunteers who maintain the Trove national database, a collaboration between the National Library of Australia and hundreds of partner organisations around Australia. Trove contains digital copies of newspapers, Government Gazettes, maps, magazines and newsletters. It also hosts books, pictures, photographs, archived websites, music and interviews, as well as information about famous Australians, including copies of letters, diaries and personal archives.
I began using Trove when I wrote my first family history and soon discovered a treasure trove (pardon the pun!) of old newspapers and copious mentions of family members. In the early days, many regional towns had their own newspapers and all of these have been painstakingly copied and keyworded into Trove. From these I was able to find out about births, deaths, social and sporting events, visitors and political events affecting individual towns. They gave substance to family members who until then had been just a series of dates and key life events.
Many of the journalistic constraints of today did not apply in the early days, and often the descriptions of events such as accidents are very graphic and extremely detailed. In particular, attitudes towards Aborigines were such that today would be termed racist, and I often find myself having to tone down the views and descriptions. Court cases and meetings are often transcribed word for word and can go for several pages in a newspaper.
When I turned my hand to historical fiction with my first novel, ‘The Memory Chest’, I used Trove to follow Katja’s court case and started to realise that there was a wealth of information about old Australian towns that no longer exist, all just sitting there on the web. So began the genesis of an idea to set my future novels in old ghost towns. As I said in a previous blog, I have always been fascinated by old towns, wondering what they might have looked like in their heyday, and this inspired the idea behind my second novel, ‘Nod to the Admiral’, set in the now disappeared town of Trafalgar.
I was much more systematic in my approach to this one. I first went back and read every article that referred to Trafalagar in its heyday. This gave me the years across which I was to set the novel, as well as the key events and people I could incorporate. So began my habit of using real events as the basis of my storylines; often I relied on the journalist’s descriptions to add colour and detail. As I develop the genealogies of the real people I wish to incorporate into the novel, I also look for mentions of them in Trove. Obituaries are particularly useful!
This initial research phase often takes months, but even after I start writing I find myself working with Trove open so that I can quickly go back and read about particular events or people. Sometimes I get lost down rabbit holes and spend days reading about something that never appears in a novel. One such case was with a pastoralist who was a minor character in ‘Last Coach to Quartz Hill’. In checking out his background I came across a court case where he was accused of ‘interfering’ with underage girls, and in fact had fathered several children. He was a prominent pastoralist, so I was fascinated to see how this case was treated in the newspaper. As the case progressed over a couple of years, the mentions became fewer and fewer, but I did eventually find out that he was gaoled for a period of time. Interestingly, there was a glowing obituary many years later which made no reference to his misdeeds. All of this occurred outside the time frame of my novel, so I never got to incorporate it, but it was a valuable lesson in the attitudes of the time.
Trove does have its challenges though. In the early days people were often referred to by initials and surname which makes a keyword search frustrating, especially when there are multiple family members living in the same town at the time. Misspellings by the original journalists are also frequent, and I find myself searching under several variations of names. The first names of women are rarely recorded, as they are usually referred to as ‘Mrs so and so’. Despite that, journalists often gave detailed descriptions of what women wore to parties, weddings etc, which is a valuable source of information about clothing.
It’s not just the articles which are valuable, but also the advertisements. These tell me which shops were operating, the types of services available, upcoming social events and much more. I remember trying to find details about Bridget Dutton’s new hotel for ‘Last Coach to Quartz Hill’, and it wasn’t until I found a ‘for sale’ notice written several years later that I was able to find out the number and type of rooms. Another memorable find was when I sent Katja, from ‘The Memory Chest’, off to the pictures at the Palace Theatre (every town had a Palace Theatre!) in Boulder. She was to see a film about Napoleon which was mentioned in the newspaper. I did a search of this film to see what it was about and found the original film on You Tube. It was surreal that I was able to watch the same film over a hundred years later!
Sometimes, the real characters I use are correspondents themselves, writing letters to the editor. One such person was William Shakespeare Hall, from ‘Cossack Pearl’, whose writings gave an insight to his views and opinions. Letters to the editor also give an insight into the burning issues of the time and these are regularly incorporated into the conversations between by characters.
The journalists themselves have often left me wondering. I dabbled with incorporating a character as a journalist in ‘Nod to the Admiral’, and had him reporting on several key events, including the building of the war memorial. It left me curious though, about how they collected and recorded their information and so in my next book, I have made the primary character a journalist. I’m learning a lot about telegraph machines and such like!
So, again I thank the volunteers of Trove. Without this database, my novels would never be written.
