Moonee Valley Family & Local History Blog

If you haven't seen it recently, the Moonee Valley Libraries Facebook page has been posting every Friday an image from Moonee Valley's past. #Flashback Friday as it's known has provided us with some great images. It was great to see a post by Lenore Frost on Friday about the recent photo of the Burke and Wills Tree in Moonee Ponds. After see the image of the tree Lenore had gone and done some research and created a timeline of the tree on her website. To see the timeline and other research post from the Moonee Valley and Keilor areas take a look at Lenore's blog and website. Time Travellers blog Time Travellers website

Queens Park, Moonee Ponds is recognised as the site where Burke and Wills made camp on the first night of their fateful journey in 1860. In this year of the 150th anniversary The State Library of Victoria has an interesting collection of Burke and Wills material; and for those who think that they might have had family involved, note the sections Eager Explorers and Portraits with the list of applicants and participants. Wikipedia has many pages about the people involved. A search for 'Burke and Wills trail' at Picture Australia results in 12 images. There are more articles about the Expedition on the National Library of Australia's website: Historic Australian Newspapers, 1803 to 1854 . Many celebrations are being planned for the 150th Anniversary and a good starting point to see what is planned is the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. The expedition is sponsored by the Royal Society of Victoria .