Australia Day: Warrnambool Family History Group tour examines 1920

Meet the group bringing history alive in Warrnambool — with a little help from the dead.

HAVE you ever considered spending Australia Day in a cemetery?

It’s probably not the first thing that comes to mind, but it has become a “tradition” for the Warrnambool Family History Group.

Their annual cemetery walks have already run six times earlier this month, while the final one will be on January 26.

“We do them during the first two weeks of January because that’s when all the tourists come down, and there are usually a few tourists around that long weekend too,” says Mike Roche, the group’s president.

He says the tours have been going for 15 years, with a new theme every year.

This year it focuses on locals who died in 1920, including several who were part of prominent local businesses.

Two women who both died in 1920 were the wives of a pair of brothers from the Callaghan family. Their deaths, Mike says, allows the group to explain to tour participants the significance of the Callaghan family and surname in the region.

“The Callaghans originally came to Warrnambool from Ireland, and they came on a ship named Cairngorm,” he says.

“A picture of that ship is included in the present-day Callaghan Motors letterhead and the signs on their cars and that sort of thing. Here we are, 150 years down the track, and the Cairngorm is still commemorated.”

However, two of the stories told on the tour are tied to local Presbyterian Church burning down in 1920. One was a soldier killed in WWI: his parents donated a pulpit to the church before the fire.

“The other person, the day after the fire, he was elected by the people in the parish to be the person who oversaw the re-establishment of the church, and he did such a terrific job that in less than two years it had been completely rebuilt.”

While the tours are held during peak tourist times, Mike estimates more than half of the people join in are Warrnambool locals.

“We had a woman (on Sunday) who said she just wanted to find out more about Warrnambool. She hadn’t lived here very long,” he says.

As well as the tours in January, the Warrnambool Family History Group also runs a seminar on the Saturday after Mother’s Day each year, with “guest speakers talking about various aspects of family history”. Guests can also visit their offices on weekdays between 10am-4pm.

“Our group has a lot of documentation of the history of Warrnambool and especially, seeing as it’s family history, it’s about people rather than things,” Mike says.

“We research people of our own families and we help each other, and we do research work for people anywhere in the world who wish to find out about somebody doing something in Warrnambool.

“It is not unusual for us to have contact with people particularly from the UK and Ireland who are trying to trace relatives.”

He says he hopes people who join the tour enjoy themselves.

“But then we hope that people come along because they are interested in family history and that they might continue looking into family history themselves, they might join our association and contribute in the future.”