Book Review: Wangalpong to Mount Tamborine

This amazing book focuses on the area around Mount Tamborine and the Logan, Albert, Coomera and Nerang River valleys in southeast Queensland. The review by Nola Fulwood (formerly an archivist and Manager of Public Access at Queensland State Archives) is published here with her permission.

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Wangalpong to Mount Tamborine, volume 1: The Moreton Bay Story (by Karen Rosser)

This meticulously researched and beautifully written history is one we can enjoy as a good read and keep handy for reference. It is written from the point of view of The Mountain and its ancient people. They watched as the volcano rearranged the landscape, the ships sailed by, the explorers ventured north, and settlement began. The author has made extensive use of the eye-witness accounts of those explorers, administrators, surveyors, and settlers. Careful analysis has given an interesting new view of the history most of us learned at school. This is no dry as dust recitation of the bare dates and places but a fascinating story that carries the reader along and encourages us to explore further.

This book started as a family history but developed as the author's curiosity led to questioning our history as we have known it. As family historians, we should strive for meticulous research, accurate referencing, comprehensive indexing, and in-depth insights into what has made our own family unique.

We should all have this fascinating history of the beginnings of Queensland on our library shelves.

Available from the author or from InHouse Publishing.
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To that I would add... be sure to read the book's foreword!

(This post first appeared on https://qld-genealogy.blogspot.com/2023/07/book-review-wangalpong-to-mount.html.)

Index to Funeral Records 1972 - 2010

Would you think to look in Queensland for records of a burial or funeral service that took place overseas, including New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Fiji, Sweden, Greece, Hungary, Austria or the Netherlands?

Cemeteries and crematoria from all of those countries (plus all parts of Australia) are mentioned in records of Gregson and Weight, funeral directors at Caloundra, Maroochydore and Nambour on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.

I recently bought Caloundra Family History Research Inc.'s new index (on CD-ROM), Gregson and Weight Funeral Directors, Caloundra, Maroochydore and Nambour - Index to Funeral Records 1972-2010. It lists (in PDF format) about 20,000 names (in two sections, 1972-1999 and 2000-2010), with surname, given name, age, death date or funeral date, place of burial or cremation, and a reference number. Aliases or nicknames are sometimes shown. Appendix 1 lists all cemeteries/crematoria mentioned, and explains how to contact them. Appendix 2 lists hyphenated or 'double-barrelled' surnames, which were not always recorded correctly in the index.

This very affordable index will be invaluable for finding deaths that are too recent to be in online civil registration indexes. There is a good explanation of abbreviations and the arrangement of entries, and a contact address for Gregson and Weight; but although the introduction says, We would be pleased if researchers would advise us of any inaccurate information, the author/publisher's address is not shown. The publication also lacks a proper title page (which should show title, author, publisher, date and place of publication, copyright notice and ISBN).

For more details about the index, contact Caloundra Family History Research.

Postscript, 2014: There is now an online database for various other Queensland funeral directors' records including Alex Gow, K.M. Smith, Cannon and Cripps, Metropolitan, Tucker and Nankivel, Lorisch, and Le Grand.