On the beach

Q: What does this beach have to do with my genealogy?


A: Nothing that I'm aware of.

It's Broulee Beach, New South Wales. I was there last week, on holiday.

During the day we did all the coastal holiday-type things you do with a 3 year old and a (nearly) 1 year old. We played on the beach, visited the zoo, found some playgrounds, wandered around the shops, and waited for hours in the ER because the baby had broken out in spots from head to toe...

In the evening, when the children were asleep, we quickly gave up on television and settled into other quiet activities.

I had my laptop, but only a very expensive pre-paid mobile internet connection. The internet famine turned out to be a good thing for my genealogy. Before I left home I installed Dropbox on both my desktop and laptop. I had been meaning to try Dropbox, and this was the perfect oppurtunity. Dropbox synchronises files between your computers and acts as an offsite backup. It has a few other claims, but the effortless file synchronisation was the feature of interest to me.

I was very pleased with how it worked. I made sure that I turned Dropbox file checking and synch off while I was away, so I wouldn't waste my limited internet connection. I turned the file sync back on again at home and my changes appeared on my desktop computer with no more effort by me. Easy.

The files I worked on were pages from the Australian Electoral Rolls, which I had downloaded from Ancestry two years ago. I had 107 pages, each with 1-5 people of interest. For each person the rolls give the name, address and occupation. As Australia had (and has) compulsory voting, they are very nice for following people's movements and career changes over time.

I made a start on the data entry back in 2007, but couldn't face doing the rest. While I was away, I managed to enter 3-4 pages each night. I still have 61 pages left to go, but the task doesn't seem quite so daunting. I just have to make sure I keep chipping away at it.

I'll talk more about how I'm using the Electoral Roll information another time.