FAMILY HISTORY TIPS

Bronwyn Prater took a year to research and publish her family's history of life on an Orrvale orchard. Here are some tips from Ms Prater on researching family history.

1. Talk to the elder members of the family to get every bit of knowledge from them. Get them to write their own histories down, if they can.

2. Valuable websites: Ancestry.com; FamilySearch.org; trove.nla.gov.au; Google for family names.

3. Local family history societies are helpful, and they often have local farm records of crops and stock movements.

4. Public Records Office is useful for birth, death, and marriage certificates.

5. The website of the Australian War Memorial is a large and valuable source of diaries, letters and first-hand accounts.

6. The Church of the Latter Day Saints is a great resource of records — there is an office in Mooroopna near the police station.