State Records Office of Western Australia

CSO Digitisation Project

Digitisation of the Colonial Secretary’s Office correspondence is progressing well. The SRO has engaged Dr Gabriel Maddock for the digitisation work, with the first 40 volumes (1828-1835) digitised to date.

 

UWA Collaboration Project

The SRO has embarked on 2 new partnership projects with UWA ICT students this year. The aim of these projects is to give the students hands on experience working with a client such as the SRO, to build tools that will have benefits for our office and the public.

One of these projects centres on a new tool to assist our internal digitisation process, to automate some functions such as file naming of images, improved uploading and access to digitised archives on our internal systems, and better data validation / file integrity.

The other project is to build a new web tool that incorporates transcription software, to automatically transcribe handwritten documents uploaded to it. Many of the records held in the State Archives Collection are in handwritten form (typewriters were not introduced to WA until the 1890s and even then, there were very few). Having software that can transcribe such records when digitised, to make that content text searchable, would unlock important information in these records and would significantly improve online access to historical information. While this project is a proof of concept, we expect it will provide important learnings and serve as a stepping stone for technical improvements we can later put into production.

 

Public Programs

The SRO has been back on 6PR Radio, talking about the history of the dairy industry in WA (6 April).

The SRO and SLWA delivered a joint public presentation “Tales of the Unexpected” talking about intriguing items in our respective collections for the Boorloo Heritage Festival (3 April).

The SRO and SLWA delivered a joint presentation to Notre Dame University archaeology students about records and published items in our respective collections relating to Guildford Gaol (28 March).

​

​

Consignment 3651: Return of prisoners committed for trial at Supreme Court (Criminal Sittings). Previously just catalogued as Returns of prisoners committed for trial 1860-1887, there are 35 items now listed including item 31 Supreme Court sittings 17/8/1885 when in Perth Gaol were Abraham Krakoner (free), John Gould (6305), Daniel Johnson (8613 / 10175), Horace Coe (9690). Item 07 Convict details - Robert Morrison, no. 7797 gives discipline details 1864 – 1866. Check out Cons3651 to see the full set. Our thanks to SRO’s volunteer Adam O’Neill in listing these records.
Consignment 3393 - W.A. Government Railways staff record cards. The Railways was always considered as an employer of men but, of course, there were women in various roles in the past although certainly not in the vein of locomotive driving and other fields that would have been closed to them, but in which they now participate. The record cards usually name women as Mrs or Miss, although of course the male cards never recorded Mr. But this enables us to search by Cons3393 AND Mrs (or Cons3393 AND miss) and study the roles that women played in the Government Railways of W.A. Some of these were seamstress, office cleaner, cook, attendant, typist, Refreshment Services attendant, female clerk and the rather nondescript title Female worker. Of interest is that during the 1940s war years, there are some female tram conductors and in the 1960s a touch of modernism was in place for the woman who was a Trainee key punch operator. Two prominent roles for women even from the early 1900s were Siding Caretaker and Barracks Caretaker. The latter could be considered to fit the role of women in society at the time as they would keep the barracks clean and perhaps undertake some kitchen and other duties. The barracks were where train crew slept overnight while on a long working away from their home-town or depot. Siding Caretaker, however, was a more substantial role with the caretaker responsible for incoming parcels and other small consignments. Caretakers were found in larger towns, often being replaced by a station master when business grew. But they could also be found at stations where the station master had been withdrawn as business lessened, such as Murrin Murrin and Morgans on the Laverton branch. There were also caretakers at many small sidings where there may just have been a general store, hall and school, if that. The wheatbelt sidings of Benjaberring, Bungulla and Mandiga being three examples. Men were also siding caretakers and sometimes there were two or more family members undertook the position. At Mandiga Fritz Leuba was caretaker 1924-1929 then the job was taken on by C C Leuba until June 1930. Unfortunately, many of the caretaker staff were only noted by initials and not full names, and some were Honorary Caretakers whereas the others would receive an income. We are now well into surnames beginning with “W” for importing Consignment 3393 names into the online catalogue.
We’ve also previously mentioned Consignment 3580, Supreme Court plaint files 1881 – 1940s, which is another ongoing project with regular additions to the catalogue. 1940s are being input and there’s an interesting theme developing. In the 1920s we began to find many motor vehicle accidents in the case files. In the 1940s we’re seeing a lot of accidents involving various defence force personnel and not only Australian, but many United States forces men were being summoned in relation to accidents. We could speculate that it was getting used to driving on the left side of the road. File 1944/E011 involved the death of Thomas Enright from injuries in motor car accident, driven by Charles Edward Bartram, of United States Navy. 1945/W014 was even more specific - Jean Daphne Willis (formerly Wilson) vs The Commonwealth of Australia in relation to No. 3061288 John William Spanton of Naval Forces of the United States of America, and the death of Cuthbert James Gray John Wilson on 18th August 1945.

Cancelled public plan townsite cadastral maps. There are presently over 9,200 items of consignment 7561 in the online catalogue and we are now almost at the end of towns beginning with “W”. Two examples of recent inputs are Wialki and Wongan Hills. This listing project should be finished by July. 

We’ve long held considerable records of the government owned Wyndham Meatworks and a major processing job was undertaken by SRO Archivist Helen Hopper. Among the series processed are Alphabetical files, Cattle statistics and results, Plans, Salaries registers, and various financial and miscellaneous records. The salaries registers, covering 1920 – 1959 include head office salary and wage sheets, while the alphabetical files include union matters and correspondence with the Main Roads and Public Works Departments (the latter controlling the Wyndham jetty through which the meatworks sent much of its production).