130 years of history saved from a Canberra rubbish tip

Though the morning was chilly as she left Campbell in the ACT bound for the Bega Pioneers Museum, her heart was warmed by the thoughts of returning a treasure trove to the place it belonged.

"When I put [the boxes] in my car last night, I felt a bit odd, because I had been living with it for four years in my house, it's like an old friend," Pam said.

"I was sad because it is the end of the era with her stuff up there, but I just feel so fantastic that this stuff has found its home."

After her step-mother Norma Steele (nee Bodycote), moved into a nursing home, Pam was tasked with the job of clearing out her previous house. In turn she inherited boxes of family history documents.

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"Everything just got put in a storage shed out in Fyshwick in Canberra, and when I was going through it all I just discovered all this material in boxes. It was everywhere, and I collected everything and took it back to my place," Pam said.

"I think I looked at it for about a year before I decided that something's got to be done about it.

"And then I noticed there was a lot of stuff in there relating to Bega, Mogilla and so on, and so I looked up on the internet and found the Bega Pioneers Museum and sent an email down, and Kaye Jauncey said they'd be interested."

Within the collection were newspaper clippings and photograph albums that captured day trips in a Chrysler Plymouth to Seahorse Inn during 1946 with 'Victor', diaries written by her mother in 1893 and 1897, and her mum's collection of recipes.

"I think most people from my experience would look at it and think it would be too hard and time consuming and they would just give up," Pam said.

She said many people would find sorting through someone's history as too overwhelming, and would do what many generations have done before and taken social history to the rubbish tip.

"It's not every day someone turns up from Canberra with a person's entire life given I'm not her direct relative. And given my interest, I wouldn't dream of throwing them away, so she's lucky I was the one who was delegated to pick it all up and sort it all," Pam said.

In a letter Norma wrote in 2009, she captured a myriad recollections she had during the 1930s with her dear friend Ruby as they lived on properties a mile apart in Mogilla, between Bemboka and Candelo.

"Off to school we'd go, down the paddock passing by the freshly milked cows, cross over the creek on the rocks making sure we didn't fall in [because] there was no bridge in those days," an excerpt of Norma's writing said.