STORIES of World War I have been immortalised by the Darlington Point Heritage Society.
Mona Finley is a member of the society and the person in charge of putting the book together.
She said said it was important for members of the public to have access to the historical documents included in the book.
“The idea was to bring the public’s attention to these war records,” she said.
“It is based on an album that was created at the time of the First World War by a local women who was the wife of a policeman at the time.
“She collected documents that local people wrote about serviceman in their family or some of them were from serviceman themselves. It snowballed from there as people also thought to put a cousin or another relative.
“It is not just on Darlington Point, it actually extends as far as England.”
There was a lot of research undertaken by Mrs Finley to complete this collection.
“The book took seven years to complete,” she said.
“I was basically the only one working on putting it together but I enjoyed it because I love to do research.
“We were fortunate enough to receive an ANZAC Centenary grant that we used to cover the cost of publication.
“We put in a lot of work to allow the book to be accessible to anyone who wants to read it. All of the hand written pages have been transcribed so that it is easier to read.
“A bit of research was needed to do that because at some stages it was not entirely clear who the serviceman was because they forgot or didn’t know the service number.
“There were also instances of people with the wrong name. It is not usual for people to be known as something other than their birth name.
“We had someone who was called Harry in the documents but his actual name was Fredrick.”
The heritage society hosted a launch event that was attended by a federal MP.
“On Saturday, August 27 we hosted our book launch that was attended by The Honourable Linda Burney the Member for Barton who was born in Whitton and was specially invited because the book features people from Whitton.”
For those anyone looking to buy the book it is on sale for $30 through Heritage Darlington Point.
“You can get in touch with Heritage Darlington Point at P.O Box 72 Darlington Point or email heritagedp@hotmail.com,” she said.
“There will be extra cost for postage so we recommend whenever possible to come and collect it yourself or have someone you know pick it up.
“We will also be selling copies at the Darlington Point Spring Fair coming up on Saturday, September 24.”
