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Louis Kessler’s Behold Blog

UTP 10 - Days 10 and 11 - Wed, 24 Feb 2016

#UTPCruise - New Zealand was an amazingly beautiful scenery and contrasts. We head now for Sydney, Australia a city whose 4.6 million people are more than the number of people in all of New Zealand.

Our 2nd day at sea on the way to Sydney gave another opportunity for a full slate of talks.

Some of the talks I attended included Helen Smith on “Using timelines in genealogical research”.

Then Rosemary Kopittke who introduced our cruise prize sponsors.

In the afternoon, I presented my 3rd talk: “Organizing your genealogy computer files”. This was partly a continuation of my first talk on source-based genealogy. Storing by source is not something that seems natural at first, and there were some comments disagreeing with it. But it is a real alternative that I use and I think many people should consider for themselves.

Following me, Diane Foster spoke on preservation.

Later on in the afternoon, Judy Russell gave a superb talk about DNA.

Day 11 we were in Sydney. My wife and I spent a week in Sydney three years ago when we were there for the 3rd Unlock the Past genealogy cruise. We had done most of the touristy things then, so we chose the day to walk up George Street and visit our old haunts, including our favorite Lindt Chocolate shop at Darling Harbour. It was hot, 32 C., and over five hours, we took 16,000 steps and must have gone into a hundred stores and passed thousands of others.

We were tired so I missed Shauna Hicks evening talk about finding ancestors using prison records.

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UTP 10 - Days 6, 7, 8 and 9 - Mon, 22 Feb 2016

#UTPCruise - Day 6 we were tendered in Akaroa, New Zealand where I spent the day with penguins and sheep. Paul Blake gave the feature talk that evening:

Day 7 was Dunedin, New Zealand, where we visited Botanical Gardens, a magnificent historic house, and a wonderful museum with a Sir Edmund Hillary display and artifacts. In the evening, Janet Russell presented “Women under the Common Law”.

Day 8 we travelled through three breathtaking fiords of New Zealand: Dusky Sound, Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound, followed by Jan Gow’s talk.

Day 9: Finally a full day at sea allowing a full slate of 8 talks, including my 2nd talk which was on Using Life Events and Ages.

I also had an announcement:

That evening, we had a rather exciting panel about “Future Proofing Your Genealogy”. Interesting and very different opinions on this. My ideas seem to be a bit different from everyone else’s and I’ll have to present them in a future blog post.

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UTP 10 - Days 3, 4 and 5 - Fri, 19 Feb 2016

#UTPCruise - this is a long cruise being 18 days, and we start with many days that we dock at a new city. On those days, all the genealogy cruisers have the day off to visit the destination and to take whatever tour or to relax and catch their breath. Those days, we only have a single talk at 8 p.m. following our group supper.

Day 3 we were in Tauranga, and six of us went to Middle Earth:

Then, that evening at 8:


Day 4 was a day at sea. On these days, we have a full slate of speakers usually with 6 talks scheduled during the day and also the 8 p.m. evening talk. This day, I listened to Geoff Doherty’s talk on Joseph Dunn’s family fracture. At 10 a.m., I gave my first of 8 talks. This one was “How to improve your research with source-based research”. I took the rest of the afternoon off to get a sunburn by the pool, and came back at 4 p.m. for the bookshop and research help zone session.

Dinner was followed by Shauna Hicks’ story about her DNA research and the perils it threw upon her:

The next day, day 5, we were in Windy Wellington. My personal journey was a visit to the Weta studios, Mt. Victoria including the site where the first shots for Lord of the Rings with Frodo and friends hiding in the forest from the Black Riders (see #11 on this page), a visit to the magnificent Wellington Te Papa Museum and downtown Wellington.

That evening after supper, Helen Smith spoke on “Health of the ANZACs in the Great War”.

Much more to come. :-)

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