Yesterday I was surprised and delighted to be invited to join the Heritage Committee of the Woodlands Golf Club.

Ever since I wrote the article about the fascinating story of the Mayfield Estate that used to be on the golf course grounds since the mid-1800s and demolished in 2002, I’ve had members come up to me and say how much they enjoyed the intriguing (but sad) story of the family who lived there.

The story of Mayfield captured my attention that I had gone down a rabbit hole to learn more. My curiosity had me searching on Trove archives for more. I pulled everything I could find and then wrote the sad story of the man deemed a lunatic by the state and who locked himself up in his grilled jail cell of a bedroom to prevent himself from wandering the woodland bush in the area.

My article was first published in the Women’s Newsletter then the main newsletter that went out to every member by email. People called me, sent me text messages and approached me at the club to introduce themselves and say their thank you for the story.

In some way, I’m glad I kept the story of Edward and his mother, a Brazilian sugar plant heiress, the mistress to his father, a French Count and explorer whose work is in the Melbourne Museum. Stories fascinate me and it’s one that had to be re-told and kept alive.

Before I was due to tee-off one day this week, I expressed to a fellow player how it’s the stories and anecdotes that are lost in history. I said to them,

“We will be someone’s history tomorrow. Our stories need to be captured so they don’t get lost. We can have formal minutes of meetings, trinkets and photographs but what we don’t have are the stories of how, what and why they happened.”

In some way I had been thinking that even though we have social media and photos online nowadays, we cannot trust that these will be around forever online as platforms can morph or die off before we see an Internet 404 page. People also don’t share stories in-depth with the heart and passion when they speak to others versus how they express themselves when posting online through the social media apps in stilted, short format. Our WhatsApp conversations can be part of history because they’re not public, they’re the most real. Part of me thinks that elements of these can also be used as historical markers of human interaction over a collective experience that may be lost over time. I digress….

That then made them think of current long term members who have these stories. Who have experienced the changes of a club that evolves through the changes in society. It would be wonderful to capture the oral history and stories of these people do that they’re not lost.

I have ideas of how to do this through audio and video recording and I have the skills to do this however, I’m not going to prompt and be proactive to the point that I bamboozle others. I’d like to take a different approach this time. Instead I’d like to simply observe and then contribute where I can and do the best job. I get too excited at times when it comes to ideas that overtake me. I need to read the room a lot more. That’s one thing I’ve learned about myself reflecting on my professional work situations over the past.

I’ll be meeting with the committee next week to learn more about my new role. It’s wonderful to find something that aligns to what I wanted to do. I’ll be exploring the archives, collecting and collating historic items, discovering and researching and then making and keeping history.