This time last year (2019) the South east of Australia was being devastated by bushfires.  Many lives where lost along with property and animals.  A friend of mine escaped with a plastic bag of belongings, everything else was incinerated. The evening TV news at the time bought numerous accounts of those who had suffered lost.

Yes, there were tears over the loss but one of the most devastating thing mentioned by many of those who told of those losses was the loss of the family photo albums.  It was the loss of family history that had the most impact.

I can relate to that emotional turmoil when family archives are lost.  In my bid to make sure no such accident happened I kept my family archives in a safe place.  Unfortunately when I moved house somehow the ‘safe place’ proved otherwise and after the move I discovered, to my bitter anguish, that the material had been accidentally confined to the rubbish.  Fortunately, I had scanned and uploaded much of that material onto my computer which meant I still had access to this irreplaceable data.  But a computer will not survive a house fire.

I now follow a policy that all family material and photographs are uploaded and not only kept on my computer but also stored in the ‘cloud’.  Much of that material finds its way onto this website which means it is available to anyone with a computer.  The bulk of material is stored out of harms way.  If I lose my computer and I can access the information from another computer.

I live by bitter experience and the family history now remains safe from fire and damage and stored where I cannot make a regrettable mistake and confine it to the rubbish.