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John Oxley Library

Researching family history with the Torres News

By Tania Schafer, Librarian, State Library of Queensland | 18 February 2020

The Torres News is a fantastic resource for Torres Strait Islanders researching their family history. This newspaper has been digitised and is available online on Trove Newspapers.

Here I am going to demonstrate a basic family history search. First I will search the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Mura Collections Catalogue - Australian Biographical Index (ABI).

For example let's search for Tom Sebasio in AIATSIS Mura catalogue.

Example of name searching on Mura catalogue.

The result tells me that Tom Sebasio was mentioned in the Torres Strait News: The voice of the Islands edition Number 439 page 12.

To access to the article online I can search for the Torres Strait News on Trove Newspapers.

Torres News on Trove Newspapers

Once in Trove Newspapers I can search for the article using the information from Mura, or use the date of publication to view the full edition.

Tom Sebasio information

The article tells me that Lieutenant Tom Sebaisio was 1 of 1000 soldiers who took part in the Army's 100th Birthday Celebrations in Canberra. Tom was part of a contingent from 51 FNQR who took part in a parade of colours at the event in 2001.

Tania Schafer - Librarian, State Library of Queensland

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