Digitised World War One newspapers

The State Library of Victoria has undertaken a project to digitise a number of World War One newspapers and these papers are now available on Trove - http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper  With the centenary of the commencement of the War in 2014 it is expected that there will be a huge amount of interest in how our ancestors and our community lived during this time and the  local newspapers will  provide a wonderful resource to both local and family historians. The newspapers were selected to provide as  broad a coverage of Victoria as possible and the papers  for the Casey Cardinia region are the Pakenham Gazette and its forerunner the Berwick Shire News which  have now been digitised from 1914 until 1918 as has the Lang Lang Guardian. The Bunyip Free Press is available from 1914 to 1915. The South Bourke and Mornington Journal has also been digitised previously and also covers much of our region, as does the West Gippsland Gazette.

Berwick Shire News and Pakenham and Cranbourne Gazette  8 September 8,  1915, pg 3

National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92095834

The papers recorded sad news such as the death of local soldiers including Private Frank Leigh A'Beckett, who was the son of the grandly named Edward Fitzhayley A'Beckett and his wife, Jane Deodata A'Beckett (nee Bourke). 

Pakenham Gazette and Berwick Shire News   June 15,  1917, page 2

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article92153530

The women also played their role in the War effort, some of course served as nurses overseas, but for the women who remained at home they worked on the family farms, fund raised for patriotic causes, joined the Red Cross, or as we can see from this report, knitted sock for the soldiers.