Community
8 October, 2025
Seeking historical volunteers
THE Cobden and District Historical Society are seeking history or photography enthusiasts to volunteer in helping them create a database of photos from the past.
While the society is in possession of potentially hundreds of photos, they currently have no central database where the photos can be accessed.
The society is aiming to scan the photos and upload them to a digital archive so when someone comes to ask about a person or place, they’ll be able to find it with ease.
Cobden and District Historical Society secretary Delia Kerr said this was an opportunity to preserve stories of Cobden’s past.
“We have something like over 500 photos here and lots of them we don’t know much about, but lots of them we do, too,” she said.
“There’s some amazing photos and they go back a long way.
“We did some William Orton slides – he used to live in Cobden.
“William Orton came and went – he came in 1889 and he was gone by 1920, but he was here and he had a general store and he made a bit of an impression in the town.
“He was also a prolific photographer, so he got the social history of the town and district of that era, which is priceless.
“We had glass negatives restored and they were photos taken in Cobden between 1890 and 1920.”
Mrs Kerr said it was imperative to get the database up and running in case something happened to the physical copies of the photos stored in the Old Chocolyn Hall.
“Nothing’s gone onto the database – it’s all got to be done, so we are seeking some assistance from the public,” she said.
“It’s a pipe dream, but Colac have got it – they’ve got nearly 300 names of people that have lived in Colac with histories of all those people.
“At the moment, if something happens to this building, the images are gone.
“We’re hoping to get backups so we’d always have them catalogued.”
October is History Month, which Mrs Kerr said made it the perfect time to get a start on uploading photos of Cobden’s history to the database.
“We want these photos on a database so that when people come in, and say ‘Can you tell me about William Orton,’ I can drag all the photos and history up about William Orton,” she said.
“All in one place – that’s what we’re aiming for.
“As it’s History Month, it would definitely be a good nod to history to get this going.
“Already too much time has lapsed for a lot of these photos, and for some of them it hasn’t, therefore we’re trying to save what we can for future generations.
“Hopefully along the way some people will come in and say, ‘That’s my grandmother,’ that’s what we really want in the end.”
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