Dr Susan Walter is a professional historian who originally worked as an agricultural scientist, focusing on quality assurance and technical management in horticulture and organic waste-management. After researching and writing local history on a voluntary basis for the Malmsbury Historical Society, she combined a passion for natural landscapes, maps, land use history and science in her 2019 doctoral thesis at Federation University Australia titled Malmsbury Bluestone and Quarries: Finding Holes in History and Heritage.

Tara Oldfield is the senior communications advisor at Public Record Office Victoria where she delves into fascinating files of Victoria’s past, writes regular blogs for the PROV website and presents episodes of the award-winning Look History in the Eye podcast. Tara has written articles for history publications such as Traces Magazine and Ancestor. Last year she won a Mander Jones Award for her short archival story Bitter Salts.

Author email: tara.oldfield@prov.vic.gov.au

Dr Sarah Mirams is an independent historian who specialises in environmental history, historic archaeology and archival research. Sarah’s early career was in secondary education and she worked as an education officer at Museums Victoria and Heritage Council Victoria. Sarah lectured and tutored at Monash University and Federation University. She is the author of ‘Escaping the Claws of the Machine’: A History of the Darebin Parklands and ‘Coasts of Dream’: A Biography of EJ Brady.

Chris Carpenter grew up in Ballarat, Victoria, and has researched his family history for over two decades. He now lives in Melbourne and enjoys assisting other people researching their family history.

Author email: chriscarpenter.au@gmail.com

Ann Hodgkinson has a PhD in economics and worked for over 25 years as a university academic in Victoria and New South Wales, examining regional development, small business and environmental economics. On retirement she completed a Graduate Diploma in Local, Family and Applied History at the University of New England. She began volunteering at the Bellarine Historical Society, Drysdale, where she is now president. Ann combines her prior knowledge of economics with new skills in historical research, focusing on the colonial economic history of her local area.

Sarah Harris is a Senior Analyst, Records and Archives at Public Record Office Victoria.

Andrew J May is a professor of history in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

Author email:  a.may@unimelb.edu.au

Malcolm Campbell is a retired construction industry commercial manager whose interest in scales, weights and measures was sparked by the find of a half pennyweight weight in the Amherst goldfields while metal detecting. From this find ensued a hobby of collecting gold scales and weights. He soon noticed stamps that were not verification stamps of the UK. These small stamps, 3–5 millimetres across, were of a Crown above a letter and a number and ‘VIC’. Eventually, finding out that they were from Victoria, the search began for the system of numbering and its meaning.