346 Canterbury Road Ringwood, 3134

Dear Les,

This is the result of my study of William Mitchell's shorthand diary. I have thoroughly enjoyed the project, especially having worked on diaries in my own family, including one containing shorthand, which I discovered - after having solved it myself - was in Samuel Taylor's system. I enjoyed reading all William Mitchell's diaries and seeing the photos on the website. He looks just as I would have expected from the diaries! John's Moore family was living and mining in Chiltern in the 1870s, then selected land in the Riverina, and later had a farm near Wangaratta, all of which is not far away from the Mitchell family. So it was all interesting to me.

If this were my family diary, I would put with it some general explanatory notes about the diary and the shorthand, such as I have included here, and I would transcribe it in one of the ways I have suggested. But I am aware that it is not my family diary and that William's family might perhaps not care for an outsider offering opinions, and for this reason I have avoided writing in the first person. I hope that what I have written might be useful, but in any case, I have enjoyed doing it and am grateful far the opportunity. Naturally I would be interested to hear of any future developments with the diary.

Incidentally, after writing it all, I discovered that the page numbering in the print copy of the diary that Barbara passed to me does not exactly match the numbering on the CD you sent me! The CD is actually one ahead, so the page numbers I've quoted, which refer to the print copy, have to be read as the following page on the CD! I've put a note in to that effect.

Regards,

u