At the meeting held on 11th February, President Stephen Ritchie presented member Lewis Macey with Life Membership of the Society. Lew has been a long standing member of the Historical Society as well as the former Gwydir Family History Society.

Lew’s family has a long history in the north-west of NSW and this connection, along with his natural curiosity and bower-bird instincts have led him to a lifelong fascination with local history. This fascination, combined with his passion for photography, has resulted in an extensive personal record of social history of Moree Plains Shire, gathered over half a century and generously made available to Gwydir Family History Group and MDHS.

Since MDHS inherited the very considerable hard-copy collection of archival maps in 2020, Lew has worked on the painstaking task of cataloguing, preserving and storing the maps, to form a unique and most valuable resource for MDHS, as is Lew himself!