A DISCARDED wartime certificate belonging to a Queanbeyan serviceman and historian has been gifted to the city’s history collection he once contributed to.

The historic commendation from “The Citizens of the Municipality of Queanbeyan and the Shire of Yarrowlumla” and awarded to Philip “Bert” Sheedy, was found by The Green Shed in Canberra – meaning it nearly ended up in the tip.

Who knows where it had come from, but Green Shed co-owner Sandie Parkes happened upon the relic and got in touch with Queanbeyan’s local history librarian Brigid Whitbread.

“When I found out Sandie had come across this certificate I could barely believe it,” says Brigid.

“Bert is a foundation of the local history collection and was instrumental in the information that’s been salvaged and recorded here.”

The certificate, which Brigid says is in “remarkable” condition, was awarded to Bert for “a great duty nobly done” with the 3rd Australian Infantry Battalion and the 7th Australian Machine Gun battalion AIF in New Guinea during World War II.

Following his service, Bert became an avid collector of history in Queanbeyan.

Today, dozens of cabinets filled with his writing and research form part of the same history collection the certificate now joins – records that were donated by Bert’s family after he died in 2000.

“There’s endless correspondence between him and people looking for info about their homes and families,” says Brigid.

“He made many contributions to historic journals and articles and was the author of ‘Moneroo to Monaro: history of Monaro Street, 1830s-1995, Queanbeyan’.”

She also says Bert helped record three large volumes of “Queanbeyan Pioneer Cemeteries, Burials and Index”.

Those records today allow people to go online and look up where particular members of the community have been buried.

“Bert and a team went around cemeteries and wrote down who was buried where and checked records,” she says.

“They were researching in the days when computers weren’t even a dream, so Bert and the team physically went through all these records – a very time-consuming, laborious process and they still managed to garner all that information.”

The Sheedy family arrived from Ireland as bounty immigrants in 1841, later becoming farmers in the Yarralumla area.

Bert was born under a wagon in Bowral in 1921 while his family were taking cattle to the Sydney show from Tuggeranong and arrived with his parents in Queanbeyan at around 18 months of age.

On top of his military service, he also worked with the Attorney-General’s Department, the Prime Minister’s Department and with the Commonwealth Police.

His wife Marjorie was also a passionate local history advocate.

Together they were founding members of the Queanbeyan Museum in 1969 and the famous “Tree of Knowledge”, on the corner of Monaro and Crawford streets, stands today because they and other Queanbeyan citizens fought against its removal in the 1960s.

Sheedy Lane, which runs past the front of Queanbeyan Woolworths, was named in memory of Bert in 2001.

Given all these achievements and more, Brigid says his certificate will have a careful restoration and be remounted in its frame, to ensure it is preserved for many years to come.

“I think Bert would have been really happy to know it had come back to the collection,” she says.

It’s not the first time a significant relic of Queanbeyan’s past has nearly gone to the tip.

Last year The Green Shed uncovered a NSW bank ledger from 1885 that was also donated to the collection.

“I think today there’s a bit more of an urgency to throw things away,” says Brigid.

“Say someone dies or has to go to a nursing home, then there’s pressure for a house to be sold or if it’s a rental, to be returned to the landlord.

“In these situations there’s no time to find what’s valuable, what isn’t, and what should go to someone who’d appreciate it and that’s why these things end up in skips, because people suddenly have no time to think about it.”

Brigid is encouraging people to ponder on their possessions and consider whether they might be able to be passed on to future generations before it’s too late.

“There’s so much to learn from previous generations and previous communities,” she says.

“These physical items, they make our history more real.”