The national and international significance of the Wenz collection housed in Forbes has been recognised with a National Library heritage grant.

Books, photographs and artefacts that belonged to Paul and Hettie Wenz are now at the Forbes and District Historical Society Museum, and the $6900 grant will fund an assessment to see how best they can be preserved for future generations.

Paul Wenz is significant as a multicultural and transcultural writer in Australia and France, says Dr Merrill Findlay, who formally catalogued the local collection and applied for the grant.

"It's extraordinarily rare in Australia to have a collection like this of non-English writing," she said.

There are more than 600 books, including first editions of Paul's books, in the local collection.

More than half belonged to Hettie Wenz nee Dunne, whose annotations fill in many of the gaps in her life story and allow scholars to contextualize her youth in the 'Marvelous Melbourne' of the 1880s and her later life and travels.

The Wenzes made their home in Forbes, established Nanima Station on the Galari-Lachlan River, and it was here that Paul also embarked on his literary career.

Wenz was best known in Australia for his Diary of a New Chum, first published in Melbourne in 1908, and republished in 1990 as Diary of a New Chum and Other Lost Stories (Angus & Robertson), edited by Maurice Blackman.

A translation of The Thorn In The Flesh was published in 2004, and Their Fathers' Land: For King and Empire in 2018.

Paul Wenz was also a war correspondent for Australian publications during WWI (see Marie Ramsland, War, Writing and the Wenz Family attached) and wrote extensively, in English and French, about Australia's agricultural and pastoral industries from the perspective of a farmer and pastoralist.

The grant will enable the museum to engage a preservation consultant to assess the collection and make recommendations for its conservation.

From there, the museum can apply for funding to implement those recommendations and then move on to promoting the collection and making it accessible.

Capturing our shire's stories

The collection has inspired Merrill Findlay, with the volunteers of Galari River Arts, to create the Wenzday Project to capture another generation of stories of the Forbes shire.

The invitation is currently open to locals to write their stories for publication on a local website.

Stories can take the form of a memoir, a personal reflection, or a fictional tale set in Forbes Shire, what matters is that it’s about something, someone, a time or place that’s important to you.

Dr Findlay has already hosted one writing workshop for locals planning to submit stories and has another scheduled for Saturday, 13 December.

The workshops will focus on good writing and reader engagement, as well as research skills.

Writers have until Hettie's birthday, 28 January 2026, to submit their stories for editing.

The Wenzday Project will also be hosting a very special workshop with Canberra bookbinder Dr Louise Hamby, offering participants a chance to turn their Wenzday words into a physical keepsake.

You can find out more about the Wenzes and the writing project online at https://wenzdayproject.wordpress.com

The workshops can be booked online through Humanitix:

Bookbinding workshop: https://events.humanitix.com/https-wenzdayproject-wordpress-com-2025-program

Writing workshop: https://events.humanitix.com/https-wenzdayproject-wordpress-com-wenzday-workshops

Those who don't have access to Humanitix, can contact Monica Wren on 0414943248.