collecting - It's cinderella time~ "Snooky ookums"

On Friday 19th September 1913, the members of the Ship's Company
of RMS "Omrah" in the Indian Ocean, performed "Snooky Ookums"
the Irving Berlin song, for all those in attendance.

Floating around in the bottom of a phossick box of mine, was the programme
that evening,
it had no philatelic relevance, but in keeping with the long and honoured
system of philately, of not discarding material, I glanced at it and left it
alone
to remain with all the other junk, undisturbed.
http://cjoint.com/data/gBoZQ83SPW.htm
http://cjoint.com/data/gBo0LCbnlM.htm
Some years later, it suddenly sprang to prominence, as the "Omrah" took
centre stage in one of Australia's most fascinating cinderellas.
On some KG5 sidefaces, someone had overprinted "A.I.F" and
the source at that time was unknown.

A philatelic detective (as it turned out, incorrectly) surmised the
overprints had
originated from the "Omrah" as it was amongst "convoy 28" by connecting
the censor mark to the ship, to the AIF overprints.

I'll let Mr. Ronald M Lee, explain the rest......
One would be remiss when writing about Convoy 28 if mention was not made of
an error made recently by one writer in identifying the ship from which the
AIF overprints emanated. It is important to examine every possible source of
information before reaching a conclusion.

In this instance, the writer based his conclusion mainly on his
understanding that a particular censor mark was used only by the Omrah. He
did not consult the shipping lists which establishes that the covers posted
at Durban and Freetown were posted there when the Omrah was in Australian
waters and therefore could not have been posted from it.

This shows that some of the information published earlier about censor marks
was incorrect. This is not intended as a criticism of the author. At least
he has

a view and has published it and, as a result of his work, others have
investigated further and drawn different conclusions. It is inevitable that
mistakes will occur and that further research by others will, from time to
time, change conclusions reached. Don't let this discourage anyone from
publishing results of their observations and research.

It is necessary, however, to guard against producing articles which will
mislead others, particularly future collectors and students, who may be
studying the article many years from now. I would suggest that if the
following points are taken into account they wiR go a long way towards
avoiding this problem.

* Let another collector in your collecting area see your writings before
publication;

* Distinguish clearly between fact and hypothesis;

* Always give a full list of references;

* Summarise what has already been published and on that basis, introduce
your new findings;

* Remember to consult material in your collection and in others. So often
collectors become so involved in searching the archives that they omit to
see the postal evidence in their collections.

I hope these few remarks will encourage many more to publish their views and
findings.

"Australians at war" ...WW1 "troopship mail part2" Australian Stamp News
July 1991