But one Wagga history buff has taken his commitment to reading the local paper to a whole new level. 

Neil Dallinger has spent the last 20 years recording each and every birth, death, marriage, and in memorium featured in The Daily Advetiser and The Weekend Advertiser.

Now, after two decades of sheer diligence, Mr Dallinger is finally able to sit back and soak up the fruits of his labour – an incredible database of more than 35,900 entries that, when printed, spans a massive 1174 pages. 

Mr Dallinger, who is now the president of the Family History Society, said he did not know how huge the project would eventually become when he started it.

“It was just a task I thought I could tackle as a member of the Family History Society – I wasn't president in those days, but I just thought I could do it,” he said. 

“In the beginning, I didn’t know how long I'd go for, but when I got to about 17 years I thought I would make it a 20 year project and then we’d produce a CD on behalf of the Family History Society.” 

While most people would find a project of this size daunting, Mr Dallinger said he enjoyed every step of the journey. 

“I manually wrote out every entry from the paper, then I took the piece of paper and typed it up the computer,” he said. 

“If I went away on holidays, I would make sure that I had the paper kept for me until I got home, or I would get the e-edition and update my records daily while I was on holidays.” 

The product of this 20 year venture is far more than a quirky history project – Mr Dallinger’s database contains information that cannot be found anywhere else.

“The Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages have certain time limits on the information you can access – for example, you can’t look up births more recent than 100 years ago, marriages more recent than 50 years ago, and deaths more recent than 30 years ago,” he said.

“Our database is modern – you can’t access this information elsewhere – and I don’t think anyone else in Wagga or anywhere else for that matter has actually done this before.” 

The best part? Mr Dallinger is still recording each and every birth, death, marriage, and in memorium featured in the paper to this day.

“I'm still going through the paper every day and, as long as I'm able to, I'll keep going through the paper every day,” he said. 

“I've even already done today's paper!” 

Mr Dallinger is now selling copies of his impressive database for just $20, and all the proceeds will go to funding Wagga’s Family History Society.