The Obernewtyn Fan Club was created in September 1999 by myself, Shannon Jones, a then year 9 student and avid fan of the Obernewtyn Chronicles. When I had an operation to have my wisdom teeth out in those September school holidays I wasn't really able to go out in public for more than a week afterwards as my face was very swollen and bruised and I looked like Frankenstein's monster. So rather than watch horrible daytime television for 2 weeks I decided to do something useful and create a website. So I did, and this is the product of the humble beginnings that were the 'Unofficial Obernewtyn Chronicles Fan Club'.

About 6 months after the site was off and rolling, Isobelle Carmody sent me an e-mail saying how impressed she was with the site and gave her permission (as she holds her own copyright) for it to be known as the Official Obernewtyn Chronicles fan club, should we wish it. However after much umm-ing and aah-ing I decided not to switch the title because I liked the quirky ring that 'Unofficial' always brings to an internet presence.

Also not so long after the kick-off of the site a member joined up who went by the nickname Vivacia. As she knew HTML (the language of writing webpages) herself she offered to help me out with some maintaining things on the site. Although she started small, Vivacia does probably more work on the site than I do now! A lot of what the site is today is owed to her and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank her for all she's done.

Viv and I both live in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. I am currently in year 11 of high school (on the home stretch!) and Viv is studying illustration at Chisholm Institute.

Several months after the site's birth the members were split into 4 guilds. We decided not to name them after the actual guild in the book for a few reasons: a) we didn't have anough people to fill more than 4 and b) if you were put in the teknoguild, for example, but your favourite Talent was farseeking, you might get peeved that you weren't in the Farseeker's guild instead. So we split into four guilds and asked them to come up with their own names. The result was the Wanderer's, Dreamweaver's, Ashling's and Mystic's guilds.

After over a year at annoying free hosting servers, I finally saved up the money to get us our own domain (as the club does not make any income and spending comes out of my pocket) - obernewtyn.net!

For now, we are content with giving fans of the series a place to talk about it and not go too insane in the wait for the fifth and final book ("The Sending") to be released. So sit back, relax and have a wander through our Obernewtyn. You can stop and have a chat to some fellow misfits along the way. You'll find me in the Master of Obernewtyn's quarters. :-)

The 2005 Update

Hey all, it's Min here. Just an update for all of you reading through wondering when the likes of the Master of Obernewtyn-ers came from as well.

Continuing from where Shannon left off, after being a member of Obernewtyn.net since February 2000, I asked Viv in an msn chat if she needed any help converting Obernewtyn.net over from it's old (black and green) format to it's new spiffy lavender format, as the site is quite large, and we weren't using style sheets at that time. It was at that time that Viv asked if I would be interested in making one of my other sites, (www.obernewtyn-theories.com, closed now, I've since combined it into obernewtyn.net), official sister site of Obernewtyn.net.
After skulking in the background updating pages here and there, Viv and Shannon gave me an obernewtyn.net email address and I officially became a new 'silent' web tech. Around the same time I was brought on board, so were Clare and Avra. Both have their own stories as to how they joined and I'll leave it for them to tell you

So, what was two became five - and let me tell you, at the rate the site was growing (and is still growing!), it needed 5 people to maintain it!

In about May of 2004, our original message boards hosted by Network 54 were raided by both invaders and spammers. One of our long time members Timm suggested that we look into proboards.com message boards systems - and we haven't turned back! Opening at the end of May 2004, proboards has definately brought the community spirit of Obernewtyn out in all of us - replacing the old message boards with an organised log in system. With the addition of a Members Only Area, in which people are personally screened by Obernewtyn.net Master's of Obernewtyn to gain access, we've made it made Obernewtyn.net more secure for our members than ever.

Shannon contacted Viv, Avra, Clare and I near the end of 2004 and notified us that she hadn't been on the site for such a long time, she was handing over the site details to us. Shannon is and always will be the Master of Obernewtyn - we'll always leave the doors open to you! *sniff*. Along with Shannon's semi-departure came Viv's notification that she still wishes to be a member of the site but cannot afford the time to maintain it any longer. *grugs Viv and Shannon*

When we were setting up proboards, I asked a few of our regular members to beta test the message boards for us. One of these members was the Buneater, of Sustinare Ridiculum fame. She was immediately made a Master of Obernewtyn at proboards thanks to her integrity, and so it was only a matter of time before Avra, Clare and I made Buneater an official Obernewtyn.net web tech. After a year an a half of being an extremely valuable web tek, Bunne resigned as a MoO to give her more time to pursue her writing career. Good luck Bunne!

Months later, with more and more work piling up, we decided to ask another long time member Emerald to become a Master of Obernewtyn as well. Emerald had been one of the dedicated Moonfairies and the Dreamweaver guildmistress at the time, plus managed (and still manages) the Obernewtyn.net library - so again, it was only a logical progression to make her position official

So, we are now four. Avra, Emerald, Clare and myself - a MoO representative for each Guild. We are all available on email via the Contact page if you have any questions or comments.
I would like to take a moment to thank our forebearers and leaders as well, without whom this site would not have gotten off the ground let alone survived - Vivacia and Shannon, site creators extrodinare, and of course Bunne.

The 2007 update

And here's the latest! 2006 was a huge year for Obernewtyn.net and it was becoming increasingly impossible to manage the html-based web site, and the proboards extension of the site, especially with the amount of members joining every day and the massive amount of content on the site, and trying to synchronise 2 sign up systems.

In March 2006, we decided to start converting the html-based Obernewtyn.net to a database driven format - and you're looking at the result! Obernewtyn.net 4.0 was released on Jan 1st, 2007, incorporating over 7 years of archived information, writing, artwork, forum posts and members into the one area. It was a very extensive process, and a very big learning curve (since only one of us was familiar at the time with SQL and php, the programming languages this site's built on), but we did it!

*hands Chocca* thanks for reading, if you've made it this far, you deserve a medal!
See you in the Dining Hall!

Cheers & Chocca,
Min