“I said ‘That’s enough Rex’, and he said ‘No, you don’t have as many as you did in the last book, you’d better go find some more people’,” she said.

“He’s been gone three years and we can’t replace him.”

Mr Fuge, who died in 2014 following three decades with the Chiltern Athenaeum Trust, worked with Mrs Disher on the first sold-out volume.

“Rex agreed it was a good idea and he had done all the stories on the past, we had all the records in the  Athenaeum, so we started it off and I did the interviews,” she said.

“There were so many people we left out, he said ‘What about a book two?’, and I said ‘Oh no, the first one took too long!’, but we got it going.

“Someone had the audacity to ask me about a book three the other day!”

This latest edition has been in the works for the past seven years and was officially launched on Friday, with Mrs Disher’s relatives making the trip from Queensland to be in the crowd.

It details the personalities and lives of established families in Chiltern through interviews and stories told by the Federal Standard.

“In the second book, I tried to cover a range of people and immigration, and there’s stories that bring tears to your eyes, reading about what people went through,” Mrs Disher said.

“Ned Day made for a good interview – he’s 96 next year and has been through the depression.”

Almost 50 people were interviewed by Mrs Disher across the two books, which can be purchased at the Chiltern Athenaeum.

“I’m proud of the way it’s all turned out,” she said.

“This was a very famous town for its gold and people.

“Anyone can do it – if you can write a letter, you can write a book.”