The Beechworth resident, born on March 21, 1915 to Thomas Frederick Rodan and Maud Isabel Dowling, had strong family associations with Australia's oldest continuously operating newspaper - the Ovens and Murray.

Her grandfather and father worked on the newspaper and played a significant role in its workings.

But while Amy was well-known in Beechworth and remembered fondly for her generosity, it was her love of cats that she was best known, reveals a new digital collection released by the Burke Museum.

"They are all I live for," she was known to say (although she also nurtured a beautiful garden at 47 Finch Street).

It's these gems - personal snippets of preserved history - that have been brought to life as part of the museum's oral history project.

Interviews with 70 aged residents recorded on cassette tapes in 2000 - detailing life, love, hardships and the history of the 20^th Century - are now available online at the click of a button.

The "suite of oral histories" was originally part of a project by Jennifer Williams, who interviewed the residents about what life was like in Beechworth during that period, according to museum collections manager Ashleigh Giffney.

Williams used the findings to publish the book, Listen to what they say: voices of twentieth century Beechworth and the taped interviews were placed in storage until 2021 when the Burke Museum digitised the entire collection, she explained.

Thanks to the meticulous cataloguing work of students from Deakin University over the past three years, audio recordings of these "voices" are now publicly available on the museum's Victorian Collections page.

Ms Giffney said with the completion of the project this month, relatives would be able to hear their loved one's stories again after many years.

"The recordings detail important historical events and hardships in the region's history including Australia during war time, economic struggles, cultural clashes, women's societal roles in a rural area and the day-to-day of 20^th Century Beechworth," she explained.

Take Horace Monshing, born in Beechworth in 1935, and the last descendant of Chinese goldminers to live in the town.

He relates his understanding of the life of his grandfather, Peter Monshing (Munshing), as a Chinese immigrant to Australia in the mid-nineteenth century, including the racism faced.

While Peter, who was originally from Hong Kong, was not a particularly successful goldminer, he was a very talented gardener, and made his living selling the produce from his market garden.

Ms Giffney said oral accounts provided important insights into history "that you can't get from an object".

"They give life to history," she said.

"We have more than 30,000 objects in our collection; these oral histories add so much context to those items.

"It's lovely to listen to the voices - to feel like you are in the room with them, to hear the inflections and the way they talk about their lives."