HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CONVICTED BY THE CIVIL POWER? Australian residents enlisting in World War I were required to answer a series of personal questions. At the time, military authorities had no idea what lay behind recruit Robert Coombes’ answer to No. 6, regarding apprenticeships; ‘Mr Pike,
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On February 19 1922 my great uncle, returned WWI veteran Arthur Singleton, was arrested. According to a later report by the Ulverstone police he was in a disturbed mental state. Like many men, he had never recovered from his war service. As one of the first Australians
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Below is a photo taken in 1933, during the Great Depression. It is a field of Christmas lilies on a property at Pennant Hills, in New South Wales. The farm produced 100,000 cut flowers for the Australian florist trade that year. Ladies could pick up a fragrant
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I first heard of the Wheeldon case in July 2017, on The Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Radio National. The story looked back to a day in 1986. Retired Macquarie University professor Peter Mason had gestured his daughters Diedre and Chloë to play an old video. He could only gesture because he
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Condensed milk has been around for generations. I do love the following snippet, published in an Australian newspaper in 1901; When condensed milk was first introduced thirty years ago the idea was scoffed at. The inventor carried the entire daily supply for New York in a ten-quart pail, delivering
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As a young woman, Joyce Cocks became an attendant (and later a buyer) at Sydney’s historic Mitchell Library. The Mitchell now forms part of the vast Library of New South Wales complex. AN ARMED ROBBER INTRUDES In 1923 an armed man entered the building on Macquarie
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A DAY OUT FOR EDITOR DES (THAT’S ME) Well one day my guardian Pauline Conolly took me to Sydney as a special treat. Now she loves going to the State Library, but I don’t (boooooring!!) I was pretty p…..d off when we ended up there (sorry, I
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FLORAL MEMENTOES OF WAR The Gallipoli Rose (Cistus salvifolius) was the Australian War Memorial’s first commemorative plant. It grew on the bloody battlefields of Gallipoli. The sight of the flowers lifted the spirits of the Anzacs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), who brought home the seeds.
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