Pauline Conolly

TINY TREASURES IN BLACKHEATH’S OLD TYTHE BARN
Up by the railway station in the Blue Mountains village of Blackheath is the sweetest, most delightfully idiosyncratic gift and hobby shop imaginable…. the Old Tythe Barn. If that name conjures an image of a vast agricultural building (it did for me), then you are in for...
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FURNER’S HOTEL – AN ULVERSTONE LANDMARK
In 1903 there was a public vote to determine whether Mr F.H. Furner’s new hotel in the seaside Tasmanian town of Ulverstone should be granted a liquor licence. Surprise, surprise….the ayes were in the majority. The old Queen had died the previous year, but the design was...
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F.O.I. – HILARIOUS HICCUP IN MY SEARCH RE WINNIE SINGLETON
While researching my family history I discovered that my great-uncle Arthur’s daughter Winifred (Winnie) Singleton died in 1937 at Victoria’s Sunbury Asylum, aged 19. I also came across a sad story that she had been admitted there after attacking her mother with a knife. Winnie had been...
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JARDINS….LITTLE TREASURES OF THE LOT
It is mid winter here at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, cold and very wet. I have been watching Monty Don’s TV series on French gardens. Oh dear, the longing it evokes is almost physically painful. How long will it be before we can enjoy that beautiful...
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JOHN OSBORNE, TASMANIA’S ‘MR PINEAPPLE’
In 1938 the Tasmanian newspaper The Mercury published the following, circa 1840s portrait of Mr John Osborne, one of the State’s pioneering horticulturalists. It’s impossible to make out from the reproduction, but he is holding….a pineapple! Osborne was born in Staffordshire England, on Christmas Day 1804. He...
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DELICATE DIANELLA – A VERSATILE AUSSIE NATIVE
I so love picking flowers in my Blackheath garden, but I rather regret gathering native dianella from the woodland areas. It looks so much better ‘en place’. The name of course derives from Diana, goddess of the woods. Its tiny blue flowers are quite complex, with their...
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A MEMOIR OF FALL IN RHODE ISLAND
This is a short guest post from my New England friend Jeanne Verity. She writes so beautifully about the United States I dreamed of as a child in 1950’s Tasmania. Aah, America, here was a place where autumn was ‘fall’ and where ripening pumpkins heralded Halloween, a...
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GOODBYE TO MR WHEELER – A FINE OLD CAMELLIA
The Camellia japonica R.T. Wheeler is very hardy and produces enormous, variegated blooms. I have picked so many to fill various containers So why on earth would I want to banish it? Well, in my Blackheath garden the camellia was growing between two red blooming trees, just...
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