Eric Huxley, 19, a student of the Sydney University, living at Clanalpine Street, Mosman, was struck by a motor car as he was crossing Parramatta Road near the University yesterday. He suffered a fractured skull…..he died late last night. (Sydney Morning Herald, June 13 1930) The young
Read more →Blackheath rocks in their giant, natural form are a tourist’s delight. On a domestic scale, they are a wonderful resource for property owners. Sometimes I think I could turn our entire Blue Mountains garden into a commercial quarry. The rocks that come out the ground here are
Read more →Reflecting on a 1970s wedding. This piece was prompted by finding one of my sticky old photo albums, and is why many of the images used leave a lot to be desired. They are now impossible to remove. OK, so my partner Rob and I first
Read more →What a delight Murder Under the Christmas Tree turned out to be. This book really was under my Christmas tree, a perfect gift to myself. It was first published in 2016, by Profile Books. As the title suggests, it is an anthology of ten short stories with a
Read more →There were very few things that my darling mother did just to please herself rather than everyone else in the family. However, the exception was her making of ghastly gooseberry pies. She loved those horrible, sour little fruits. Our Tasmanian orchard was a bit of a disaster
Read more →Harmony at Home has been trading at 30 Govett’s Leap Road at Blackheath (Blue Mountains) for the past 13 years. There is also a store down the Mountains at Richmond. The proprietor is Jock Ferguson. I just love the many Australian themed goods they stock. In the
Read more →CHRISTMAS PUDDING …now the strangest tale I ever heard was about Charles Dickens cooking one in a top hat. However, my own effort surely comes a close runner-up. By the way,
Read more →Erigeron karvinskianus is commonly known as Seaside Daisy. It’s a hardy perennial that can cope with wind, heat and salt spray. Now this doesn’t sound as if it should grow in the Upper Blue Mountains of NSW, but it also copes with frost and snow, and thrives
Read more →In April 1920, Clarice Tucker (nee Thomas) was a young married woman living at Edenhope in western Victoria, not far from the South Australian border. Her family were from the small town of Inglewood, near Bendigo. It must have lifted Clarice’s heart when a letter from her
Read more →Beatrix Potter was born in 1866. She experienced a stultifying. genteel London childhood that caused her to withdraw into her own world. It was a world that would later be made magical by her artistic talent and love of nature. We, and generations before us, have been
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