When Sydney tutor Raymond Miller discovered his female student Ngaire Payne was ill-prepared to sit entrance exams for medicine, he came up with a plan. He would dress as a woman and sit the exams at New England University in her place. It sounds crazy and well…it
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Lilian Beatrice Simpson was born in Sydney in 1883. She was the fourth daughter of Elizabeth and William Parker Simpson (died 1889) English born William was a sculptor and it seems Lilian inherited his artistic sensibility. She dreamed of becoming an opera singer. In 1901, Lilian married
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Milk Arrowroot biscuits have been part of Australian life for generations; left out for Santa with a glass of milk, popped into school lunchboxes, and in the early days crushed and fed to babies in their bottles. A large part of the company’s advertising involved
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‘The string bag is the symbol of feminine bondage in Australia’. Thus spoke US consul Mr T.C. Robinson at a conference of the NSW Agricultural Bureau in 1950. He advocated a reorganisation of food distribution (which eventually led to supermarkets and shopping malls), better laundry and dry-cleaning
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Aunty Ed’s seemed a good place to celebrate a significant birthday for a small bear by the name of Editor Des. Reaching a quarter of a century deserves recognition. Not a telegram from the king just yet. but something special from Australia Post. AUNTY ED’S …PERFECT FOR TEDS
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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