Shame on me for treating Pip Williams’ The Bookbinder of Jericho so badly. In my defense, it wasn’t in pristine condition when I picked it up from our local street library. I was reading it among the giant rhododendrons in the park at Blackheath, in the Blue
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I recently wrote an article for this website about Enid Blyton. If you haven’t read it, here is the link. It was inspired by a piece I came across in the wonderful Australian newspaper archive TROVE. Written in 1952, it was a reaction to the South Australian
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Enid Blyton was an integral part of my rural Tasmanian childhood, as she was for most ‘Baby Boomers’ around the world. In later life we discovered that the prolific author entertained us at great cost to her own children, but that’s another story. My siblings and I
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Yes, there really was a brand called Billy Tea. And what a great advertisement. The company was established by James Inglis in the 1880s. ICON OF OUR COLLECTIVE MEMORY We are an increasingly urbanised society, but the image of the Aussie swagman watching his billy boil will
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Flora Drennan was an Australian national champion in the 100 yard sprint. However, if you Google her in relation to this, you will have no success. She won the title in 1908, far too early for recognition among the official female Australian Athletic Champions, recorded from 1930.
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The Kewpie Doll’s place in Australian social history was cemented when Ray Lawler’s Play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll was first performed in 1955. The seventeen dolls referred to in the title were annual gifts for the Melbourne girlfriends of two Queensland cane cutters. Of course by
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I picked up a 2008 novel by Colleen McCullough in one of our local street libraries. It was titled The Independence of Mary Bennet. My first thought was how brave it was to continue the lives of the Bennet sisters after Jane Austen put down her pen
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Bahr’s Chocolate Shop and Milk Bar was on the corner of Hampden Road and Stowell Avenue in Hobart’s historic Battery Point. My partner Rob remembers buying lollies from this shop when he was a child in the early sixties. I’m not sure what the name was then.
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Rebecca Lucas , from outside the small Tasmanian town of Railton, was just seven years old when she suddenly fell ill in 1937. She was diagnosed with infantile paralysis (polio), as was her older sister Winifred. The girls were admitted to the Devon Hospital at Latrobe for
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The Queen Victoria Museum in Launceston is a highly regarded institution, and the largest outside an Australian Capital City. A WINDFALL In 1904 Lady Clara Dry, wealthy widow of Sir Richard Dry, the first Tasmanian born premier of the State, made a significant bequest of antiques. The
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