We are moving into a new house and I have been sorting boxes stored for a number of years, some from my late mother-in-law, Jeanie. But what is trash and what is treasure? In one box there were lots of old Christmas and birthday cards, plus countless
Read more →I have a bit of an obsession with miniature bicycles. It began at the West Ulverstone primary school when I was in grade five and fell in love with a boy called Lee Dunston. Lee had a wonderful green trike, which was designed as a pencil sharpener.
Read more →I have been remembering Ulverstone (Tasmania) personality Miss Andrews, and discovering a lot more about her! When we are young we have such a one-dimensional view of our elders, especially those in authority. Miss Helen Andrews was in charge of the Lady Clark Memorial Library at Ulverstone
Read more →I heard a strange noise outside the front door the other day and opened it to find a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo perched on a corner post looking a bit sad. I’m afraid I tried to shoo him away, because cockies are known for chewing on wooden railings.
Read more →Thomas Nevin was a rather eccentric personality, which is probably why I like him so much. 😎 He was one of Tasmania’s earliest commercial photographers. When Alfred Bock advertised for an apprentice in 1863, young Nevin applied. A few years later Mr Bock moved to the mainland
Read more →Whenever I stand at Blackheath’s Govett’s Leap lookout I sense the spirit of Charles Darwin, one of my great heroes. Darwin said of the Leap; ‘It is a tremendous rent or depression in the earth, which is said to be the deepest chasm with perpendicular cliffs in
Read more →Vere Gordon Childe spent his childhood at a home called Chalet Fontenelle, at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains of NSW. He was educated at Sydney University and subsequently at Oxford. Childe returned home in 1917, but as a pacifist, atheist and committed socialist he was ostracized
Read more →The Town Hall is lighted by three magnificent crystal chandeliers bearing 14 gas jets, and imported from the famous house of Ossler and Co., Birmingham, at a cost of £230. (Cornwall Chronicle, Oct. 27 1866) a When Hobart Town Hall was completed in 1866 it symbolized the
Read more →A stump does not have to symbolize the end of a tree’s usefulness. Tiny, insect eating birds such as wrens and robins often choose one as a low level look-out post. Meanwhile I have fun with stumps as ‘garden art’. That variegated rhodo hat would not look
Read more →In 1875 a Tasmanian devil left Hobart aboard the American ship Swatara, bound for San Francisco Bay. I was fascinated, and very moved by the background story. In the 19th century the USS Swatara was involved in transporting scientific parties to the South Pacific, to observe the
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