On Sunday, October 6 1929, the Commercial Bank of Australia in Enmore Road, Newtown was broken into and the contents of the safe stolen. The manager was away at the time, and the theft was reported by the caretaker, Bruce Bell. Mr Bell was required to sleep
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In 1860 Alfred Denison, brother of the then Governor-General, was leaving the colony and donated his collection of birds to the government. The only condition was that a suitable home be created for them. The site chosen was in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens, on the eastern boundary of
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Peter Kotz, a fellow social history buff, took the photo below. The rusting, 70 lb golden syrup drum was found on a rough bush track near Alice Springs. Golden syrup was such an integral part of life in the parched Australian outback. It replaced butter on a
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You wouldn’t think that a scruffy looking fence in the Australian outback would capture the imagination of so many people, myself included. Stretching for 5,614km it’s the longest continuous fence in the world. It was constructed to keep marauding dingoes out of the relatively better pastoral lands
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Early breakfast approaching Alice Springs. This was meant to be a travel piece, but I was side-tracked by the story of the gold. Now there has never been a murder aboard The Ghan (well not that we know of), but there was a heist of gold bullion
Read more →In days gone by you could turn up a week late to catch The Ghan and still be in plenty of time. The Aussie outback train was often delayed by wash-outs, sand-drifts or mechanical failures. I love this poem from 1952 about a car speeding along the
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This is a guest post from Warren Bishop, a direct descendant of James Smith, who built Tasmania’s famous ‘disappearing house.’ The Disappearing House at “The Corners” Conara Standing at the turnoff to St Marys at Conara, the so-called “Disappearing House” earned its name by the illusion of
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Dr Henry Croker Garde was a long term resident surgeon at the Maryborough General Hospital in Queensland. Born in 1855, he was a graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast and a prize winning Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. The doctor was well travelled, having
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First, a little background. In 1931, art collector George Garnett presented prominent Hobart surgeon Dr. Victor Ratten with a gift, in thanks for saving the life of his young daughter. Appropriately, the gift was a large oil painting of the British nurse Edith Cavell. Nurse Cavell was
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In April 1929 there was a devastating flood in the small tin mining town of Derby, in north-eastern Tasmania. A dam burst after a period of unprecedented rain. Fourteen people lost their lives and many others their homes and livelihoods. The death toll would have been much
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