This piece on NSW Labor Premier Jack Lang was inspired by a draft article written by Miss M.E. (Joyce) Cocks, in 1932. I was researching Joyce’s life at Sydney’s Mitchell Library when I came across a diatribe she had written against Lang; ‘The present Government deliberately refuse
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Valentine Street, running off George Street in Sydney’s Haymarket, is currently more urban alleyway than street. I walk down it almost every day on my way from our apartment in Thomas Street to the Haymarket Light Rail stop. The following is an image dating from 1910, It
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE 1815 – 1882 This piece began as a review of the 1869 Anthony Trollope novel He Knew He Was Right. I so appreciated the humour throughout this great, door-stop of a book. Some may find the snail’s pace of its 900 small print
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I was intrigued to discover that two boat builders and a lorry driver from my home town of Ulverstone played important roles in promoting tourism at Cradle Mountain’s Dove Lake. FIRST AFLOAT? Although the indigenous Palawa people hunted in the area for thousands of years, there is
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In the early 1970’s a quirky song written and performed by Bernard Bolan, The Rose Bay Ferry, reached number one in the Australian top forty charts. It captures the romance and escapism associated with ferry travel on Sydney Harbour. I contacted Bernard some years ago to ask
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The 2025 Ashes series is about to begin and no doubt we will be reminded of the 1882 mock ‘death notice’ that inspired this remarkable and long standing sporting rivalry; I was unaware until recently that another ‘memorial’ had been published a few days earlier; Peate, was
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In 1999 my English friend Errol Fuller produced an extraordinary work, The Great Auk. The book incudes 450 lavishly illustrated pages on the extinct, flightless bird, and covers its ecology, habits, distribution and tragic history. I treasure my signed copy. On June 3 1844 the last two
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Sydney’s Botany Cemetery was consecrated in 1888, and initially located on a ten hectare site. It is now known as the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park. When fifty year old Thomas George Jones died in Sydney in 1947 his body was identified by his sister Sophia and his
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Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery is the largest in the southern hemisphere, and dates from Victorian times. When retired Sydney schoolteacher Arthur Apsey died on May 24 1925, he was buried just two days later in Rookwood’s Anglican section. Apsey had lived in a substantial property called The Pines,
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The Rookwood murder of William King and his young wife Elsie in 1898 shocked not only Sydney, but the entire colony of NSW. William King had been manager of the large, Roman Catholic section of Rookwood Cemetery for decades, living there in a quaint cottage surrounded by
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