FAMILY HEIRLOOMS Throughout my Tasmanian childhood there were two small oil paintings hanging beside the open fire in our farmhouse sitting room. When the wind blew, the hessian backed wallpaper ballooned out, and the pictures nearly fell off their nails. I was always intrigued by them, and when
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AN ENTREPRENEUR Early in 1894, schoolmaster George Ratten arrived in Parkes, New South Wales, from the Victorian coastal town of Port Fairy. He was accompanied by his wife Eliza and the couple’s six children. Mr Ratten set about building a private, co-educational college in Mitchell Street, opposite
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MARGARET MACQUARIE (NEE GOODWIN) Recently I posted the story of Hector Macquarie, and his marriage to the unfortunate Margaret Simson. Hector was the dissolute nephew of Governor Lachlan Macquarie. You can read the first part HERE. And now the story continues…… It had always been assumed that
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Hector Macquarie was born on Scotland’s Isle of Mull in 1794. He was the illegitimate son of Charles Macquarie, Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s younger brother. Governor Macquarie took his nephew under his wing, famously dubbing him Hero Hector…which was to become an ironic nickname. The young man grew
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King Alfred’s legendary burning of the cakes was the subject of my first history lesson, delivered by my mother as she popped a tray of rock cakes in the oven. Her notion of where the incident took place was vague; ‘In the woods somewhere’, she said…handing me
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In 1809 Lachlan Macquarie sailed for New South Wales aboard the stores ship Dromedary, to begin his term as Governor of the colony. In 1821 the Dromedary sailed from Sydney back to England, carrying Commissioner John Bigge. Ironically, Bigge was carrying his famously adverse report on Macquarie’s
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In July 1818 Governor Lachlan Macquarie made an inspection tour of the Paterson River in the Lower Hunter region of New South Wales. On July 30 his diary records, ‘We then proceeded to view the rest of the Farms on both sides of the River—finding the soil
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Misconception! ‘A stout Victorian matron in black bombazine, her huge upper arms developed by years of beating outrageous quantities of eggs into churn-loads of butter’. This description fits a widely held view of Mrs Beeton, author of the culinary bible Household Management, but it could not be
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OH I DO LIKE TO BE BESIDE THE SEA! I grew up near Ulverstone, a seaside town on the north west coast of Tasmania. Boxing Day was traditionally beach day. During the nineteen fifties we were still without a car, and travelled the four miles (8km) from
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CHRISTMAS 1877. At St-Leonards-on-Sea, in the English county of Sussex, a Christmas market was being held in the ‘old town’. The shops and churches were decorated with laurel, holly and ivy. Nevertheless, perhaps due to the unseasonable mild weather, the jollity of the Hastings & St Leonards
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