A DICTIONARY IS BORN IN ‘STRAYA’ In 1812 the convict James Hardy Vaux (pictured ) produced what is credited as being the first Australian dictionary: A New and Comprehensive Vocabulary of the Flash Language. It was essentially a compilation of slang used by the ‘flash’ criminal element
Read more →
This brief article is a tribute to a very special Frenchman; Dr Auguste Ambroise Tardieu, who was born in Paris in 1818. Dr Tardieu headed the team of French doctors who performed a post-mortem on the disinterred body of English schoolgirl Marian Marsden in 1854.
Read more →
My friends, authors and historians Cora Weaver and Bruce Osborne , recently published a well researched, richly illustrated book called Celebrated Springs of the Malvern Hills. Here is small extract; These pure springs inspired the water-cure clinics at Malvern, lining the pockets of physicians such as Dr
Read more →
Daisy Spedden of Orange County, New York State survived the sinking of the great liner with her husband Frederic and their only child Douglas, then six years old. In 1913 Mrs Spedden wrote the story of their escape as a Christmas gift for Douglas, told through the
Read more →
STEAM AND SPEED The brilliant British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born at Portsmouth in 1806, the son of a highly regarded French engineer. Many thousands of Australians have a connection with Brunel as their ancestors emigrated on his innovative steamship, the SS Great Britain. At the
Read more →
In 1910 Henry Lawson wrote the following lines celebrating Sydney’s restorative Southerly Buster; ‘Tis a glorious mission , Old Sydney’s Physician Broom, Bucket and Cloth of the East, ‘Tis a breeze and a sprayer that answers our prayer, And it’s free to the greatest and least.
Read more →