Travel is not easy for someone like me. I never have a proper seat, so no life vest. Pathetic. What would happen if we crashed? Arrived in Darwin. They are obsessed with crocodiles up here. Do I really want to go to Kakadu? Pauline made me pose
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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
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My first trip on The Ghan was in 1966, from Port Pirie to Alice Springs. My friend Desma and I were 15, and on a school trip from Tasmania. What do I remember? Well our teachers caught the flu and some of us took full advantage of
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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In the late 19th and early 20th century, Arnotts sought testimonials from people feeding their little ones on milk arrowroot biscuits. The possibility that an image of their child might be chosen to illustrate an advertisement was irresistible. The company was soon swamped by photos and letters
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