Celebrations in Australia for the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth were on a scale it’s hard to imagine these days. Every town and city in the nation strived to do the occasion justice. The Blue Mountains, where I now live, certainly stepped up. At Katoomba there was
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Thomas Sutcliffe Mort was an Australian pastoralist, and a pioneer of preserving food for export by freezing. In September 1875 he organized a picnic lunch for 300 influential people (all men of course 😎) at Lithgow, where he had established a vast meat works and chilling complex.
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In the 1930s the general public still regarded an X-Ray plate with incomprehension and wonder. When a 65 year old coal miner underwent an X-ray of his lungs at Lithgow Hospital the bizarre result only increased that feeling. Beside Thomas Jackson’s ribs was a clear picture of
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Hash browns are best eaten for breakfast in a New York City diner, with eggs over-easy and crispy bacon. I have tried to recapture the experience here in Australia at Maccas……take my advice and just don’t do it. By the way, in case anyone is confused, hash
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I made my first, post bushfires visit to Lithgow recently. This town has such spirit and resilience. Nowhere is it better expressed than in a laneway off the main street featuring art created from discarded bicycles. How’s this for sheer exuberance? The exhibit at the top of
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STEAM POWERED PEOPLE MOVERS FOR SYDNEY We learn that the Works Department is making arrangements for the construction of a temporary tramway from the Redfern terminus to Hunter-Street, to be used by visitors to the International Exhibition. They expect to be able to get the motors from
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How many nuts and bolts are there in the Sydney Harbour Bridge? Well, oddly enough, only a handful. Rivets were used instead, some 6,000,000 of them. The majority of the steel for the bridge’s girders came from Britain, but the government contract stated that all rivets were
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I was fortunate to visit Eskbank House Museum in Lithgow before the pandemic put a stop to my adventures.. The oldest part of the colonial Georgian house was built circa 1842, from local sandstone. Its original owner was Mr Thomas Brown, who established the Eskbank Colliery. There
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The sculptor Tom Bass (1916-2010) was born in Lithgow. Richard Neville (1941-2016) spent much of his later life in the Blue Mountains village of Blackheath. Both men were associated with a work of art regarded as one
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In a now famous reference to Queen Elizabeth; ‘I did but see her passing by, and yet I’ll love her until I die.’ Prime Minister of Australia R.M. Menzies. (1963) Early in February 1954, a group of WWI diggers travelled down to Sydney to see the young
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