When my parents bought their farm in Tasmania in 1952 there was an ancient apple tree in the garden. As far as we could tell it was a Bramley cooking apple. It produced a huge crop year after year, which my mother used in every way imaginable;
Read more →There are many reasons to visit my birthplace, beautiful Tasmania, but perhaps the best one is to eat freshly caught scallops. Oh yes indeed. Even as far back as WWI locals complained that too many were shipped off to the mainland. However, it seems this was not
Read more →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
Read more →Writing in 1926, a journalist (The Daily News, Perth) reflected on the sport of wood chopping in the years before WWI. He appeared to have been pretty impressed by competitors from the island state. In Tasmania, in the underhand events, the axemen invariably were barefooted, and they
Read more →Stephen W. O’Flaherty was a worker in Scott’s sawmill at Derby, a small community in the north-east of Tasmania. In 1913 he suffered a significant injury when a lever at the mill rebounded and a lag slipped, breaking his arm in two places. It was said that
Read more →This piece was originally published in The Australian newspaper it has been substantially updated since then. CANBERRA – THE PLANNED CAPITAL Many Australians are ambivalent about the planned city of Canberra. Its monolithic buildings stand a little too far apart in their park like surroundings, and can
Read more →There was a large gravel pit on the dairy farm I grew up on outside Ulverstone, in north west Tasmania. I don’t think the income from it was huge, but it must have been a big help to my parents when they bought the property in 1952.
Read more →Tasmanian native hens were part of my 1950s rural childhood, but I must admit I gave them little thought. This may be because they would simply shoot across my vision like the cartoon character Roadrunner. They are flightless, but can motor along at up to 50 kilometres
Read more →As a Baby Boomer I grew up with little exposure to Australian literature. It was all English boarding school stories, Enid Blyton and Charles Dickens. My early knowledge of poets was limited to those represented in a primary school textbook called (appropriately in my case) Poems for
Read more →An update.😊 In 1978 the ABC made a film about Amy Sherwin. If you scroll down to the comments, you will see a message from Dianne Smith, who has kindly provided contact details for those who expressed an interest in seeing this some time ago. Dianne’s young
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