FOR THE FIRST PART OF THIS STORY ON PERCY BUSH-COX, CLICK HERE. Percy Bush-Cox enlisted with the Leicestershire Regiment in World War I. In June 1918 he was reported in the press as having been wounded for the second time. Percy Bush-Cox is pictured at right in
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Returned serviceman Ernest Durham would have been amazed to find that after his death in 1949 he would become the centre of a story so bizarre I hardly know where to start. 😎 Private Durham signed up in 1916 with the newly formed 34th Battalion. It was
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FOR THE PREVIOUS PART OF THIS STORY, CLICK HERE. Sawson is a quiet village south of Cambridge in the U.K. On December 30 1954 there was disbelief when local widower ‘Ernest Durham’ was found dead in his garden, a bullet through his head. In the same incident
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Kiwi polish was first produced in 1908 by Melbourne business partners Hamilton McKellan and William Ramsay. The name Kiwi was a tribute to Ramsay’s New Zealand born wife. For two reasons the product was a major improvement on the old boot blacking (remember Charles Dickens working in
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Coogee beach on Boxing Day 1921 was a very popular spot. For returned serviceman Charles Larsen the beach, in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, was a refuge from his home in inner-city Redfern. Larsen was over six feet tall; blond and blue eyed. He was an experienced body
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THE PAUL LOUBET STORY, PART TWO (BLACKALL). FOR THE FIRST EPISODE, CLICK HERE. From The Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton) ‘Our informant happened to be in Jericho when Dr Loubet and a very fine looking woman, who was introduced everywhere as Mrs Loubet, were going through to Blackall.
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The story of Paul Rene Loubet and his life in Australia reads more like fiction than real life, and researching it has been quite a challenge, albeit a fascinating one. This is the first ‘chapter’. Annabel Illingworth married young doctor Percy Webber Black in London in March
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Hospital food still gets a bad rap, but honestly it’s not too bad. However, back in the 1920’s food from home was greatly appreciated by patients such as WWI veteran Francis Wooldridge.. Wooldridge was a married man with six children when he went off to war in
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Rivers Paterson (nee Staines) was born on the day her father Thomas drowned in the Bell River, between Molong and Wellington, in the central west of New South Wales. Thomas Staines was an ex-convict; a former blacksmith and farrier from Leicestershire. He was transported for life in
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Suzanne (originally Susannah) Evans was one of five children. She was born in 1893 in the gold mining town of Walhalla, Victoria to John and Alice Evans. Her mother died when she was only eight years old. In 1914 the Evans family moved to Melbourne and the
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