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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The Australian born artist Hilda Rix (1884-1961) was living and working in France when war broke out in 1914. She abandoned her studio at the Etaples artists’ colony and fled to London with her widowed mother and her older sister Elsie. Many of her pictures were left
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My father was born on October 4 1917.at North Motton, a small rural community in north-west Tasmania He was christened Arthur Newman Allen. The middle name of Newman was for his father. Arthur was for his maternal uncle, Arthur Singleton. However, Dad was always called Robin ….and
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Sister Rosa O’Kane was from Charters Towers in Queensland. She was aboard the troopship Wyreema when the armistice was signed in November 1918, and the ship was recalled to Australia. After the Wyreema reached Freemantle, Rosa was one of twenty army nurses who volunteered to care for
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The story of HMAT Boonah in WWI should have prepared us better for the challenges of the Covid pandemic. Arthur Thwaites was a chemist’s assistant from Parramatta. He enlisted on October 15 1917 as part of the medical corps, but was not called for overseas service until
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