Orroral homestead - a snapshot of a fabulous old homestead: Stock stations in the Canberra district were established towards the end of 1824 and several years later pioneers settled in the mountain valleys west of the Murrumbidgee, beyond the limit of the 19 counties. William Herbert paid £10 for a pasturage licence in 1839 for [...]
Elder & Co. brought the first ‘Afghans’ (Afghan cameleers) to South Australia to help traverse the desert terrain and long distances. Thirty-one Afghans arrived on the the ship 'The Blackwell' at Port Augusta and on New Year’s Eve 1865 the waiting crowd of onlookers watched the remarkable sight of 124 camels being lifted and deposited [...]
“Wilcannia, city of wind and dust, Queen of the western plains; Where man works for his daily crust, And it seldom ever rains.” (The Barrier Miner, Friday, November 3, 1939.) The Burke and Wills expedition is well known. Burke’s impatience on reaching Cooper’s Creek on November 11, 1860 and the unfolding disaster that transpired became [...]
When grazier Scobie Mackinnon married 1920s Hollywood silent screen actress, Claire Adams after meeting her in England following the Coronation of 1937 life at Mooramong homestead in Skipton Victoria was bound to change. Mooramong began its life under settler hands in 1838 when the squatting run was taken up by the Scottish immigrant Alexander Anderson [...]
Imagine owning pastoral lands equal to a third of the size of Belgium. James Tyson (1819-1898) was an Australian born, self-made ‘millionaire’ who owned a string of properties around Australia. His fame as a pastoral tycoon, immortalised by Banjo Paterson in the Poem T.Y.S.O.N. By the time Tyson finished acquiring pastoral leases along the Warrego River [...]
In 1845 George and James Hope arrived on the western edge of the Wimmera district of Victoria, near the town of Edenhope (established some years later) a scant thirty kilometres from the South Australian border. They chose the shores of a lake as part of their 48,000 ha selection, naming it Lake Wallace after William [...]
A bushman with his dog and horse outside a humpy. This picture is thought to have been taken in the Hughenden district, QLD, around 1910-1920. By the looks of it it's made from canvas and branches and you can see cooking utensils near the entrance. A humpy (or gunyah) was traditionally used by Aboriginals as [...]
In the early years of the 1860s a young wife abandoned her husband and with her son in tow went to live with a stockman named James Taylor. This woman’s leap towards a new life would probably have never been of interest were her husband not Ben Hall, who at the age of nineteen would [...]
Loved, admired, loathed. Songs sung about them and poems written. To this day the infamous Ned Kelly remains an icon but with the origins of our bushrangers beginning with our early penal settlements it was inevitable that brutal times would produce desperate people. These men who were originally escaped convicts, glanced over their shoulder at [...]
Letters to loved ones were written and received here. Telegrams studied, cheques written, gummy envelopes licked, livestock tallied and stores listed. I’ve seen a similar desk in a mail order catalogue circa 1900. Except this one sits solidly in my office, a box of old nibs in one of the drawers. They are the kind [...]
