Charles E. W. Bean is considered Australia’s finest WW1 correspondent and historian, having served as a journalist at Gallipoli, arriving there only a few hours after the sea-landing, and then travelling to the Western Front after recovering from wounds received on the battlefield. His first-hand accounts of the ‘fog of war’ exposed the heroism, logistical [...]
On the 3rd March 1885 an infantry and artillery battalion of 758 men and officers set sail from Sydney for the Sudan with great fanfare. By the end of the month they had reached their destination. It was an important milestone, for never before had an Australian colony sent paid soldiers to fight in an [...]
Before today’s supermarkets offered home delivery services, and corner stores supplied busy household’s needs, urban dwellers had access to fresh bread, fruit and vegetables, fish and meat from the many vendors who plied their wares. Some of these tradespeople delivered orders to your front door, milk, bread and meat being staples. Other street-traders swung their [...]
It took over twenty years for Australia’s first consignment of wool to be sold at auction following John Macarthur and the Rev. Samuel Marsden’s importation of Spanish merino sheep to Australia in 1797. And when that transaction occurred in London in 1821 it wasn’t in a fancy exchange with hundreds of interested buyers but at [...]
I’ve been infatuated with Ernest Hemingway from an early age. It was he that swept me away in my early teens with For Whom The Bell Tolls and later, The Old Man and the Sea. His economical word usage and understated style struck a chord with me and at some deeper level I wanted his [...]
In 1837, forty-nine years after the arrival of the white man in Australia the suggestion was made that Australia was a country sorely in need of camels. Considering the extent of Western and Central Australia it turned out to be an excellent idea. The first record of imported camels is in 1840, when the lone [...]
It’s said that everything and everyone is interconnected in some way. I often find when I’m sleuthing for facts when writing that some snippet of information will pop up and I’m left pondering the events that link people and places together. This happened about twelve months ago when I was reading up on the Strzelecki [...]
The Marquis de Rays. What an exotic name. It conjures wealth, European lands and a noble linage. But names and appearances can be deceptive and the Marquis de Rays, a French Nobleman was a scoundrel and con-artist supreme. The Marquis ripped off poor settlers in the late 1800s offering the ‘promised land’ but eventually after [...]
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It would be nice to believe that Australian’s were generally tolerant towards different religions. Not all of us are. Where religion and politics were once considered to be topics that weren’t discussed around the meal table, politics is all everyone is talking about these days, while religion is a subject that some people still avoid. [...]
