On 21 July 1898 Sydney celebrated as Mayor Alderman Mathew Harris officially opened the Queen Victoria Markets Building. The Lady Mayoress, with a commemorative solid gold key, opened the druitt Street entrance. That evening the Town Hall was transformed for the 1400 guests at a ball celebratig the opening of these markets. Designed by George…
Have you ever looked at the date on the War Memorial in Burwood Park? It’s worth looking at carefully because it reveals an interesting fact . . the dates of the First World War are given as 1914-1919. This is in contrast to most modern sources which give the dates as 1914-1918. On researching the…
A favourite pastime of residents is to walk along the waterfront to enjoy the peaceful vista. Not many of us know that between the “green lights” opposite the cove is a monument to one of Australia’s greatest rowing athletes, Henry Ernest Searle. Little is known of his childhood except that he came to Sydney when…
As we board the 504 or the 438 for the CBD, most of us miss a little street 50 metres on our right hand side, Henry Lawson Avenue. Henry Lawson, an Australian literary giant of poems and stories, wrote mainly about the average Australian. He died 79 years ago, and should we today read his…
At the birth of Australia we had not one, but two giants of literature, Lawson and Paterson. Andrew Barton Paterson was born on 17 February 1864 near Orange NSW. He was educated at Sydney Grammar School, then he studied law at Sydney University and practised in Sydney. Paterson started writing for The Bulletin in 1889….
When Charles Dickens visited Australia, he used characters he met or heard about for characters in his various novels. Miss Haversham, from Great Expectations was in fact Eliza Donnithorne from Newtown, Sydney. Another character was Fagin from Oliver Twist, who was based upon Ikey Solomon. In the late 1820’s a paradoxical situation existed in Hobart…
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