Growing Old

On Valentine’s Day 1966 Australians woke to a brand-new currency. The decision to change from the Australian pound (with its awkward shillings and pence) to a decimal currency — the Australian dollar — had been a pragmatic, economic one. Yet decimalisation became an opportunity for Australia to assert itself as an increasingly self-assured and forward-thinking…

1896: Edwin Flack becomes Australia’s first Olympian. The first Olympic Games of the modern era were held in Athens from 5 to 10 April 1896. Edwin Flack, an accountant and Australasian champion runner, is considered Australia’s first Olympian. He won the 800-metre and 1500-metre sprints, took part in the marathon and won a bronze medal…

Yaralla ‘given away to the Government’. Good intentions are often misconstrued as Miss Eadith Walker discovered to her dismay in 1914. Returning from an overseas trip, Miss Walker heard that the Governor-General, Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, did not have a place to call home for his stay in Sydney. She generously offered the use of Yaralla, not realising the political and social storm that would…

Extract from my autobiography (an unfinished project) by Peter Bryant In the 1920s, some of Concord’s large estates like “Yaralla” on the Parramatta River, were subdivided and made available for housing. By 1926, the year my mother and father married, new streets and avenues had been laid out.  They ran down to the edge of…

Members of the City of Canada Bay Heritage Society would be aware that No. 1 Bent Street is the address of the Heritage Society’s Museum, located in the former Concord Library. Bent Street was named for Ellis Bent (1783-1815) who, before travelling to Sydney, accepted an appointment as Deputy Judge-Advocate of N.S.W. He arrived aboard…