Books Tell a Story
I found this on Facebook and felt the need to share. A librarian somewhere has taken the time to arrange these books to bring us a very pertinent message. Simply brilliant!!! You need to read the titles from top left onwards
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From Our Collection
Sunbeam Mixmaster In the years between the First and Second World Wars, Ivar Jepson designed and built dozens of kitchen appliances, including the indomitable Sunbeam “Mixmaster”. Born in Sweden in 1903, Jepson loved to design things as a boy, studied engineering as a youth, and went to Germany to pursue graduate studies in mechanical engineering. …
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Old Sydney’s Physician: the Southerly Buster
In 1910 Henry Lawson wrote the following lines celebrating Sydney’s restorative Southerly Buster; ‘Tis a glorious mission, Old Sydney’s PhysicianBroom, Bucket and Cloth of the East,‘Tis a breeze and a sprayer that answers our prayer,And it’s free to the greatest and least. Often down on his luck, Lawson identified with the city’s urban poor; those…
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Seeds for Flynn’s Flying Doctor Sown 100 Years Ago
AUGUST 22, 2017 marked the centenary of the death of a little-known outback stockman which attracted national headlines and proved the impetus for Reverend John Flynn’s vision for an outback aeromedical service. Kimberley stockman Jimmy Darcy suffered massive internal injuries on 29 July 1917 when his horse fell in a cattle stampede. An 80-kilometre ride…
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Lieutenant Clifford Peel – Providing a Blueprint for the RFDS
The Royal Flying Doctor Service honours the legacy of a far-sighted young man named John Clifford Peel whose vision played a great part in the inspiration and planning of the Flying Doctor. In 1917, Reverend John Flynn received an inspirational letter from Lieutenant Clifford Peel. The young airman and war hero suggested the use of aviation to…
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Museum Closed
With the potential for a further extension of the lockdown due to Covid we do not know when the museum will re-open. As a result, we have cancelled our advertised October speaker – but we will certainly invite him back once things begin to open up again. Unfortunately, we had to cancel our July Rivendell…
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Polio Days . . . Painful Memories
According to conventional wisdom, you aren’t really supposed to remember things from your early childhood. Well, I must be an odd bod, because I do remember. I was a happy enough little kid for the first five years of my life, with blond, curly hair, (whatever happened to it?), and nick-named ‘Goldilocks’. I was the…
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Epidemics in Australia
The fear and uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic may feel new to many of us. But it is strangely familiar to those who lived through the polio epidemic of the last century. Polio – the silent killer In the first half of the 20th century, as smallpox began to disappear, polio (infantile paralysis) was the…
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From Our Collection
The Blue Bird Sewing Machine Bebarfalds, a retailer of home furnishings and manufacturer of furniture, traded for many years from its landmark location opposite the Sydney Town Hall on the corner of George and Park Streets. They are best remembered for their sewing machines, introduced around 1917, and branded as ‘Blue Bird’ from about 1926….
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Bent Street, Concord
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…
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Murder in Five Dock
In December 1916 William Graham Eyles, a former alderman of Drummoyne, was sentenced to death in Sydney’s Central Criminal Court for the murder of his wife, Ellen, who was found hanging by a strap from a bedpost in her house in Courland Street, Five Dock. There were signs of a struggle with numerous bruises on…
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2000 Sydney Olympics Torch Relay
Torch The design of the torch reflected three famed areas of Australian culture: the boomerang, the Sydney Opera House, and the waters of the Pacific Ocean. The concept also reflected the elements of earth, fire, and water. This was achieved across three layers of the torch. The first, inner layer contains the fuel system and combustor, the second contains…
