In the 2021 New Year Honour List, our secretary received the Medal (OAM) of the Order of Australia in the General Division. She was recognised for her more than 50 years’ service to heritage through the City of Canada Bay Heritage Society and their Museum. It could have not gone to a more deserving member….
Back in the 50’s what were the local shops we most relied upon – and indeed – were all that we needed? The grocer, the green grocer, the butcher, the cake shop, the newsagent, the chemist. For other things – clothing, shoes, books, toys and sports gear you went into town. The grocer was that…
We remain a society fascinated by gadgetry. The industrial revolution ensured that our ancestors were similarly attracted to wondrous objects which promised to make life easier, and, at times, more profitable. We might say that all useful objects are not gadgets and all gadgets are not necessarily useful objects. Knives for picking the stones out…
The “first” Sydney Harbour tunnel built about a century ago has been largely forgotten. The tunnel, dug under Sydney’s harbour at its narrowest point between Greenwich in the north and Birchgrove in the inner west, was a technical feat involving the sort of hard physical labour almost impossible to contemplate today. It was built for…
All Absolutely Wrong!!! 25. “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” – Albert Einstein, 1932 24. “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” – Decca Recording Company on declining to…
To our dedicated and hard-working volunteers -Bob, Benson, Pam, Andrew, Lois, John, Kay, Sharon, Lorna, Janice, Alan, Patricio and Jeanette (and Roz and Margo who couldn’t join us for our Christmas luncheon) – we sincerely thank you for helping out at our museum, working behind the scenes, during this difficult year. The work that has…
This special Memorial in Concord West has taken a powerful step forward in its ultimate goal of attaining recognition as a Military Memorial of National Significance. Federal, State and Local governments are currently collaborating to deliver a business case securing the site’s future and acknowledging its unique place among military commemoration sites. The Kokoda Track…
“Jingle Bells” was written for Thanksgiving, not Christmas. The song was written in 1857 by James Lord Pierpont and published under the title “One Horse Open Sleigh”. It was supposed to be played in the composer’s Sunday school class during Thanksgiving as a way to commemorate the famed Medford sleigh races. “Jingle Bells” was also the first song to…
Bundy Clock from the Australian Gas Light Company In November 1888 Willard le Grande Bundy, a jeweller in Auburn, New York patented a timepiece to track the hours worked by employees and to calculate pay. The device was powered by mechanical and later electrical means. A year later his brother Harlow founded the Bundy Manufacturing…
Came across this poem on Facebook. It was written by Kathleen O’Mara in 1869, reprinted during 1919 Pandemic. It is Timeless…. And people stayed at homeAnd read booksAnd listenedAnd they restedAnd did exercisesAnd made art and playedAnd learned new ways of beingAnd stopped and listened more deeplySomeone meditated, someone prayedSomeone met their shadowAnd people began…
The Barrier Miner (Broken Hill) published the following article on Wednesday, 7th January, 1953. Sydney-Early on Christmas morning an intruder entered the kitchen of the Dame Eadith Walker Hospital, Concord. The intruder put into a hospital patients’ Christmas sack: a dressed turkey, a dressed fowl, two dressed rabbits, a leg of mutton, thirty-two mutton chops,…
In 2018 the Australian Maritime Museum received a donation of papers belonging to First Lieutenant William Bradley, who sailed aboard HMS Sirius in the First Fleet. This extraordinarily generous gift to the nation had been passed down through five generations of Bradley’s English descendants, which included two vice-admirals. Bradley was a cartographer and diarist. His…
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