General

The Salvation Army’s beginnings date back to July 2, 1865 when a Methodist minister commenced a work in East London that would encircle the world before the end of the 19th century. It began as the Christian Revival Society and soon after was called the East London Christian Mission.  William Booth, the organisation’s Founder, preached the…

When the guns on the Western Front fell silent at 11 am on 11th November 1918, it marked an end to four years of continuous fighting between the Imperial German Army and the combined forces of the British and French Empires. The Armistice was a suspension of these hostilities, rather than an endpoint to the…

At the Australasian Science Congress held in Hobart in January 1902, John Sulman, an English architect living in Sydney, read a paper entitled “A Twentieth Century House with suggestions on the solution of the Servant Problem”. He said:  “It is probable that many middle-class households will, in the future, have to dispense with servants altogether,…

Camerated concrete construction is hardly a conversation stopper at a barbeque, but this method of building houses attracted worldwide attention at the start of the twentieth century. In 1905 Concord builder, Henry Arthur Goddard, patented a method of using aerated reinforced concrete that was less dense than regular concrete, but retained its structural strength. This…

How Australia’s Rarest Stamp Escaped an Inferno. On 29 September 1936, William Vanneck, the right honourable Lord Huntingfield and governor of Victoria, paid a ceremonial visit to the Commonwealth Stamp Printers in Melbourne to mark the first printing of a new twopenny stamp featuring an etched portrait of King Edward VIII in his naval uniform, …

In 1922 the struggling Fred Walker Company hired a chemist, Dr. Cyril P. Callister, to develop a food spread made from readily available leftover brewer’s yeast extract, a natural source of Vitamin B.  In a stroke of marketing genius, the company ran a nation-wide competition asking the Australian public to name the spread.  Fred Walker’s…

Archie Priddle had already achieved national prominence when he enlisted in the A.I.F. in January 1915.  Tall, strikingly handsome with fair hair and blue eyes, Priddle competed in a series of swimming and sculling races against celebrated New Zealand champion, Paddy Hannan.  Their contests excited national attention with hundreds of pounds being offered in prize…

I’m 87 years of age and I have realised I still have so many unanswered questions!  I never found out who let the dogs out . . . the way to get to Sesame Street . . . why Dora doesn’t just use Google Maps . . . why we don’t ever see the headline…

On the morning of 2 September 1922, Henry Hertzberg Lawson died, aged 55 years, of cerebral haemorrhage in Abbotsford, at the home of his dear friend and housekeeper, Isabel Byers. He was given a state funeral; the first person to be granted a NSW state funeral (traditionally reserved for Governors, Chief Justices, etc.) on the…

Burial service for parrot One of the strangest graves in the ancient Western Road cemetery at Parramatta (NSW) is that of a parrot.  For twenty years the bird entertained travelers at one of the hotels, and the wife of the hotel keeper become so attached to it that when it died she purchased a grave, hired a mourning coach…

CALCULATOR:  The simplest form of calculating machine is the wooden counting frame, or abacus, with moving beads strung on wires which represent units, tens, hundreds and so on. This device has been used in China for thousands of years – it is so ancient that its exact time and place of invention are unknown. The…