16 April 2026
While nineteenth-century railway opening celebrations have received little attention from historians, the advent of this revolutionary form of transport commonly was understood as the most important event in many Australian country towns’ short histories. Armidale in northern New South Wales (NSW) was no different and its opening celebrations are the focus of this socio-cultural history. Key themes include a battle with the NSW Railways Department over the Station site, shifting local power relations and repeated forms of social exclusion from formal festivities. Drastic improvisation was also forced upon organisers by the Railway Station and Town Hall’s incomplete state in early 1883. The essay concludes with an epilogue upon a potentially scandalous tragedy now long forgotten. [About 7,800 words, 136 footnotes, 25 images and three maps (including Main Northern railway with historic routes and Google Earth 3D option)].
7 June 2024
This article examines two early hydroelectric installations on the New England or Northern Tablelands of New South Wales. The first, which began operation on the Gara River in 1894, was the pioneering commercial hydroelectric plant in Australia and was built to power mining machinery and town lighting at Hillgrove. A substantial gallery of historic images is featured, including photos of a smaller mining plant built on the Styx River in 1907. Finally, some later regional hydroelectric power stations and plans are noted. [About 4,000 words, 73 footnotes, one video, 29 images and one map].
14 November 2021
Over the years claims have been made that Napoleon Bonaparte owned and played two guitars. This essay discusses one such instrument now held at The Briars, a National Trust property on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. There isn’t any evidence that Napoleon played the guitar and his purported ownership of this example doesn’t stand up to scrutiny either. While the mythology associated with the instrument is an interesting subject in itself, the primary aim of this piece is to uncover its actual history (as far as it can be determined). [About 4,000 words, 66 footnotes, one video, seven images and one digitised book].
29 October 2021
The Great Strike is regarded as one of the most divisive conflicts in Australian industrial history. It primarily took place in Sydney and this article examines an early documentary film censored by the New South Wales government in late 1917 and rarely screened. However, in 2017 about 15 minutes of surviving footage was published online by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Part I of the article identifies subject themes and locations under subheadings derived from surviving film intertitles while Part II briefly discusses apparently censored footage. Other newsreel footage of the Great Strike was included in the essay in April 2026 and is also briefly discussed. [About 5,600 words, 73 footnotes, five images, two videos and one map].
1 October 2018
On 25 May 1870 the bushranger Frederick Ward (popularly known as ‘Thunderbolt’ or ‘Captain Thunderbolt’) was shot and killed by a police constable named Alexander Walker at Kentucky Creek, near Uralla, in northern New South Wales. In the following days an Armidale photographer named Andrew Cunningham captured at least ten photographs pertaining to Ward’s death. Some of these photos (particularly three of Ward’s cadaver) are well known; on the other hand, virtually no investigation has been undertaken of at least four other photos of the site where Ward was shot. These include two staged re-enactment images in which Walker participated. I also look at the visual representation of Ward’s ‘capture’ in the colonial illustrated press, noting the ways these images diverge from reported reality. [About 2,800 words, 30 footnotes and nine images].
23 May 2018
The All England cricket team’s tour of 1861–62 generated unprecedented interest and excitement in the Australian colonies. This article examines the visual documentation of one match held before large crowds at Sydney’s Outer Domain, near the Royal Botanic Garden. An enormous and very likely unprecedented six-frame photographic panorama of the match captured by Thomas Glaister hasn’t been noted by scholars to date and doesn’t appear to have survived in original form; however, a likely excerpt was published in the Sydney Morning Herald half a century later. Reportedly ‘instantaneous’ photographs of the match also were captured by Glaister representing early steps in the evolution of sports photography. [About 2,800 words, 41 footnotes, eight images, one plan and one map].
3 January 2018
Australia’s hydroelectric history began in 1883 when the ore dressing sheds at the Mount Bischoff Tin mine at Waratah in Northern Tasmania were lit by electric light. Over the course of the 1880s, five other pioneering lighting systems opened in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales. Presently, a substantial amount of misinformation surrounds some of these installations while others have not been given proper recognition and this overview presents each in chronological order. Like all my articles, wherever possible digitised primary source evidence is directly linked in the footnotes. [About 2,700 words, 41 footnotes, six images and one map].
