Category: Australian History

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, 72 footnotes, one video, 27 images and one map].

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 near Mel­bourne. There isn’t any evidence that Napol­eon played the guitar and his purported ownership of this example does not 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, 64 footnotes, one video, five images and one digitised book].

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 themes and content. [About 5,400 words, 68 footnotes, five images, one video and one map].

On 25 May 1870 the bushranger Fred­erick Ward (popularly known as ‘Thun­derbolt’ or ‘Cap­tain Thun­derbolt’) was shot and killed by a police trooper 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, 31 footnotes and eight images].

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 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, 9 images, one plan and one map].

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 electric 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, 39 footnotes, five images and one map].