A Life of Service

Three service medals awarded to Bathurst-born Irene Stoddart (1880–1957) recognise the contribution she made as a nurse during WWI. Nurse Stoddart may have been especially proud of the 1914-15 Star, which recognises her service prior to 31 December 1915. A small lapel pin with the motto ‘digna sequi’ gives a clue to her role during […]

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Sweet Survival

In late 1929, stock markets crashed and the world fell into the Great Depression. By 1932, one in three Australian breadwinners were unemployed. Families queued at soup kitchens or relied on government payments that allowed them to buy only the bare minimum of food. For many poor families, the staple meal was bread and ‘dripping’ […]

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Simply Electric

The American inventor Thomas Edison is claimed to have said that to invent ‘you need a good imagination and a pile of junk’. It would have been easy for excavators working in William Street, Brisbane, to see these tubes as junk and throw them away. But these tubes are of World Significance as some of […]

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