Talkies Come to Town

Imagine Dan Alderson’s surprise when he found this ‘Woods Australian Diary’ from 1930 stashed behind the safe at Tamworth’s Theatre Royal. It was not just a plain old diary – when Dan opened its cover, he discovered that its pages were filled with handwritten notes revealing the titles of films screened decades before at the […]

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Putting Pen to Paper

Computers, tablets and smart phones might be helpful, but many would agree there’s still nothing like scribbling down your thoughts using a pen and paper. In December 1872, when Maitland Mercury newspaper employee John Thompson ( – 1902) first opened this diary, he seems to have been thinking of using it in the coming year […]

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