Nancy Irene Wallbank (1910-1981) of Dudley, New South Wales, was in her early 30s when she became a registered National Emergency Service (NES) Warden. During WWII, as airstrikes began to feel like an imminent threat throughout Australia, the NES formed to prepare communities for possible air attacks on Australian soil and train volunteers to assist […]
This certificate, issued to Albert Arthur Robert Wallbank (1909–1975) gave him the right to mine under the 1906 NSW Mining Act. Albert lived in Dudley in the heart of the coal mining district of the Hunter Valley of NSW but it is unlikely that he was intending to mine for coal. Gold was his target. […]
When WWII began in 1939, the New South Wales government swiftly established a body known as the National Emergency Service (NES) to act as an air raid and civil defense service on the home front. All civilians, particularly government employees, were urged to join. One of the 115,000 people who heeded this call was Albert […]
Albert Wallbank served as a police constable in Carrington, Newcastle for seven years until March 1921, when he was transferred to Dudley, then a small seaside town. The ink stand pictured dates to the 1920s and is believed to have been gifted to Constable Wallbank. Perhaps it was a farewell gift from the Carrington community, […]
The National Emergency Services (NES) was established at the beginning of World War II in 1939 to ‘help protect, educate and provide aid on the home front.’ NSW Ambulance and St John’s Ambulance were engaged to provide first-aid training such as that undertaken by Nancy Irene Wallbank (1910–1981) of Dudley a suburb of Newcastle, NSW. […]
In the early hours of a Monday morning in March 1898, the sound of a major explosion rocked Dudley, a small mining town just south of Newcastle. As plumes of black smoke spewed from the shaft of the Dudley Colliery, the mothers, wives, and children of workers ran to the site. Fifteen identity tags hung […]
Made in the famous J Hudson & Co Ltd factory in Birmingham, this whistle belonged to Senior Constable Albert Wallbank (1887-1953), a long-standing officer at Dudley Police Station, south of Newcastle. Like many aspects of standard police issue equipment in New South Wales, this whistle was inherited from the British ‘bobby’ (slang term for a […]
One Sunday shortly before Christmas in 1928, Frederick V. D’Arcy (1901-1996) sat down to write the following inscription on the first blank page of a small leather-bound bible: ‘16th December 1928, Presented to Mr. B. Wallbank, From the Dudley Presbyterian Sunday School, F.V. D’Arcy, Superintendent.’ D’Arcy was born in Walcha, New South Wales, on Anaiwan […]
After 24 years of service at Dudley Police Station, on the 20th July 1945, Constable Albert Edward Wallbank (1887-1953) was promoted to the rank of Senior Constable. Upon receiving his new rank and responsibilities, Wallbank also earned these Senior Constable stripes that were affixed to his uniform. As a policeman, Wallbank dealt with his fair […]
Constable Albert Wallbank was dedicated to three things: his family, his job and his adopted community of Dudley. Sadly, Albert (1887-1953) had not known his own father, because he died when Albert was 14 months old. Through his mother Sarah (neé Singleton) Albert descended from the convict William Singleton who arrived in New South Wales […]
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