Burning the Midnight Oil

The horses whinnied restlessly as the coachman, Jim Lowe, prepared their harnesses. Nearby, hanging at the entrance of the Cobb & Co booking office, this lantern beamed brightly like a beacon in the pre-dawn darkness. The passengers had been called for at their lodgings half an hour before – their coach was ready to make […]

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A Reminder of Home

Following the frenzied days of the gold rushes, which swept across various parts of New South Wales and Victoria between the 1850’s and the 1870’s, there was an influx of Chinese miners from these areas to Holbrook, then known as Germanton. A vast number of these men sought to find their fortune in the abandoned […]

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Giants of Wire

N. Greenings and Sons was the oldest and largest British wire company in its heyday. The company was founded in 1805 by Nathaniel Greenings in Warrington and would go on to internationally export precision industrial products well into the twentieth century. One of the items produced by Greenings was the laboratory sieve, a tool used […]

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Seeing Herman Rosler

If it possible to ascribe personal characteristics based on a photograph this portrait of Julius Herman Rosler (1825-1914) – known as John – suggests a self-confident man determined to make his mark on the world, something he certainly did. One obituary published upon Rosler’s death was subtitled ‘A Romantic Career’ which somewhat downplays a life […]

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