Orange’s Bold Bid

This 1902 booklet shows that the Central West town of Orange was once in contention to become the site of the nation’s capital. This honour eventually went to Canberra. The cover proclaims ‘Canobolas’ as the ‘Ideal Site for the Federal Capital’. An English / Anglicised version of a Wiradjuri word Gnoo Blas and meaning ‘two […]

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A Good Fit

This elegant top hat first belonged to James Dalton Jnr (1834-1919) of Orange, who purchased and wore it in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Several decades earlier, James had fled the Great Irish Famine, leaving the town of Duntryleague in Limerick County, Ireland and migrating to NSW as a free-settler on the Panama, arriving […]

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