Leather worn through at the toes, broken laces, and soles coming apart. These boots were worn to the bitter end and seemed to serve their wearer well. But were they fit for purpose? Worn by a miner at the Stockton Borehole Colliery, at Teralba, Lake Macquarie, where coal was mined from 1901, boots like these […]
Posing for this photograph one day in the 1970s, the senior surf boat crew of the Caves Beach Surf Lifesaving Club were wearing their Speedo swimming briefs – a far cry from the heavy woollen bathers worn in earlier decades. Still, the club’s signature colours of maroon and white remained. They had much to celebrate […]
As these men posed on Caves Beach, on the peninsula between Lake Macquarie and the Pacific Ocean, it’s tempting to imagine that the photographer might have yelled out a request such as, ‘C’mon boys, smile for the camera!’. The two jovial lifesavers at the left responded, but the three men on the right just squinted […]
The proverb ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ is possibly never more apt than when applied to the portable mine gas detector. Throughout mining history, countless miners have lost their lives in explosions caused by the inflammable methane gas that accumulates underground through the transformation of ancient plant material into coal. But from the 1950s, […]
A clean, orderly, and peaceful facility with smokeless chimneys – it is so picturesque that even a family of ducks float happily nearby. The Pasminco Smelter, also known as Cockle Creek Smelter or ‘The Sulphide,’ was a zinc and lead smelter covering approximately 190 hectares at the northern end of Lake Macquarie in Boolaroo. Founded […]
These scrapbooks were compiled by the Babaneek Ladies’ Choir (1950-1982) and are a reminder of their community work between 1950-1973 and 1979-1981. They trace the choir’s long performance history throughout the Lake Macquarie and Hunter Valley regions. The Babaneek Ladies’ Choir was motivated by the charitable intention of bringing joy and comfort through song, this […]
Geoff Sidebottom is a professional musician who knows a thing or two about keeping the beat. ‘As a lead drummer I’d play a four-bar sequence and then second drum would come in and fatten it. Then he’d stop while I played a different pattern perhaps. And if you got a bit sick of playing a […]
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 […]
One glimpse at the map illustrated on this pamphlet would suggest that if a hydrogen bomb were to be dropped on Newcastle, the effects would extend beyond Maitland, Cessnock and Lake Macquarie, making the chances of survival slim. Luckily for the citizens of the Greater Newcastle area, the Cold War era local civil defence organisations […]
When fisherman Richard Parker acquired a block of bushland near Lake Macquarie, about 1895, there were two tools in his kit that would be essential for clearing the land and building a simple house – his axe, and this pit saw. The house Parker built at 85 Docker Street (now known as Haddon Crescent), Marks […]
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