After diving into the still, muddy water of Stoney Creek at Toronto in the early 1930s, Bill Walker usually took a lap or two to warm up. But when he did, Bill was hard to beat. Known for his staying power, the Newcastle Sun considered him ‘a swimmer of class with excellent prospects.’ Over the […]
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, […]
At this point, the history of Newcastle, located on Awabakal and Worimi country, is enmeshed with coal mining – but this was not always the case. Though these twentieth-century drills bits may have seen use in one of the many coal mines in the region, they are actually typical of those used for woodworking or […]
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 […]
Gone were the days of sweating by the wood fire stove in summer while waiting for a flat iron to heat. In the 1930s, this Coleman Self Heating Iron Model No 4A, with ‘Cool Blue’ enamel was the state-of-the-art ironing aid that every home needed. Heated with a gasoline fuel burner, which lit instantly and […]
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 […]
Holding the arm of her new husband Ernest John Phillips, Scottish-born Jessie McGeachie (1883-1947), descended the stairs in the garden of her parent’s home Craig Royston in Toronto, with its terraced lawns leading down to the edge of Lake Macquarie. It was the morning of 9 June 1909 and they had been directed to take […]
When the Lake Macquarie swimming champion Bill Walker heard his name called, and he stepped up to receive his award for the Senior Point Score of 1935-6, he might have had a chuckle at being handed this silver-plated teapot trophy. That fresh winter evening in June 1936, at the Blackalls Park Hall near the banks […]
One Sunday in early February 1933, Bill Walker splashed out of the murky water and up the sandy bank of Stoney Creek near Toronto, Lake Macquarie. Puffing from swimming the 200-yard (183-metre) race, the 20-year-old was in fine form – beating his competitors in the very respectable time of 2 minutes and 46 seconds. That […]
Richard Sneddon drove his horse and cart to the back door of the bakery of the West Wallsend Cooperative Society and filled his baskets with fresh loaves, which had been baked and neatly stacked on trollies the previous afternoon. Around the town, Richard left bread at the houses of co-op members, and collected the small […]
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