Fit to Meet the Queen 

NSWR fireman hat header

Barry Purdon must have been very excited when Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Bathurst on 12 February 1954. On their whirlwind tour of Australia, the royal couple visited 57 towns and cities in 58 days, but only travelled by train three times.   On that momentous day, Barry was the ‘fireman’ on […]

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Trophy Textile

As hundreds of industrial looms clanged and hummed at the National Textiles manufacturing plant at Rutherford, NSW, this small, printed remnant of ‘toile’ furnishing fabric hung silently on the wall in the administration office. It was a ‘trophy’ of a high-quality furnishing textile the staff had woven in 1988 in celebration of the Australian Bicentenary, […]

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