Every train station has one. The familiar sign that reminds you to get off the train at your stop, or to stay on, if it’s not. Like all others, this sign from Morpeth train station at Robert Street, Morpeth, is a silent witness of decades of comings and goings. Built in 1889, Morpeth was just […]
Sometime in the 1780s, or even earlier, a furniture maker in England put the finishing touches on this utilitarian chair with its simplified fiddle back. He painted it with shellac and used his hammer to drive in iron tacks to secure the brown leather upholstery and to stamp the letters ‘S’ and ‘L’ (perhaps his […]
How many pieces of wood does it take to build a miniature bridge? How many hours, and how much patience? With its clever system of interconnected triangles and cast-iron joints, this 1:25 exact scale model of one of the three spans of the Morpeth bridge was expertly and painstakingly pieced together by Michael Deguara. A […]
In the 1870s, when Berry schoolgirl Helena Kinneally stitched the buttonholes, fancy borders and darning to create this needlework sampler, she probably didn’t know how useful those skills would later be, when she became the mother of ten children. Helena Kinneally (c. 1868-1904) was born in Victoria about 1868. She was the daughter of William […]
The sinuous silver snake that forms the handle of this claret ewer is poised to strike – but at what? The snake is focussed on the hinged lid of the ewer, which has a hole where perhaps a knob was once attached. Could the missing knob be the snake’s prey, and could it have been […]
Leslie Clouten was recovering from his wounds on 28 September 1917 when he wrote a letter to his parents on the back of this folding souvenir postcard booklet. While serving at the front in France in June, Leslie had been injured by a gunshot wound in the abdomen, and was removed to England, suffering continual […]
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 […]
The popular Australian cartoonist Les Lumsdon (1912-1977) was born in Abermain, New South Wales, a small outlying town of Newcastle. Spanning three decades, Lumsdon documented the lives of ordinary Australians, capturing the political mood of the times in his satirical comic sketches. He created these hand-drawn cartoons for the Newcastle Morning Herald from 1946 […]
They said the new mine shaft was so free of projecting rocks that you could not hang your hat on any part of it. It was March 1887, and two hundred guests were gathered for a bush banquet at the new Young Wallsend Colliery, near Teralba. They toasted the future success of the new mine […]
In November 1916, as the troopship HMAT Borda approached Cape Town, Private Leslie Clouten and his mates on board were surely impressed by the scenery – the city at the southern tip of Africa nestled between the shore and Table Mountain, rising behind. His ship had already called at Durban a few days earlier, and […]
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