With smoke billowing out throughout the day, the red brick chimney of the Maitland Gaol cookhouse towered over the perimeter walls, serving as a focal point for the people of East Maitland. This date stone installed on the chimney and marking the year it was built, is now all that survives of the cookhouse (demolished […]
Underground coal mines are dangerous workplaces. The pit ponies used to work coal were no less at risk than the miners. The pit pony’s job was to haul the coal wagons, or skips, and equipment in and out of the mine. This old, well-worn and hardened leather strap had a crucial role to play when […]
Imagine her excitement as Narelle Kemp, a young girl from the mining town of West Wallsend carefully unwrapped this Vulcan Toy Model Featherweight sewing machine in the 1950s. It was a gift that brought her much enjoyment, and one that also had an important purpose. On this miniature version of the classic Singer sewing machine, […]
First recorded in the English-speaking world in the seventeenth century, hopscotch as a children’s game conjures images and sounds of laughter, joy, and play-themes that art photographer Michael Cook (1968-) comments on through their visual omission in his work Mother (Hopscotch). Speaking directly to the artist’s personal past as an Indigenous adoptee, and to the […]
It was fear that stopped Dave McGarry from re-offending when he was finally released from Maitland Gaol. Locked up from age nineteen, McGarry remembers how ‘everyone here was someone to be scared of… at least sixty per cent of the guys… all carried weapons’. Improvised stabbing weapons, known as ‘shivs’ in ‘criminal slang’ since at […]
Celebrated as a superb showman, with a dry wit and infectious smile, Gordon Parsons (1926-1990) toured Australia extensively, recorded 21 singles and seven albums, and won several country music awards. But Parsons was a reluctant performer and loved the quiet life, ‘I’d just as soon poke around the bush … I’d rather be fishing than […]
On the floor of the dark, dusty, pit the miners shuffled about loading skips with the recently sorted chunks of coal. As each pair of miners filled a skip, they attached a string carrying a small piece of leather bearing their number. Then the winding mechanism hauled the skips carrying the rich black ore up […]
Dusty roads that stretch endlessly through flat, dry scrubland are a defining feature of the Australian landscape. Underneath open blue skies, the environment takes on a surreal, ethereal state, stuck somewhere between the real and the unreal. In Mother (Skipping Rope), artist Michael Cook (1968-) takes that same feeling of intangibility and instability and utilises […]
On 31 July 1915, eighteen-year-old Winnie O’Sullivan stood on the roof of her family’s hotel the Lord Dudley. Here, she listened to the roaring crowd at the nearby Sydney Stadium, in Rushcutters Bay. Women were admitted to the stadium for free, but as a boxing venue it was considered no place for a lady. Inside the stadium […]
On the evening of 31 July 1915 the tiered seats of the Sydney’s premier boxing stadium were crammed with 17,000 spectators, and thousands more stood outside. All were impatient for the anticipated Darcy v. McGoorty match to begin. Les Darcy (1895-1917), a 19-year-old blacksmith-turned-professional-boxer from Maitland, was the local drawcard. How did Eddie McGoorty, the […]
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We pay respect to them as First Nations people with a continuing connection to land, place, waters and community
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are advised that this site contains stories, images, voices, and video of people who have died.
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