Merle’s Little Black-out Curtain Dress

This empire waist dress, which has a cross-over bodice and matching bolero jacket, was made from a former blackout curtain used during WWII. After ‘Victory in the Pacific’ was declared in August 1945, the curtain was salvaged by Merle Hadley (1926-2015) from her childhood home in Sydney. The dress was machine-sewn by Merle in 1956, […]

Read More…

A Good Fit

This elegant top hat first belonged to James Dalton Jnr (1834-1919) of Orange, who purchased and wore it in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Several decades earlier, James had fled the Great Irish Famine, leaving the town of Duntryleague in Limerick County, Ireland and migrating to NSW as a free-settler on the Panama, arriving […]

Read More…

Postmarked Wollumben

One of the oldest known artefacts relating to the European settlement of the Tweed River district is this small franking stamp. It was used at the first-established Post Office that operated from the home of Joshua (1838-1918) and Gertrude Bray (1846-1938), located near the present day town of Murwillumbah. It is a beautifully crafted hand-tool […]

Read More…