A Living Tradition

possum skin cloak covered in painted Aboriginal-style designs

Based on extensive research undertaken by  Yorta Yorta artist Treahna Hamm, this contemporary possum skin cloak was crafted in 2007. The prominent incisor tooth from a possum’s lower jaw was used to etch the non-furry side of the skin with designs that represent the totem and personal markings of Aboriginal people, as well as the […]

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‘To Orange With Love’

black and white photograph of somone platform diving into a pool from above

In 1988, and with camera in hand, the celebrated Sydney-based photographer Max Dupain (1911-1992) ventured west to the town of Orange. More well-known for capturing city skyscrapers, harbour ferries, and bathers on sandy beaches, Dupain went to Orange at the request of Peter O’Neill, then Director of Orange Regional Gallery. O’Neill had asked Dupain to […]

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Learning The Australian Way

At the age of twenty one, Lois Carrington began work as a Migrant Educator in June 1949.  During her career she worked at the Bonegilla Migrant and Reception Centre where she made and used hand-puppets to help teach English and cultural awareness. The migrant families who arrived at Bonegilla from 1947 onwards were taught English […]

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Writing Home

handwritten letter

Many of Frank Brown’s friends enlisted in WWI, but Frank was deemed medically unfit to serve and remained at home in Albury throughout the war. His best mate Arthur Hewish, known as Les, enlisted as a Lieutenant and was later promoted to Captain in the 3rd Battalion. Les fought at Gallipoli and on the Western […]

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Capturing the Barrier

Although James Wooler (1872-1944)  resided in Broken Hill for only a few years his photographs transformed how the world saw its people. His work for The Barrier Miner put the newspaper at the cutting edge of mass media, surpassing The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald’s ability to illustrate articles. His photographic legacy is a […]

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The People’s Painter

Kevin Charles ‘Pro’ Hart (1928-2006) MBE was one of Australia’s best-known and most prolific artists, he was also one of the least accepted by a disapproving art world. Even though the criticism expressed by city-based art critics and galleries about his work was mixed most of it was negative. Counter to this, when the former […]

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Making Her Mark

sampler with multicolour thread listing the alphabet in various cases

Embroidery samplers from the late nineteenth century made by children were often small in size and called ‘marking samplers’. The one shown here was worked by Catherine Frost of Orange in 1872, when she was eight years old. Typically, samplers were made by girls between the ages of five and fifteen, they were the work […]

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Out of the Handbag

crocodile leather handbag beside two letters, hairpins, a lipstick, and business cards

Elizabeth, or ‘Lizzie’, Chifley, the wife to Australia’s sixteenth Prime Minister Ben Chifley, lived well-away from the glare of her husband’s public life. She spent most of her time at the Chifley home at 10 Busby Street in Bathurst, which was a modest painted-brick cottage located in a working-class area of town. Remaining inside their […]

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Riding the Rails to Prosperity

silver badge which reads Porter

In January 1888 a thirty-mile stretch of train track was opened with much pomp and ceremony on the western border of New South Wales. It’s hard to imagine now but the construction of this infrastructure, when the only modes of transport were bullock train, camel, and horse and cart, was vital and revolutionary in its […]

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The Boundary Rider Who Founded BHP

Born Germany in 1846, Charles Rasp (1846-1907) arrived in Melbourne in 1869. Although his early years in Australia were spent as an itinerant agricultural worker he went on to become one of the founders of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP) and ended his days a very wealthy man. After a few years working on […]

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