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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
On 12 February 1938 the SS Orama left London for Australia and among its passengers were twenty-eight child migrants. Edwin Lambert, one of these children, boarded the ship clutching a suitcase that held his clothes, a science book and these small toys. As the ship eased away from the wharf Edwin waved goodbye to his […]
This decorated certificate, along with a silver table-centerpiece known as an epergne, was presented to Carcoar’s Bank Manager, Mr John Phillips, at a farewell organised by the village’s residents in August 1893. Printed tributes like this example were commonly gifted in this era, they acknowledged the community esteem felt for those who received them. The […]
In 1883 Scottish migrant George McCulloch (1848-1907) took a risk on a rocky field on the Mount Gipps sheep station he managed. The risk paid off and within a few years he had founded the Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP). George left Broken Hill soon after he made his fortune, but he never forgot his […]
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