Sunday 30 June 2024
1 July in Australian History
Thursday 27 June 2024
A new library with gallery in The Petherick's abandoned convent.
Just magic watching the library take shape!
June 28 Australian History without the cricket bits
1790 Slightly cracked and half past a pool noodle, John Macarthur rocked up in Sydney for the first time.
His wife, Elizabeth, did a lot for the sheep industry with Merinos.
1836 Snow fell in Sydney all over the shop and scared the two-legged wildlife.
1847 The Right Reverend Charles Perry was consecrated as the first Bishop of Melbourne (29 June).
1848 The Right Reverend Charles Perry was installed in the Cathedral Church of St James.
1880 Bushranger Ned Kelly was caught by the police after throwing a tanty that resulted in a number of people being not alive.
1880 Melbourne became the first city to install a commercial telephone when engineering firm Robison Bros hooked up their Melbourne office to their South Melbourne foundry.
Book-ending the bloody mess called The First World War
1914 The assassination of Arch-Duke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia, kicked off 4 years of mayhem.
1919 Billy Hughes signed the Versailles Treaty on behalf of Australia; the Treaty of Versailles officially brought an end to the war.
Sources - I accidentally closed some of the tabs and I'm getting tired, cranky and snarky, so I'll do it tomorrow.
Or something.
June 28 Australian History with a side serving of cricket
On this merry wee date in history a few things all cricket flavoured happened.
1882 The Australian Cricket Team took on the United South of England at Chichester and made a tidy little score.
Source:
Australia V United South England
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1915 Australian cricketer Victor Trumper was farewelled at the too-young age of 37.
Source:
Victor Trumper
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1938 Australian cricketer Don Bradman scored 102 at Lords.
Source:
Don Bradman
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2006 Keith Miller's Baggy Green cricket cap was auctioned for $35,000 more than 50 years after he wore it.
Source:
Keith Miller
Monday 24 June 2024
Murrumbidgee Floods June 25, 1852
The night of June 24, 1852 saw the river Murrumbidgee swell to breaking its banks, flooding the original township of Gundagai (Gun-da-guy).
European settlers had established buildings on the low lying ground, too close to the river.
Wiradjuri (Wee-rad-jury) men came to the rescue of the Europeans - even though they'd tried to warn them against building the town and buildings where they had - Indigenous people were often the saviours of those who'd dismissed/ignored or treated them badly.
Previous floods had seen Wiradjuri people rescue Europeans in the 1840s.
The Wiradjuri men of whose names we know were Yarri (Coonong Denamundinna) Jacky Jacky, Long Jimmy and Tommy Davis.
They rescued an estimated 69 people in bark canoes over three days and nights.
No one knows the exact number of people who lost their lives as the population was often increased with drovers, but with 250 people living in the town, at least 80 - 100 people died, untold livestock losses and only 3 houses left standing after the flood water receded.
And, of course, no one knows how many Indigenous people died.
2017 saw a mark of respect and thanks to the Wiradjuri People with the statue of Yarri and Jacky Jacky and one of the bark canoes used to rescue people.
Sources:
https://indigenousx.com.au/the-heroes-of-gundagai/
https://www.visitgundagai.com.au/discovergundagai/sculpture-the-great-rescue-of-1852
https://csaa.asn.au/2022/08/08/gundagai-yarri-and-jacky-jacky/
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/101627922
https://www.visitgundagai.com.au/discovergundagai/oldgundagai
Mudpies mudlarks
Father - daughter team Andy and Josie are a fab, fun pair to join on their mud-ventures, whether in the waterways or digging dump sites in the woods there is enjoyment to be had in their finds, the mud and the usual tank traps.
Thursday 6 June 2024
The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin
This exceedingly well-researched biography paints a clear picture of the life of both women in the theatre, and of those who dared try to exist outside its confines.
But, actually, that is not entirely true as it was the likes of Dickens and his mates who strove to paint pretty little dovecotes in which to imprison their ideal woman, keeping her saintly, pure, out of politics, art, and certainly not allow her any agency of her own.
Trollope, of the Anthony variety, was brother-in-law to two or more such females of the species who had intellect, ability for writing, journalism, languages, sciences, and yet...
And yet they died in poverty.
They always die in poverty.
Languishing in the dust of disinterest and ignorance these difficult women, who will not fit neatly or quietly in those pretty prisons, await to be discovered decades or centuries after the male has sated his fill of publicity, after the male ego has been patted enough to silence his fangirls for a couple of years.
These women are never promoted by these males, these so-called bastions of literature who have been studied endlessly in secondary schools, in books where they paint women as less than males.
And we wonder why there is War on Women...!
Charles Dickens was dodgy AF.
Giving the bugger serious side-eye re his wife's sister...well, I should say "sisterS".
Women in his books are never nice, normal, independent, intelligent people - they are always "less", sex-worker Nancy in Oliver Twist, Oliver's mother herself a fallen saint, Great Expectations, I mean to say!
And let's not forget the statement that his poor, long-suffering wife was 'insane' when he decided to have his mid-life crisis but wanted to keep the good PR rolling along.
Remind me again - exactly WHY do we think these 'masters' of literature are the best for our kids to study before they venture into adulthood?
My takeaway review -
A MUCH OLDER MARRIED wealthy bloke got his own way by beginning a sexual relationship with a TEENAGER whose family consisted of a widowed mother, 2 sisters and NO INCOME.
23 July Australian History
1773 Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, namesake of Brisbane aka Party Town Bris-Vegas, was found in the cabbage patch. 1888 The South Coast R...
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1770 Today was a shite day for a random kangaroo ; a crew person on Cook's ship became the first European (that we know of) to eyebal...
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1791 The Mary Ann , a ship operating independently of the Third Fleet, rocked up in New South Wales, bringing with her 141 female convicts a...
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1814 Today saw Matthew Flinders' book, A Voyage to Terra Australis, finally in print where he named Australia... well, Australia. A Voya...