Below the Albion Hotel in Forbes (NSW) is the Bushranger’s Hall of Fame, or Infamy, to be pedantic. Punitive knicknacks adorn the walls, such as a homemade rack, but the real lure lurks in the three separate rooms to the rear of the burrow. In situ, the first room saw Frank Gardiner and his accomplices, [...]
Broome is described as a melting pot of races. But a century ago, the place went closer to a cocktail shaker. Riots were regular. Race and pay (often connected) were the major beefs, with 2000 Japanese pearlers, and 400 Koepangers (from Indonesia) often major players in the biffo. The worst clash was in 1920. The [...]
Readers of this site have noticed a pattern. After writing up two astonishing women of Cooktown, I should add a third. This one belongs in the Tough section of Cassowary Crossing, and warrants a reappearance: Call her Thora, and Toots Holzheimer would mow you down with a semi-trailer. Mother of eight, Toots was a trailblazing [...]
Mary Watson and her cauldron [see previous entry] is just one head-spinning yarn in Cooktown Cemetery in far northern Queensland. A second grave not so far away belongs to a woman of a similar era. And her tale is no less remarkable. Known by the tag the headlines provided, the Normanby Woman owned no other [...]
The reason Mary Watson hopped into the pot with her baby, and rowed off Lizard Island without much freshwater on board was due to her Chinese servant Ah Leong being speared the day before by natives, while fetching water at the creek. In short, she didn’t fancy her chances. Ah Leong was dead. Thankfully Ah [...]
February 1802 wasn’t too serene for Matthew Flinders. Entering the Great Australian Bight, beyond the Eyre Peninsula, our island’s first circumnavigator struck a gale. Knowing his limits, he led the Investigator into the lee of Waldegrave Island where the crew stayed restless all night. Come morning he named the inlet Anxious Bay. And if that [...]
Speed Kills. The message is everywhere. TV ads, press banners, billboards: every patch of blank space is occupied by government slogans asking us to take the pedal off the metal. So pity the hamlet bang between Birchip and Ouyen on the Calder Highway in Victoria. With a population less than the annual road-toll, the tiny [...]
Marian Tomas was a man’s man. His birth name was Marinko, and mates called him Tich, a Slavic nickname meaning ‘little man’. But Tich Tomas will be remembered as a hero, Western Australia’s first conscripted casualty of the Vietnam War. Fresh from throwing his 21st birthday in the Cundinup Community Hall, Tich hit the paddy [...]
Cold Chisel sang about the Star Hotel riots of 1979. The pub was a music mecca for the younger set of Newcastle (NSW), and when it shut, there was hell to pay. Cars burned and police horses bolted. It was anarchy as sponsored by Mr Molotov. Poke your nose into the shabby shell that goes [...]
Australia has no history of civil war. The closest we came, it could be argued, was the Eureka Rebellion in 1854, and Father’s Day in Milperra, 1989. The day began as a motorbike swap-meet in the car-park attached to the Viking Tavern. All seemed according to Hoyle when suddenly a raised voice became a raised [...]