England

The engineering giant that helped build Queensland

30 May 2025 / 3 Comments

Nations are not built by those who sit down and ask for doles or alms, but by the daring and the bold. They are not built by the timid, but by the dauntless and adventurous.

R. S. Maynard

Maryborough was truly an essential industrial city in Queensland’s early history. It served as a pivotal distribution centre that supported three major industries: agriculture, manufacturing, and timber.

The man who walked the Bass Strait

9 May 2025 / 10 Comments

The Bass Strait submarine cables

In 1859, the first underwater telegraph cable in the Southern Hemisphere and the longest in the world was laid across Bass Strait.

Planning began in 1853 when discussions were held to build an overland line from Hobart in the south to Launceston in the north of Tasmania, extending across Bass Strait to Victoria.

The Cricket bat – a journey from the backyard to Test matches

31 January 2025 / 4 Comments

Nostalgic beginnings

Growing up in Australia in the 1970s, I spent countless hours playing backyard cricket during those balmy summer evenings. Despite my love for the game, I never excelled, oscillating between dreams of being a superb bowler or a top-order batsman, yet failing to master either. My lack of skills was evident as I was always the 11th-picked player on our school cricket team, batting last and rarely bowling.

The year Santa never made it to Darwin

20 December 2024 / 1 Comment

It began as a deep distant rumbling, like the stirring of some gargantuan subterranean beast.

It was unsettling at first, ominous, something you felt in your guts more than you heard with your ears, an eerie subsonic vibration that seemed to rise from the bowels of Hades.

As the she-devil crept closer, the wailing began.

The debt of burden was the skeleton in all their closets – the failure of the Beerburrum Soldiers Settlement Scheme

20 September 2024 / 5 Comments

A Grand Vision

The Queensland government funded Beerburrum Soldier Settlement Scheme was a disaster. The aim was to provide repatriated servicemen from World War I with farms where “swords could be transformed into ploughshares” for a tranquil existence in a rural climate.

The high enlistment numbers and enormous physical and mental casualties from the war, forced Australian authorities to develop a repatriation policy.

Timber’s role in the rise of Australian butter

31 May 2024 / 3 Comments

While researching for my three-part series on the truth behind the rainforest wars in New South Wales (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), there was a constant theme in the historical account of utilising one species of rainforest timber. While the cutting of hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) was undoubtedly very extensive in New South Wales, the scale of utilisation in Queensland was even more significant, and one of its primary uses was for butter boxes.

Special ANZAC stories

25 April 2024 / 8 Comments

I have decided to write this blog to commemorate and remember the men from settlements in and around Surrey Hills who fought in wars.

In Chapter 10 of my book, “Fires, Farms and Forests”, I outlined some of the war service by men from Guildford Junction. This blog goes into more detail and includes stories about men from Parrawe and Bulgobac.

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Happy 100th birthday, Wee Georgie Wood!

22 March 2024 / 2 Comments

Like many places on the West Coast, before 1964, when the Murchison Highway was opened to vehicular traffic, the only access was via the Emu Bay Railway. However, Tullah wasn’t on the Emu Bay line, and like the silver town of Magnet, it relied on a tramway spur for a link to the outside world.

Extending the railway to the west coast

26 January 2024 / 4 Comments

Introduction

In my book “Fires, Farms and Forests”, I dedicated a chapter to outline the construction of a horse-drawn wooden tramway in the mid-late 1870s. The chapter focused on the monumental task of constructing 74 kilometres of a new line through some sections of dense rainforest, all cleared by hand.

As I wrote in the book, I believe it is the longest wooden tramway built in the world.

How the Hampshire Hills became a sea of yellow

27 October 2023 / 2 Comments

Gorse was brought to Tasmania in the early 1800s. Its principal use was as an ornamental hedge by settlers hoping to replicate the paddocks of England. The Reverend Knopwood purchased some English gorse at New Town, near Hobart in 1815. Writer, Louisa Anne Meredith, noted the widespread use of gorse for hedges on the east coast by 1841.… Read more

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