Melbourne

Another flood, another poor response

Eugowra station was established in 1834, and the town took its name from the station when a village popped up in the 1860s on the station about 35 kilometres east of Forbes.

The town is most famous for a gold robbery in 1862 when Frank Gardiner and his gang of bushrangers pulled off the biggest gold robbery at Escort Rock just outside of town.

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Queensland’s border response to the 1919 Spanish Flu

When the railways of Queensland and New South Wales met in 1888, the border towns of Wallangarra and Jennings were created. It was the only rail link between Brisbane and Sydney, leading to a new era in transport. As a consequence, both states introduced the Intercolonial Express train service.

However, the two governments could not resolve the differences in the railway gauges between each state.

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The rise and fall and rise again of a valley’s Rattler

As settlers moved into the rich, fertile areas of the Mary Valley in the 1860s, they wanted a railway to connect them more readily to the outside world and markets for their produce.

The government ignored their early calls, but all that changed when prospectors discovered gold at nearby Gympie in 1867.

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Special ANZAC stories

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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The fruit and salad bowl of Queensland

Introduction

If you have driven around the patchwork of fertile red volcanic soils east of Bundaberg, you would have noticed several paddocks of fruit and vegetable crops, in addition to the vast cane fields. Bundaberg is best known for its sugar cane and rum. However, these days, the region is a true fruit and salad bowl area feeding the nation.

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The humble clothes peg

Ever since humans have worn garments, they have had to wash them. Where to put the garments to dry has a fascinating history. We always think that pegs hung them. However, clothes pegs only have a relatively recent past. Before the nineteenth century, laundry was hung on bushes, limbs or lines without fasteners to hold the clothes in place. … Read more

The tragic loss of the Voyager

Introduction

They became men overnight”. A reference to young 19 year-old crewmen that had only been in the Navy for six months and rose to the occasion in the rescue operations after Voyager collided with HMAS Melbourne.

Tomorrow marks the day, 60 years ago, of the worst peace-time tragedy for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).

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The 1939 fires – a blame game

And of course there were ignitions by the fistful. Lightning kindled some fires, but most emanated from a register of casual incendiarists that reads like a roster of rural Australia: settlers, graziers, prospectors, splitters, mineworkers, arsonists, loggers and mill bushmen, hunters looking to drive game, fishermen hoping to open up the scrub around the streams, foresters unable to contain controlled burns, bush residents seeking to ward off wildfire by protective fire, travellers and transients of all kinds.

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The silver town that was auctioned off the face of the earth

After James ‘Philosopher’ Smith discovered the rich Mount Bischoff tin deposit near Waratah in 1871, there was a keenness to prospect other areas of the West Coast region. Prospector William Robert Bell was one of them. He was employed by the Van Diemen’s Land Company (VDL Co.) in May 1875 to carry out prospecting on the eastern boundary of Hampshire Hills following the discovery of tin near Mount Housetop, some three miles away.

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Killing koalas to “save” polar bears

“They are farming us of our money, not farming the wind or solar.

Queensland will be covered in glass and steel to meet ambitious renewable energy targets

In a previous post, I wrote about the mad scramble by federal and state governments to force a rapid transition to renewable energy despite insurmountable engineering constraints, costs blowouts by a factor of 20 from $78 billion to $1.5 trillion in 2030 and $9 trillion by 2050, and the refusal of our federal minister, Chris Bowen to face up to reality, even after a relentless stream of delays to major renewable projects hits the news each month.

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