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Happy History Week
This week organisations across the state are celebrating History Week 2020, the festival organised by the History Council of NSW. ...
Listening to the Great Depression
People have been asking me a lot lately about how the economic recession we are experiencing now compares to earlier times of economic instability. Unlike the situation we're all in at the moment, which has come about largely because of the pandemic, the global...
Death of the Monorail
I remember the childhood joy of riding the old Sydney monorail – a single-loop that connected Darling Harbour, Chinatown and the Sydney central business and shopping districts. You had to board with a little gold token and were whizzed through what seemed like...
The squire of Enmore House – Joshua Frey Josephson
Today I'm going to give you an insight into how my mind works and the connections I follow when I'm exploring the Dictionary of Sydney. Listen to Lisa and Alex on 2SER...
Stars shining bright above you
This month in Sydney is a good time to look to the stars - not only are we all in Covid inspired isolation, with associated clearer and darker skies, but the planets Jupiter and Saturn are in prime viewing positions. Looking at the stars might seem like a thing few...
Armed with such terrible weapons
Today Sydney-siders take for granted that our local spiders, in particular the Sydney funnel-web, are dangerous and to be treated with caution, but, surprisingly, surprisingly, this caution only came about in the 1920s. [button...
Richard Dawson: Sydney’s original iron man
Richard ‘Dicky’ Dawson was an entrepreneur whose early iron foundry located down at Circular Quay was a landmark business that transformed Sydney. Listen to Lisa and...
The Dugong and the Salamander
It’s strange to think about what might be entombed in dirt beneath the pavements we walk on in Sydney. But the discoveries around 1900 of two particular creatures catapults us back into the prehistory and the Deep Time dimensions of our city. [button...
Shipping hazards
It's been wild weather out there in Sydney over the last couple of days, so it seemed like a good time to look at one of the earliest maritime disasters in Sydney Harbour - and remind people it's really not a good idea to take the boat out at the moment. [button...
Horse Drawn: John Rae and ‘The Turning of the First Turf’
John Rae is, perhaps, my favourite dead white male. On the surface, he’s really rather ordinary. An administrator who was meticulous and ambitious, he was a career public servant. He woke up, got dressed, went to work and came home again. He married and had six...
