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Read more about the article Miracle of the waters: a 1955 flood tale
At the Long Bridge after the flood.

Miracle of the waters: a 1955 flood tale

When dozens of witnesses saw Stan and Alma Chalmers swept, with two companions, into a boiling whirlpool of debris-filled floodwater they all agreed there was no way they could have survived. The couple was caught up in Maitland's extraordinarily destructive flood in 1955. They had climbed onto the roof of their house in Mount Pleasant Street, but the house was picked up by the raging torrent and smashed bodily into the Long Bridge. Those on the roof vanished into a vortex of filthy water as horrified watchers looked on. Premature death notices Death notices duly appeared…

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Read more about the article American Suburban: a railway love story
Wayne Dempsey in a derelict American Suburban sleeping car at Broadmeadow, NSW. Photo by Pete Smith

American Suburban: a railway love story

Wayne Dempsey’s dream, as a young man, was to work on the railways. Specifically, he wanted a job at the Eveleigh carriage workshops at Redfern. “I haunted the place, as a boy,” he said. Wayne on one of the American Suburbans in 1962, the year he started his job at the carriage works. He distinctly remembers the day in 1962 when – aged 18 - he turned up to apply for a job there. “The deputy manager told me all about the place then asked me what I was interested in,” Wayne recalled. “I told him…

Continue ReadingAmerican Suburban: a railway love story
Read more about the article Tales of the ’55 flood: Harry Boyle’s story
Harry (left) and his brothers Brian, Jack, Lex and Gus cleaning up after the 1955 flood.

Tales of the ’55 flood: Harry Boyle’s story

Harry Boyle was 36 when the big flood struck his dairy farm at Swan Reach, near Hinton, in the Hunter Valley of NSW. The former Australian Army commando had been back from the war in New Guinea for 10 years and had settled down to farming with his wife, Elsie, and his two young sons, Peter and Geoff, aged 10 and 11. Elsie Boyle Harry Boyle Harry had seen his share of floods on the Hunter River and its tributaries, and when he heard another was on the way in 1955 he wasn't too worried. The…

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