© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Monthly Archives: December 2023

Read more about the article The debt genie: good servant, bad master
Bankcard logo, and a bank branch in the 1960s.

The debt genie: good servant, bad master

EASY credit is a two-edged sword. For most people in mainstream Australia it's easy to borrow money, but for a great many it's a lot harder to repay. I remember the solemnity that accompanied the arrival of my parents' first credit card. It was the 1970s and "Bankcard" was new to Australia. My vague memories of dinner table conversations are that this was an American idea, convenient but dangerous. Firm rules had to be established to make sure this powerful new genie remained a servant and never became a master. Bankcard purchases had to be closely…

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Read more about the article Trying to remember the years BC

Trying to remember the years BC

In so many conversations these days the point arrives where somebody says something like: "but that was before Covid". Yesterday it was somebody talking about the new travel gear they bought before the pandemic stopped travel. The day before it was somebody else describing how their childrens' career plans were upended by the virus. The day before that it was something else, then something else again. I'm calling that remembered time the BC years: Before Covid. Not that I can really quite recall all the detail now. So many other shocks have followed. And it's not…

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Read more about the article Colin Christie, Newcastle’s musical mayor
Christie Place, Newcastle, in 1982, and Colin Christie. Portrait photo by Boddy Studios, part of the Newcastle Sun Collection held by Newcastle University's Special Collections.

Colin Christie, Newcastle’s musical mayor

Mostly assembled from research by Norm Barney and Ross Edmonds Next to Newcastle City Hall is a little park, sometimes bright with flowers, that goes by the name of Christie Place. The Christie for whom it is named is one of Newcastle's more colourful (in a good way) former mayors, Colin Christie, whose civic career was paralleled by his musical enterprises. Newcastle book collector and historical researcher Ross Edmonds recently acquired a battered old bound volume of sheet music that once belonged to this musical mayor, prompting some interest in the man behind the place name.…

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