© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Author: Greg Ray

This author has written 481 articles
Read more about the article Newcastle and the Hunter Region, by Ourselves: 2000 to 2020. We’re asking for help.

Newcastle and the Hunter Region, by Ourselves: 2000 to 2020. We’re asking for help.

A few years ago Sylvia and I were giving a talk to a group, about old photos of course, and there was a lot of discussion about how lucky we and others had been at times to benefit from chance discoveries of caches of old negatives. Then Sylvia wondered aloud about photos from the digital era, and how future enthusiasts would manage to stumble on forgotten troves of images that had no physical analogue to help them survive. Having suffered the agony of a hard-drive failure, and the misery of a lightning strike that knocked out…

Continue ReadingNewcastle and the Hunter Region, by Ourselves: 2000 to 2020. We’re asking for help.
Read more about the article Robert Sneesby’s eyewitness account of old Newcastle
Newcastle, NSW, in 1886

Robert Sneesby’s eyewitness account of old Newcastle

Some years ago Mrs Margaret Thompson was visiting an elderly aunt to gather information for some family history research. A request for old photographs brought to light an old black exercise book in which the elderly lady's father, the late Robert Sneesby, had recorded many of his recollections of Newcastle in the late 1800s. Recognising the treasure, Mrs Thompson and her husband Stuart transcribed the document, added numerous photos from various sources and made a handful of copies. Some months ago she kindly loaned me a copy to scan. A copy of her transcribed document was…

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Read more about the article Stories from old postcards: Part 1

Stories from old postcards: Part 1

Old postcards can be interesting for a variety of reasons. For a start, they are often interesting for the subject matter they depict. And sometimes they also carry interesting titbits of historical information in the messages written on their backs. I've picked a handful from my collection and transcribed the often hard-to-read inscriptions. . Your parcel is on its way . . . This one is easy to read, at least, having been typed by a staff member of renowned Newcastle department store Winns. Mrs Lowrey, of Booral, has ordered a parcel from Winns, and Winns…

Continue ReadingStories from old postcards: Part 1
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