© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Author: Greg Ray

This author has written 481 articles
Read more about the article Travelling Through Time, dedicated to our Dads

Travelling Through Time, dedicated to our Dads

Our 10th book, Travelling Through Time, will always be associated in our minds with sad endings and joyous beginnings. That's because for much of 2018 as we worked on the book, we were painfully aware that both our fathers were dying and - at the same time - we were awaiting the birth in Sweden of our first grandchild. As it happened our fathers died within a week of one another last October, just as the book was being printed, and little Elsie was born on November 1. Naturally we had to make our pilgrimage to…

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Read more about the article The first ocean voyage of the ferry Koondooloo

The first ocean voyage of the ferry Koondooloo

A few weeks ago my sister-in-law gave me a pile of old magazines that had once belonged to her father, Frank Norris, of Kotara in Newcastle, NSW. These magazines, titled Shipbuilding, Ship Repair and Services, didn't seem promising reading material, but knowing as I do that interesting information might be found almost anywhere, I took them home and started leafing through them. Almost immediately I was rewarded by the discovery of a fascinating article, by John Broadhouse, about his voyage from Scotland to Australia in 1924 aboard the Koondooloo, a British-built vehicular ferry that was destined…

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Read more about the article A 100-year-old remembers Maitland

A 100-year-old remembers Maitland

There was an old Chinese man the locals called "No Chin". He had exposed dentures and he slept on cornbags in a shed in Elgin Street, behind the iceworks. There was Billy Kilmartin, who rode around on a pushbike at night with a covered basket on his handlebars, selling hot pies. And there was Jackie Minch, whose mother had a grocery shop and who ran to the bank with every pound note they earned, wearing a felt hat turned up like Tiger Kelly. These and other colourful characters from Maitland in the 1920s and 1930s clung…

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