© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Life’s ironic behind the digital curtain

The Iron Curtain was not something you wanted to live behind, in my Cold War youth. All I knew about it came from media pundits and politicians, and they were pretty convinced that the folk who lived behind that impenetrable veil of metal were doing it tough. Primarily what they lacked was freedom, but also good movies, clothes and luxuries of various sorts. Powerful ruling elites in the countries behind the iron curtain looked after themselves, first and foremost, and the common herd ran a distant last in priorities. Vast resources were expended on weapons that…

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March 1918: Miracle at Villers-Bretonneux

Excerpt from The Hunter Region in The Great War, by Greg and Sylvia Ray The winter of 1917-1918 was almost as bad as the one before it, but at least the troops knew what to expect. They expected cold and snow, and they also expected a big German assault as soon as the weather improved. Behind their own lines, the Germans were training for a new phase of long-awaited open warfare.Knowing this, the Allied troops were full of dread. The futile Passchendaele bloodbath had sapped the Australian battalions and weakened the core of the entire British…

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Maitland, a city built on steam

Maitland is a city whose foundations were built on steam. And thanks to steam, the district was able to become one of the main drivers of economic growth in the young colony of New South Wales. The Hunter River was always the key to Maitland’s future. Not only did the river produce the great wealth in the trees and soil of the floodplain, it also provided the highway to move produce from farm to market. Boats and canoes of various kinds regularly plied the river in the early days of European settlement and it is clear…

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