© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Author: Greg Ray

This author has written 481 articles
Read more about the article An uncensored letter from wartime New Guinea

An uncensored letter from wartime New Guinea

To beat the official censors who read mail sent by Australians serving in New Guinea in World War 2, those servicemen sometimes got their mates going home on leave to carry letters and post them in Australia. It was a simple and effective way to evade the prying eyes of officialdom, whose job it was to make sure that important military details didn't accidentally fall into enemy hands and that the people at home didn't hear too much about the grim reality of the war. Accounts I have read by servicemen suggest that mail from home…

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Wealth, power and justice

The 12-month jail sentence handed down last month to coal protester Eric Serge Herbert sent a chill of fear through activist circles. As it was intended to do. The sentencing magistrate, Janine Lacy, imposed the severe sentence after Herbert delayed a coal train in Newcastle for a few hours. His action was part of a campaign by Blockade Australia, a protest group to which he belongs. While Blockade Australia sponsored 20 anti-coal protests aimed at the major coal port over a period of 11 days, the state's police and court system responded with equal or greater…

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Read more about the article Newcastle’s Obelisk and “the social evil”

Newcastle’s Obelisk and “the social evil”

Was Newcastle's famous Obelisk once a site for illicit sexual assignations? It may have been, if I have understood the transcript of an 1866 public meeting correctly. The transcript, created as part of an elaborate joke apparently designed to reflect discredit on Newcastle's young municipal council, is a record of a meeting at which a reluctant candidate for office, Mr C. W. Williams, was quizzed over many aspects of civic life. Mr Williams was not a highly educated man. At the time the law allowed unwilling candidates to be elected to Newcastle's municipal council against their…

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