© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Off the rails at Woodville Junction: a vintage photo essay on a railway mishap

As a newspaper reporter, I often had the experience of spending time covering a story, only to have it never appear in print or, even worse perhaps, see it cut to a brief on a page deep inside the next day's edition. Even though I disliked this, I had to admit that our staff photographers suffered the problem to a far greater degree than most reporters. The photographers would be sent racing at a moment's notice to some event that seemed to hold promise for the news pages, returning later with a comprehensive set of shots…

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Giving somebody else’s money to your best friend.

The best gift you can give, apparently, is the one you don’t own. That seems to be the Australian Government’s attitude to the Murdoch media empire, which could gain about $1billion a year under the government’s proposed scheme to force Google and Facebook to pay media corporations for sharing their content. The government claims it is pushing this law on the basis on fairness and equity, but who could honestly believe that, coming from the same schmucks who engineered Robodebt, and who put the scam-meisters of the gas industry in charge of Australia’s alleged Covid-19 response?…

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“Enemy aliens” in Australia in World War 1

It was not a good thing to be German in Australia in 1914. The outbreak of the First World War meant that anybody with German heritage was instantly under suspicion of disloyalty, and it wasn't long before many were rounded up and placed in internment camps. A copy of a 1914 letter from the Newcastle branch manager of the Bank of Australasia, William Miles Coverdale, shows how closely people with German links were being scrutinised by authorities. Mr Coverdale was required by the War Precautions Act 1914 to report to his head office on any suspicious…

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