© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

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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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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Ray Standen’s Newcastle earthquake video

Back around Christmas 1989, Islington man Ray Standen, 64, was making a video in Hamilton. It was a jolly yuletide film about the suburb - and particularly the shopping strip of Beaumont Street - preparing for Christmas and New Year celebrations. Ray had made video his hobby about three years before, after he'd suffered a heart attack and stroke, and he credited the hobby with helping him find a reason to keep living. (My source for this information is an article by Mike Scanlon, in The Newcastle Herald. I'm afraid I don't know the date of…

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