© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Loud and clear: ham radio’s calling cards

Rummaging around collections of old photographs and postcards I have often wondered about these peculiar cards, emblazoned with strange letters and numbers, that sometimes turn up, usually in groups of several. I could guess they were connected with amateur, or "ham" radio operators, but their purpose remained a mystery until recently, after I found a few more, when I decided to find out about them. It didn't take long to discover that they are known as "QSL" cards and that radio operators use them to let one another know when they have received each other's signals.…

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Read more about the article Memories of Old Sydney Town
Photo by Barry Shoesmith

Memories of Old Sydney Town

During almost 30 years of operation, the historical theme park Old Sydney Town, near Gosford on the NSW Central Coast, attracted millions of visitors. Intended as a reconstruction of the Sydney in the very early 1800s, it was a remarkably faithful replica with many authentic touches. The park was the brainchild of architect Frank Fox, who bought the 110ha site because of its apparent resemblance to the landforms of early Sydney Cove. Fox was apparently inspired by the example of Walt Disney and Disneyland in the USA. He and his children - David, Stephen, Michael, Peter…

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Growing up under the shadow of the Bomb

Nuclear war loomed over my youth the way climate change looms over that of my children’s generation. Hitting my teens in middle class white Australian society in the 1970s, I was acutely aware that the USA and the USSR were engaged in a tense Cold War and had built up vast arsenals of atomic and other weapons, arriving at the point where neither side could make a first strike against the other on account of what was called MAD – “mutually assured destruction”. We had the destruction of the environment to worry about too, but were…

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