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Read more about the article The Rose Stereograph Company: a snapshot

The Rose Stereograph Company: a snapshot

Anybody in Australia who pays even a little attention to old postcards will soon encounter some of the products of the Rose Stereograph Company. The publishing output of this long-lived firm (which operated from about 1880 until it went into liquidation in 2017) was phenomenal, and when the remains of what must have been a vast photographic archive went on sale in June 2021 with Lloyds Auctions, it attracted media attention across Australia. A young George Rose, taking a photograph. From the book, George Rose, Australia's Master Stereographer, by Ron Blum. According to a brief history…

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Read more about the article The great oil fires of Wickham, NSW
View from Bank Corner of the 1939 oil tank fire at Wickham. Photo by Russ Hughes.

The great oil fires of Wickham, NSW

Wickham residents were startled by a loud explosion at about 2pm on Saturday, December 16, 1939. Within moments the cause was clear: one of the huge fuel storage tanks owned by Commonwealth Oil Refineries near the waterfront had caught fire and was burning ferociously, sending huge black smoke clouds into the sky. Those who recalled the suburb's earlier scare with the fire on the oil tanker British Honour in 1930 scrambled to get their families and belongings out and away from the danger zone. A signalman - J. Sommers - at the Hannell Street railway box…

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Read more about the article A Greek boy in Mayfield: Mike Trypas remembers

A Greek boy in Mayfield: Mike Trypas remembers

Mike Trypas still wonders what made his mother decide to uproot her family from the Greek island of Kos and transplant it in the foreign soil of distant Australia. His father would have been happy to stay and keep living the life of a "peasant farmer", working somebody else's land, but his mother must have known that leaving her old life would be the key to a better future for her four sons. Mike was just five when the family arrived in early June, 1955, after a month-long voyage aboard the MV Skaugum. His parents, Louizos…

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