© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Miscellaneous

Read more about the article The Rothbury Colliery “riot” of 1929

The Rothbury Colliery “riot” of 1929

IT was December 16, 1929. Christmas was just around the corner, but it wasn’t shaping up to be a merry one for many residents of the Hunter Valley Coalfields of NSW. In March, thousands of coalminers had been locked out of their workplaces by mine owners whose profits were being eroded by the steadily unfolding financial catastrophe of the Great Depression. The mine owners wanted the miners to take a hefty pay-cut, but the miners refused – unless and until the mine owners opened their books and revealed the true state of their profits and costs.…

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Read more about the article My heart tells me we should change the date
My great uncle John William "Jack" Allsopp.

My heart tells me we should change the date

I’m glad to be Australian, and I cherish my deep roots in this amazing continent. On my father’s side of my family I can find convict ancestors, brought to the penal colony for attempting highway robbery and for stealing a piece of ribbon from an employer. My mother – born out of wedlock to a woman who couldn't keep her and to a father whose identity we don’t know - was adopted by a big-hearted Salvation Army woman descended from English stock and her part-Aboriginal husband. He was a gentle giant of a man whose indigenous…

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Read more about the article A 100-year-old remembers Maitland

A 100-year-old remembers Maitland

There was an old Chinese man the locals called "No Chin". He had exposed dentures and he slept on cornbags in a shed in Elgin Street, behind the iceworks. There was Billy Kilmartin, who rode around on a pushbike at night with a covered basket on his handlebars, selling hot pies. And there was Jackie Minch, whose mother had a grocery shop and who ran to the bank with every pound note they earned, wearing a felt hat turned up like Tiger Kelly. These and other colourful characters from Maitland in the 1920s and 1930s clung…

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