© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Miscellaneous

Read more about the article Pet emu ate the engine nuts: a guided tour of 1920s Swansea
Swansea Bridge, NSW, as it was

Pet emu ate the engine nuts: a guided tour of 1920s Swansea

Nearly every weekend and holiday from the mid-1920s to 1930, Maitland boy Neville Chant spent at Swansea with his family in their weekender on Black Neds Bay. More than 100 years old when I met him in 2019, Neville retained vivid memories of his beloved childhood haunts, and could paint an evocative word-picture of the people and places he saw. I asked him to take me on a tour of the Swansea of his distant memory. Here is what he told me: Neville Chant, sharing his memories of Swansea in the 1920s You have to understand…

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Read more about the article Balsa raft visits Newcastle, 1973
Guayaquil in Newcastle, 1973

Balsa raft visits Newcastle, 1973

In December 1973 Newcastle Harbour received a strange visitor in the shape of a balsa wood raft, not unlike the famous Kon-Tiki which Thor Heyerdahl used to cross the Pacific Ocean in the late 1940s. The raft, named Guayaquil after its point of departure in Ecuador, South America, had struggled across the ocean before its crew was lifted to safety from the apparently sinking raft off Ballina, NSW, HMAS Labuan. Guayaquil did not sink, however. Currents carried it down the east coast where it was found by a fisherman, K. Bollinger, who towed it into Newcastle.…

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Read more about the article Dangerous days deep underground at Paxton.
Headframe of Stanford Main colliery at Paxton in 1987. Photo by Don Ebbott

Dangerous days deep underground at Paxton.

Fred Caban started work at Stanford Main No. 2 mine at Paxton in 1947 when the mine employed 400 men and produced 1000 tonnes of coal a day. One thing he remembers is the great speed at which the steam-powered winding engine could haul a cage up the 400 foot shaft. A cage could carry two tonnes of coal or 12 men to the top of the unloading gantry in 10 seconds. “When the cage dropped away you would swear the bottom had fallen out and you were falling,” Fred recalled. “When going up you had…

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