© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Ed Tonks: lessons from local history

I like to flatter myself that I'm a little bit like my friend Ed Tonks. We're both very interested in good beer and in local history and geography. Both of us sometimes also get highly focused on narrow topics which we then follow in whatever odd directions chance dictates. Ed and I are both comfortable with the idea that many people would say we are "on the spectrum". That's fine. As Ed smilingly says: "The world should be thankful for enthusiasts". Enthusiasm is one of Ed's defining characteristics, and it's what has made him such a…

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The Adventures of James Tucker, Convict

When the book The Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh was first published in England in 1929, it was assumed the tale was a straightforward autobiography by a convict in the British colony of New South Wales. Its descriptions of life in the colony, and especially the miseries of convict existence, were so vivid and plausible that it wasn't hard to believe it might be a first-person account. But though the book was based on a manuscript that was certainly produced by a New South Wales convict, the truth was more complicated that it had seemed at first.…

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Art and Jean Mawson’s remarkable partnership

It's strange how quickly even the most colourful characters can be forgotten. Art Mawson is perhaps a case in point, and his wife Jean maybe even more so. In their heyday this power couple were noted fight promoters, controlled seven or eight NSW coalmines and a trucking business and looked set to leave their name as a legacy on the coastal subdivision they were creating south of Swansea, near Newcastle. But the suburb of Mawson was slow to take off and the locals ended up changing its name to Caves Beach, leaving the Mawson moniker to…

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