Great War – Photo Time Tunnel

A Newcastle girl’s letters from the WW 1 home front

Post author:Greg Ray
Post published:April 20, 2023
Post category:History Militaria Newcastle, NSW, Australia
Post comments:0 Comments

Doris Schuck was 16 years old and living in Newcastle East when "The Great War" broke out. Like most youngsters in the community at the time she was intensely patriotic and she paid particular attention to the fortunes of "Newcastle's Own" 35th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force, so often in the thick of fierce fighting on the Western Front in Europe. Living very close to Newcastle's Fort Scratchley - a relic of the Russian scare of the early 20th Century - she got to know quite a few young soldiers and she wrote to some…

March 1918: Miracle at Villers-Bretonneux

Post author:Greg Ray
Post published:April 22, 2022
Post category:History Militaria Miscellaneous
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Excerpt from The Hunter Region in The Great War, by Greg and Sylvia Ray The winter of 1917-1918 was almost as bad as the one before it, but at least the troops knew what to expect. They expected cold and snow, and they also expected a big German assault as soon as the weather improved. Behind their own lines, the Germans were training for a new phase of long-awaited open warfare.Knowing this, the Allied troops were full of dread. The futile Passchendaele bloodbath had sapped the Australian battalions and weakened the core of the entire British…

An exquisite child portrait from the collection: a real masterpiece.

A tantalising photo mystery

Post author:Greg Ray
Post published:February 26, 2022
Post category:History Miscellaneous Vintage Photographs and Photography
Post comments:3 Comments

One of the problems with many collections of old photographs and negatives is that they are too often disconnected from their history and provenance. Sometimes that doesn't really matter. If the subject matter is mostly generic then the images may stand on their own. But some collections cry out for more explanation. I recently bought a small collection of 35 glass plate negatives from a seller in Melbourne. My main reason for buying was the presence in the collection of five plates depicting some of the decorative arches erected in Melbourne at the time of the…

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