© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Les Lumsdon, a life in cartoons

During his long reign as The Newcastle Morning Herald's resident cartoonist, Les Lumsdon became a household name. His daily drawings of blue-collar families grappling with the issues of the day captured the spirit of a city that liked to laugh - especially at itself. In the 1960s visiting American servicemen were making dating a tough job for local boys. Born in Abermain in 1912, Les Lumsdon had an early ambition to be a newspaper cartoonist. His first jobs, however, were in retail, first at his parents' corner store then in the advertising department at the Hustler's…

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Wrecked on Nobbys

Long before the celebrated grounding of the Pasher Bulker in 2007, Nobbys Beach hosted another unexpected visitor which was, for its time, almost as popular a tourist attraction. Considering that it was wartime when the unlucky Maianbar washed ashore on Nobbys, and that not as many people had access to cameras as in 2007, the 1940 grounding of this ship is a surprisingly common subject encountered in Novocastrian family photo albums of the era. The Maianbar loading at Cundletown, on the Manning River. Photo from the book The Good Old Days, Volume 2, by Jim Revitt:…

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Lovely “Bobbie” the 1942 beach girl

In the dark days of World War 2, when Australia and Newcastle felt threatened by Japanese military might, the population needed something to take its mind off the war. And what better than a beach girl contest? A promotional badge for the 1942 Newcastle Beach Beauty Quest. These sixpenny "buttons" were sold by the contestants to raise funds. Actually, the competition (modelled on similar ones that had been held in Sydney throughout the previous decade) was the idea of the Newcastle Commercial Travellers' Club (an association of travelling salesmen), which had already organised some successful fund-raising…

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