© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

NSW

Read more about the article Building the Hexham Bridge over the Hunter River

Building the Hexham Bridge over the Hunter River

Long before anybody considered building a bridge across the Hunter River at Hexham, people crossed by punt. A convenient crossroads and staging point between Newcastle, Maitland and Port Stephens - and between Sydney and Brisbane - Hexham was settled by Europeans in the 1820s. It soon had a railway station, a handful of industries and facilities for loading coal aboard small ships. Hexham punt, 1904. Photo by Ralph Snowball. Early photo, circa 1910, of a car leaving the steam punt at Hexham. Photo by Ernest Docker According to the December 1946 issue of the NSW Department…

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Read more about the article Bridging the Hawkesbury River: Part 1

Bridging the Hawkesbury River: Part 1

When the first railway bridge over the Hawkesbury River was opened on May 1, 1889, it completed the final link in a rail system that linked NSW with South Australia, Victoria and Queensland - albeit not with uniform gauges. Official souvenir brochure to mark the opening of the first Hawkesbury River railway bridge. The rail line that linked Homebush (now known as Strathfield) with Waratah had been one of the toughest pieces of railway engineering yet tackled in the Australian colonies (Australia as a nation had not yet materialised). With river crossings to make and tunnels…

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Read more about the article Vickers-Comsteel, Newcastle, NSW, in 1929
Photos from the Bank Notes article about Comsteel.

Vickers-Comsteel, Newcastle, NSW, in 1929

Industrial and commercial newsletters and in-house publications are a rich source of fascinating historical material, often of a type that can't be found anywhere else. One of my favourite Australian business journals is Bank Notes, the Journal of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. I pick up copies and bound volumes from time to time, mostly from the 1920s and 1930s, and love to comb through them for great old photos and articles about many aspects of Australian life. Mostly the articles are written by bank staff members, and the photos come from many sources. A copy…

Continue ReadingVickers-Comsteel, Newcastle, NSW, in 1929
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