© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

NSW

Read more about the article Miracle of the waters: a 1955 flood tale
At the Long Bridge after the flood.

Miracle of the waters: a 1955 flood tale

When dozens of witnesses saw Stan and Alma Chalmers swept, with two companions, into a boiling whirlpool of debris-filled floodwater they all agreed there was no way they could have survived. The couple was caught up in Maitland's extraordinarily destructive flood in 1955. They had climbed onto the roof of their house in Mount Pleasant Street, but the house was picked up by the raging torrent and smashed bodily into the Long Bridge. Those on the roof vanished into a vortex of filthy water as horrified watchers looked on. Premature death notices Death notices duly appeared…

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Read more about the article 300 diamond rings a year: Caldwells jewellers

300 diamond rings a year: Caldwells jewellers

WHEN Geoff Caldwell left Newcastle Boys High School in the 1930s, he told his father he wanted to be an engineer. His father laughed at the idea. "Dad told me I should just join the family business and help him run the jewellery store," Geoff laughed. He took his father's advice. The fledgling Caldwells jewellery business was launched at the end of the Great Depression years, survived World War II and went on to enjoy an extraordinary period of prosperity during the era when a prime location on thriving Hunter Street, Newcastle, was money in the bank. "We used to sell 300 diamond rings a year," Geoff…

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Read more about the article Newcastle’s glorious municipal leaders
Newcastle in the 1870s, from The Town and Country Journal

Newcastle’s glorious municipal leaders

Honestly, I had to laugh out loud. What started out as a more-or-less po-faced description in an 1872 newspaper of the fledgling town of Newcastle, NSW, turned into a hilarious slag at the apparent incompetence of the settlement's council - its municipal "corporation". The paper is The Town and Country Journal, dated February 10, 1872. The article features a lovely woodcut of Newcastle, overlooking the harbour and Nobbys, and most of its column-length is occupied by an account of the history of the Australian Agricultural Company, which ran the city's coal monopoly for the benefit of…

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