The previous post described the cottages in the village – known as the Patch – at the Belconnen Naval Transmitting Station, and the challenges of keeping them warm in Canberra winters. This time, former residents talk about their memories of Read More …
The Belconnen Naval Transmitting Station operated for 66 years, from 1939 to 2005. Back in 1939 the suburb of Belconnen did not exist, and the naval base was set in an open landscape remote from the centre of Canberra. The Read More …
There are many excellent reasons to record and use oral history interviews. Here are the first five of the fifteen reasons why I have found oral history to be useful and important. They are not in any particular order. Oral Read More …
The top five posts for 2018 are revealed. Read More …
With the announcement in December 2018 that Adelaide will be home to the new Australian Space Agency, it is timely to reflect on South Australia’s more than 70 year involvement in space activities. Memories of Woomera In 1947, the Australian Read More …
Before the introduction of television in Australia in 1956, going to the pictures was a popular entertainment. The first permanent cinema in Adelaide was established in 1908: West’s Olympia Theatre at 91 Hindley Street.* A further fifteen cinemas opened in Read More …
Sue Gibbs and Peter Zajicek spent their childhoods in Woomera, 450 km north of Adelaide, in the 1960s and 1970s. The isolation of Woomera made it an ideal place to look at the stars, free from the light pollution of Read More …
Woomera is a dry place – most of the time. Sometimes however it is inundated with rain, and then the landscape changes dramatically. Plants that have laid dormant come to life, and seeds from ephemeral plants germinate and grow. I Read More …
What is it like to grow up in the rolling green hills of the Kent countryside in England, only to spend several years as an adult working in the Australian desert? It is hard to imagine two settings more different Read More …
My previous post introduced the Unemployment Relief Scheme settlement in Meadows that was established during the Great Depression. Oral history interviewees talked about what it was like to live there in cottages that had been described as ‘roomy tin bungalows’ Read More …