Month: June 2013
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Treasure Trove
I’ve just struck gold. In an earlier post about James Tyson I mentioned finding online information in the archives of a newspaper called The Queenslander. After digging a little deeper I found a most amazing resource funded by our Federal Government through the National Library of Australia. It’s called Trove. A note on the home page says…
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Tyson Doneley talks about The Hon. James Tyson MLC
Tyson Doneley talks about the life of The Hon. James Tyson MLC and his pastoral interests throughout the 19th century. He reads out the Banjo Patterson poem that mentions Tyson and talks about the considerable wealth he accumulated during his lifetime (estimated to be 9 billion AUD in today’s terms). This digital story was created…
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The Late Hon. James Tyson – a Sketch of his Family History
I was searching the internet for some photos of or about James Tyson and accidentally tripped over a scan of an amazing article in a newspaper called The Queenslander. It was published on Saturday 10 December 1898, just six days after Tyson’s death. Here’s the link to the scan of the page: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/20854080. It’s a…
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From William Tyson to Evan Hill – an Australian story
My third great grandmother, Isabella Marie Coulson, was transported to Sydney in 1809 for seven years after being convicted in Yorkshire of petty theft. Her husband, William Tyson, was able to gain
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Nicola Roxon retires from politics
One of our best Federal Health Ministers, Nicola Roxon, has retired. In her valedictory speech she talks about the things she is proud of and things that have distressed her during her political career. It’s 18 minutes long in total, but oozes with compassion and passion, and her despair in relation to sexism in parliament…
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Morse code lives on
Back in the 1830s, Samuel Morse and a couple of his mates were experimenting with sending electrical pulses over wires. To send messages they needed a language, and so was invented what is now called Morse code. It’s very simple, consisting of only two things: dots and dashes. Each letter of the alphabet is allocated…
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Imagine waking each morning hoping you’re wrong
I’ve often said that climate scientists are really weird people because we are the only scientists that wake up in the morning and hope that we are wrong. This quote from Lesley Hughes (Professor of Biology Macquarie University and Climate Commissioner for the Australian Government) was part of an interesting debate called “Climate science: beyond party politics”. It…
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Mitch Benn – There Are Things Worth Rioting About Right Now
I’ve been listening to a podcast called Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4. Last Friday it was The Now Show, a satirical tilt at just about anything in the British media. I was really enjoying the program and then, about seven and a half minutes in, I was captivated by a brilliant biting contemporary folk song…