Author Archives: dgm

Way back in October, I wrote about my attempts to clean up the digitised text of Ernesta Drinker Bullitt’s account of her journey through Austria Hungary and Germany in the midst of the first World war. At the time I … Continue reading →

I started out, innocently enough, looking for images from the Crimean war, and falling through a set of internet rabbit holes, found myself looking at a website devoted to early erotic daguerreotype and ambrotype stereographs. Stereographs are of course made … Continue reading →

On our back deck, beside the outside tap, we have a couple of ornamental bamboos in pots. This afternoon, as I was filling a bucket, I noticed something shiny under the roots of one of the plants and, being curious … Continue reading →

  John Leech’s 1861 cartoon for Punch of a man reading from Collins’s book. Photograph: Universal History Archive/Getty Images I’ve been rereading Wilkie Collins’ ‘Woman in White’ while at the same time watching ‘The Bridge’ on SBS, and I’m struck … Continue reading →

While we were at Tathra last week we went to Green Cape for a swim at Bittangabee and a walk from the lighthouse back towards Bittangabee via Pulpit Rock. About 300 metres from the car park you pass the cemetery … Continue reading →

It’s an open secret we’re fixing our house up for sale. Having decided to retire there didn’t seem much point to staying on in Canberra – rural Victoria seemed a way better option. Of course when you put your house … Continue reading →

There we were, sitting on a beach in the Mimosa rocks national park sharing a picnic and watching the sun go down,  when my phone rang. A surprise in itself, as we expected to be well out of cellphone range, … Continue reading →

When I first lived in York, I lived in Milner Street, in a brick terrace house built in the early 1860’s by the railway company to lease to its clerks. The name ‘ Milner’ always puzzled me – the adjoining … Continue reading →

Around a week ago, some people were getting quite excited about finds of high status Roman pottery from Carlisle, and how it suggested that it was more than a rude frontier settlement on the edge of empire – one commentator … Continue reading →

New Year’s Eve and what to do? We had our prawns, a bottle of champagne in the fridge, and our evening planned, but we had a dead space in the afternoon. So rather than mooch and read we went to … Continue reading →