Author Archives: dgm

I’m going to make a confession here. I like trains. Or more exactly, I like the social history of trains and railways. Admitting you like trains is always dangerous. It gets you lumped in with these people who wear unfortunate … Continue reading →

There’s a mini meme going around – Analog August which is linked to a book by Michael Harris as to how everything is hyper connected and only anyone born before 1985 remembers life without the internet. There’s enough bits of … Continue reading →

I’ve already written about pre european contacts in Australia between the indigenous inhabitants and the populations of south east asia. Now, from South Africa a report on a dig at a pre-colonial smithy, which is interesting because among the trade … Continue reading →

One of the themes of this blog has been pre-european contacts between the Aboriginal populations of Australia and those of neighbouring parts of SE Asia. That’s clumsily expressed, essentially we mean contacts other than those documented contacts by european colonists … Continue reading →

I’m a fan of microhistory, probably because I’ve always liked stories and because, when I was a child in Stirling, the main library had this permanent display of the town records and court transcriptions. They were utterly mundane, but these … Continue reading →

As we rattled north out of Brisbane on the Sunlander, the train stopped at Exhibition station, and from the train window I glimpsed what looked to be a rather stunning neo Romanesque church in the distance. And then, in the … Continue reading →

We were going on holiday, with plan to head north out of Canberra’s winter cold to the far north of Queensland, to FNQ, and then work our way south, stopping at places of interest, finding places to chill and relax, … Continue reading →

We had been as far north as Cooktown, and were driving back south along the edge of the outback, listening to an eclectic mixture of North African pop, Mexican baroque,  Bob Dylan and blues music. On the way we passed … Continue reading →

Geeky idea time – I was reading Hugh Thomson’s The White Rock about his travels in what were the Inca lands in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, and in it he makes the comment that the Inca Empire wasn’t really an … Continue reading →

Yesterday, Saturday, was midwinter’s day here in Canberra. In times past I used to wish everyone a happy Inca new year on this day, really because I felt we ought to make more of mid winter here in the southern … Continue reading →