Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’ve written before about the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of exploration in East Asia, including the possibility of a group of Portuguese sailors being the first Europeans to land in Australia. These early european sailors had in part been driven … Continue reading →

Before I go to sleep in the evening I like to read for twenty or thirty minutes with a hot drink – probably a sign of growing old. I usually read stuff I find entertaining and relaxing rather than serious … Continue reading →

Beechworth, in Victoria, is an old gold town, and quite historical. Hidden in plain sight is a little bit of world war one history. If you go to the public loos from the main street you walk down the side … Continue reading →

A week or three ago I blogged about the great selfie crisis. Since then I’ve come across an interesting little problem. If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that one of my interests is that chaotic period … Continue reading →

If you have read any British Victorian era literature, you’ll have come across references to a Bradshaw – a guide to train times. So named because George Bradshaw compiled a compendium of the various and often competing companies train timetables … Continue reading →

Well this week we’ve had a bit of a moral panic over selfies of clothing challenged people, not in the least because a number of pictures of media starlets have been stolen from Apple iCloud servers, perhaps by brute force … Continue reading →

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 →