Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 →

Last night J and I went to the Canberra Theatre to see Bell Shakespeare’s production of Henry V, and damn good it was too. Henry V is a huge sprawling play, with changes of scene, comedic interludes and the rest, … Continue reading →

Last Sunday was cold, windy and brilliantly clear, so we took ourselves off to look at Cooma cottage, the onetime home of the explorer Hamilton Hume, who, along with Hovell found the route south to Victoria, broadly taking the route … Continue reading →

Well, that’s certainly a title. Long term readers of this blog will know that I’ve been doing a lot reading about the British colonial experience in Asia, including the literature of the time. Inevitably this segues into reading about the … Continue reading →

I’ve written previously about the possible Portuguese landing on the coast of Northern Australia during the age of European discovery. The initial evidence was fairly circumstantial, but at the same time there were reports that a cannon of possibly Portuguese … Continue reading →