Esther Abrahams – convict, farmer, drinker and an all-round admirable woman
In July 1786 a teenage girl with dark hair and a long, attractive face, stepped into a shop, took two cards of black lace to the counter and asked the price. “Twenty-five shillings,” she was told. Young Esther Abrahams, for that was her name, tartly replied that she would pay no more than a guinea…
Working at Elizabeth Farm
Working as a guide at a historic home sounds, for many people, like a dream job. But is it? Last year I was lucky enough to meet the lovely Jacky Dalton, who works at Sydney Living Museums. I subsequently asked her about how she came to be in her job and this is what she…
Australia’s First Piano – belated update
Surgeon George Worgan, thirty-three, improbably managed to bring a piano with him on the First Fleet. In 1790 he gallantly began to tutor Elizabeth Macarthur, telling her she’d ‘done wonders in being able to play off God save the King and Foots Minuet’ and that she was ‘reading the Notes with great facility.’ Worgan went…
Eat Your History by Jacqui Newling – Review and Interview
Hands up if you love to cook? Keep your hand up if you are interested in Australian history? Still with me? Then do I have the perfect book for you (or for someone you know – Christmas is just around the corner and books are ever so easy to wrap…) Eat Your History: stories and…