Radio 3WR
Wangaratta can lay claim to Australia’s first country broadcasting station, going to air five months before Toowoomba’s 4GR. Stationer and Wangaratta Sports Depot owner Leslie John Leo Hellier commenced radio 3WR in February 1925 in a shed in his backyard...
Margaret Considine (c1818-1895)
Another post from my earlier university days. Much more research has been done since this was first penned in 1999. This post has NOT been updated with the new research. Margaret Considine was born circa 1818 at Sixmilebridge, a townland in the civil parish of...
Gordy Moore (1885-1967)
I am having a break from the blog while I concentrate on my PhD. This post comes from research I did for an Advanced Diploma in Local and Applied History that I was completing at the University of New England in 1999. My research has come a long way since then and the...
The Real Grandma
The impetus for this blog came out of many years tracing my family history and long talks and explorations of Wangaratta with family members. One of those family members was my dear Uncle Bert who had a wonderful memory and fabulous sense of humour, and a willingness...
“Scenes of riot and debauchery” – Dr Murphy’s letter
Dr Francis Murphy was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1809 to public servant Francis Down Murphy and Mary (née Morris). He trained in the medical profession in Cork, Trinity College, Dublin, and London qualifying as M.R.C.S., in 1835. The next year he migrated to Sydney in...
On This Day In Wangaratta – 4th July 1875
This day marks the 140th anniversary of the death of George Moore at the tender age of 28 years. George died at the home of his parents on the One Mile Creek after a four week battle with typhoid fever. It must have been a horrible lingering end for the young man....
A Young Bank Teller Writes Home
Regular readers of this blog will know that I don’t spend a lot of time on Ned Kelly. Blogs and websites dedicated to the Kellys explore the subject in great depth. The history of north eastern Victoria is so much bigger than the story of the Kelly Gang and so I...
On This Day in Wangaratta – 22nd June 1857
Bushranging has long been a part of Australia’s history and folklore. We have all heard about the big stories, but we probably don’t realise that bushranging occurred regularly in poorly policed areas and that Wangaratta was one such place, until at least...
On This Day in Wangaratta – 15th June 1930
On this day in Wangaratta the famous female aviator Amy Johnson landed at Bowser on Buckler’s private airstrip. The landing was quite a coup for the town as Wangaratta was the only stopover on Johnson’s route from Canberra to Melbourne. Newspaper reports...
This blog has been selected to be archived in Pandora, Australia’s Web Archive, conducted by the National Library of Australia
