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Terry Smyth, Denny Day: The Life and Times of Australia’s Greatest Lawman

Terry Smyth, Denny Day: The Life and Times of Australia’s Greatest Lawman Ebury Press, 2016, 352 pp., ISBN: 9780857986825, p/bk, AUS$34.99 Award-winning writer Terry Smyth has taken on the extraordinary, and regularly overlooked, story of Edward Denny Day in Denny Day: The…

Barangaroo

NAIDOC Week is in full swing, celebrating the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples so we thought we'd take the opportunity to celebrate someone a very powerful woman in Sydney’s history - Barangaroo.     …

Anniversary Day, Australia Day, Survival Day, Invasion Day

Aboriginal Day of Mourning, 26 January 1938 Man magazine, March 1938 Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (a429002 / Q 059/9) The debate about the name and date of Australia Day has been contested for a very long time, and…

NAIDOC 2016: Sydney's Aboriginal people

Portrait of Bennelong c1793, attributed to William Waterhouse, State Library of NSW, a1256013 / DG 10, f13 NAIDOC Week 2016 celebrations are in full swing at the moment and the Dictionary of Sydney recently published new articles about Sydney’s Aboriginal past by…

The Appin massacre - 200 years on

The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 11 May 1816, p2 This Sunday 17 April 2016 marks 200 years since the Appin massacre, when at least 14 Aboriginal men, women and children were killed by soldiers under the command of…

New tour! Sydney Harbour Islands

Bennelong Point c1804, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (a1528483 / V1/1810/1) The Dictionary of Sydney has launched a new tour! Following on from Convict Parramatta, we can now explore Sydney’s harbour islands on our mobile devices, from the Royal Australian…

A year in review

wp-image-11751https://home.dictionaryofsydney.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/BodgieStyle.jpgBodgie Styles for Spring 1951 . Almost-deserted Sydney beach (except for pretty, dark-haired Joan Francis) was chosen by bodgie David Roper, 17, to air leopard-skin trunks, with tail. From the collection of the State Library of New South Wales [TN18]…

NAIDOC Week celebrations

Taking of Colbee (Colebee) and Benalon (Bennelong), Manly Cove, 25 November 1789. By Bradley, William. From the collection of the State Library of New South Wales, a3461020 / ML Safe 1/14 opp. p. 182 As I've mentioned before, the Dictionary of…

Voices from Liverpool's past

A group of Italian prisoners of war behind the perimeter fence of the main compound at the Liverpool prisoner of war and internment camp November 21, 1945. 1945-11-21 By McQuillan, Ern. Contributed by Australian War Memorial AWM 123706 The Dictionary of…

New perspectives on Aboriginal Sydney

Petition from Maria Lock re: land grant 1831, page 1. 1831. By Lock, Maria. Contributed by State Records New South Wales [NRS 907 2/7908, page 1 of 3 The Dictionary of Sydney has a large number of articles, images and information…