The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.
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Letter writing campaign
The Dictionary of Sydney is under serious threat and needs your support. Despite our long and productive relationship with the City of Sydney, and the support of Council, the City is considering withholding the 2012 -13 tranche of the five-year funding voted…
Clans, campsites and the Koori Knockout
Natives of New South Wales, Biddy Salamander of the Broken Bay Tribe, Bulkabra Chief of Botany, Gooseberry Queen of Bungaree, watercolour drawing by Charles Rodius, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW a1114010 / SAFE / PXA 615, 6 Histories of…
Mechanics' business
The new Workmen's College at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts in the Illustrated Sydney News, 14 June 1879, p 4 'The room is fitted up with all manner of scientific apparatus and specimens of nature, among which we noticed…
New faces
'Constance Kent, the murderess', State Library of Victoria Acc No: H41038 The new people in the Dictionary of Sydney are a mixed bunch indeed. Apart from the City of Sydney mayors I've already blogged about, we have a few other new faces. Noeline…
Suburban idylls
Greenwich Road, Greenwich c1908, State Records NSW ref: 18526_a024_000037 The new material in the Dictionary includes some new suburbs, old and new. Bradfield is a suburb that has disappeared, subsumed into the surrounding areas of West Killara and West Lindfield. Joan Rowland tells the…
Counting councillors
John Sutton, Mayor of Sydney c1866 City of Sydney Archives ref: 0588709 (SRC18779) We've got more City of Sydney material in the form of another bunch of aldermen, scrappy, argumentative geezers that they are. Terri McCormack has unveiled the lives of Stephen…
Winter reading
Front cover of 'Atlas of the Suburbs of Sydney', Part I 1886, Contributed by The Archaeology of Sydney Research Group Map Collection, the University of Sydney The Dictionary's new material for Winter 2012 is up on the website, and there's lots…
From the ground up
If you have some free days in late August, you should come along to a great conference the Dictionary is co-sponsoring. From the Ground Up: People and Places in Sydney's Past brings together academics, postgraduate students and professional historians of Sydney…
Secret rituals
This child’s ankle boot of the 1840s, found in the roof cavity of a house in Lower Fort Street, Dawes Point, is believed to have been concealed as a response to the deaths of three children in the same family. Have…
Ten years of Te Ara
Congratulations to Jock Phillips and the team at Te Ara, as they contemplate 10 years of trailblazing. Te Ara, if you don't know it, is the online Encyclopedia of New Zealand, a wonderful resource funded by the NZ Ministry for…