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John Newton, The Getting of Garlic: Australian Food from Bland to Brilliant

John Newton, The Getting of Garlic: Australian Food from Bland to Brilliant NewSouth Books, 352 pp., ISBN: 9781742235790, p/bk, AUS$32.99 John Newtown's new book The Getting of Garlic: Australian Food from Bland to Brilliant  is an impressive follow up to his 2016…

Jacqueline Kent, A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life

Jacqueline Kent, A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life (Second Edition) NewSouth Books, 347 pp., ISBN: 9781742236025, p/bk, AUS$34.99 Award-winning writer Jacqueline Kent’s highly-acclaimed work A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life (2018) is now available in an updated second…

Adam Courtenay, The Ship That Never Was: The Greatest Escape Story of Australian Colonial History

Adam Courtenay, The Ship That Never Was: The Greatest Escape Story of Australian Colonial History HarperCollins Publishers (ABC Books), 323 pp., ISBN: 978073333857, p/bk, AUS$29.99 In a genuine example of fact is stranger than fiction,  journalist Adam Courtenay's book The Ship That…

Devonshire Street Cemetery

Devonshire Street cemetery prior to demolition, showing the headstone of Joseph Leburn c1905, by Ethel Foster, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (ON 146/no 401) Last night Lisa gave the Annual History Lecture for History Week 2018, and in keeping…

Life and death in Sydney’s early hospitals

Panoramic view of Infirmary and Mint, Macquarie Street, Sydney c1870, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (SPF/321) The History Council of NSW’s annual festival, History Week, will start this weekend, and as this year's theme is ‘Life and Death’, we…

The Electrical Association for Women

Electrical Association for Women Cookery Book, compiled and published by Mrs FV McKenzie, Director of the Electrical Association for Women (Australia) Sydney, published by The Electrical Association for Women (Australia), Sydney 1936 (private collection) Electricity has been in the news for…

The island laboratory

  Loir in the laboratory at Rodd Island, Illustrated Sydney News, 21 November 1891, p12 Our picturesque Sydney Harbour has 13 islands, each with its own fascinating history. Cockatoo Island, Garden Island and Fort Denison all come to mind as popular attractions,…

Eora fisherwomen

bara by Aboriginal artist Judy Watson, image courtesy of Judy Watson and UAP MEDIA Yesterday Governor David Hurley and Lord Mayor Clover Moore unveiled plans for a major new artwork overlooking Sydney Harbour on the Tarpeian Precinct Lawn above Dubbagullee (also…

Historic Sydenham pub gutted by fire

wp-image-15369 https://home.dictionaryofsydney.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ANU-NBAC-General-Gordon-Hotel-card-5-side-2-CROP.jpgGeneral Gordon Hotel, Sydenham 1949, courtesy of the Noel Butlin Archives Centre [General Gordon Hotel card 5 side 2 (detail)]451353/> General Gordon Hotel, Sydenham 1949. Courtesy Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University  (General Gordon Hotel card 5 side…

Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the early colony 1788–1817

Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the early colony 1788–1817  NewSouth (2018),  432pp, ISBN 9781742232140, p/bk, RRP: $34.99 Recent years have seen the publication of a good deal of compellingly sensitive histories of the early years of British invasion and settlement in…