The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.
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Our City: 175 years in 175 objects
Young council employees c1905, probably employed as gully flushers Courtesy City of Sydney Archives (006011) This morning on 2SER, Lisa talked to Nic about the fantastic exhibition she's been working on which commemorates the City of Sydney Council's 175th anniversary . This…
The Lucy Osburn-Nightingale Museum
Sydney Living Museums’ wonderful event Sydney Open is coming up on 4 and 5 November, where the doors of more than 60 of the city’s most important and intriguing buildings and spaces will be open to the public for one weekend. One…
The Other Moderns: Sydney’s Forgotten European Design Legacy
Edited by Rebecca Hawcroft, The Other Moderns: Sydney’s Forgotten European Design Legacy, NewSouth Publishing, 2017, 352 pp., ISBN: 9781742235561, p/bk, AUS$49.99 Rebecca Hawcroft, a cultural heritage consultant, has brought together some of Australia’s most important commentators on culture and design for The Other…
Inaugural Coral Thomas Fellowship Lecture
On 19 October, Dr Rebe Taylor, the State Library of New South Wales' current Coral Thomas Fellow, will deliver the inaugural lecture on her recent findings. In the early 1830s, surveyor John Helder Wedge collected early south-eastern Aboriginal wooden artefacts from…
Sydney’s coffee obsession
Sydney Gazette, 31 July 1803, p4 via Trove Sunday 1 October was International Coffee Day and we certainly love our coffee in Australia. Historian Garry Wotherspoon has written an article in the Dictionary of Sydney about how our city’s obsession with…
John Newton, The Oldest Foods on Earth: A History of Australian Native Foods
John Newton, The Oldest Foods on Earth: A History of Australian Native Foods NewSouth, 304 pp., ISBN: 9781742234373, p/bk, AUS$29.99 The Oldest Foods on Earth: A History of Australian Native Foods (2016), from NewSouth Books, is John Newton’s vehicle for a 50,000-year…
A distinguished lady doctor
Dagmar Berne c1890, State Archives and Records NSW (9873_a025_a025000112) Today on 2SER Breakfast we looked at the inspiring tale of Sydney's first female medical student, Dagmar Berne. It's not really a happy story, but this resilient and generous woman made an…
Thomas Ley: Politician and murderer
Portrait of TJ Ley 1925 Courtesy National Library of Australia (nla.pic-an23460617) The State Archives and Records NSW has a new exhibition online and at the Western Sydney Records Centre in Kingswood titled ‘Captured: Portraits of Crime 1870-1930’. It explores photographs and…
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…
Ross Gibson, The Criminal Re-Register
Ross Gibson, The Criminal Re-Register The University of Western Australia Publishing, 2017, 152 pp., ISBN: 9781742589558, p/bk, AUS$22.99 Ross Gibson’s new work, The Criminal Re-Register (2017) from University of Western Australia Publishing, is a fabulous re-imagining of a mid-twentieth century copy of a…