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 known as Bennelong Point) that will celebrate and honour the clans of the Eora nation. I was honoured to be present at the announcement and I'm excited at the prospect of this newly commissioned artwork. bara by Aboriginal artist Judy Watson, is modelled after the crescent shapes of ‘bara’ – traditional fish hooks crafted and used by Gadigal women for thousands of years.

Listen to  Lisa and Jess on 2SER here 

Eora women deserve to be recognised. They were the main food providers for their families; along the coast and harbour one of the staple foods were fish. There is an excellent article in the Dictionary of Sydney by Professor Grace Karskens that traces the history of Barangaroo and the Eora fisherwomen that you can read on the site here. Women fished from their bark canoes (nowie or nawi) with lines and hooks, whereas men stood along the shoreline with their fish gigs. The women made their fishing lines (carr-e-jun) by twisting together two strands of fibre from kurrajong trees, Cabbage trees or flax plants. Sometimes animal fur or grass was also used.

Aboriginal woman with her baby, in a canoe fishing with a line c1805, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW ( PXB 513, f.12)

The distinctively crescent-shaped fish hooks (burra or bara) were honed from the broadest part of the turban shell (Turbo torquata). The pearly reflection of the hook would have acted as a lure. The women didn't use bait, but would spit chewed shellfish on the surface of the water. The Australian Museum has examples of pre-European manufactured hooks in their collection, and have interesting articles on the manufacture of Eora hooks here and here. European naval officers admired the technical accomplishment of these essential tools - First Fleet Surgeon George Worgan thought that they showed 'the greatest ingenuity' of all the Eora implements. The skill of the women in catching the fish and navigating the changeable harbour conditions in their modest nawi was also greatly admired.

Fish hooks of NSW, detail from plate in John White's Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, 1790, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (MRB/ Q991/ 2A2)

Their skills were not only described in detail in journals, but also captured through multiple water colours showing Eora fisherwomen in nawi with fires going, fishing and minding and feeding their small children. They were a common sight all around Port Jackson for generations, singing as they rowed and fished. Eora women dominated the waters of the harbours, coves and bays, and the coastlines in between. The fish hooks and lines were sometimes worn by Eora fisherwomen around their necks like a necklace. Although the hooks were beautiful, pearly and finely made, they weren't worn as a frivolous piece of jewellery, but rather an essential working implement. They were also a symbol of women's identity, power and status in the community. It is wonderful to see Sydney's history of Aboriginal women and their domination of the harbour represented and honoured in such an iconic rendering of the bara. Further Reading: Read Grace Karskens' article Barangaroo and the Eora Fisherwomen and  Val Attenbrow's Archaeological Evidence of Aboriginal Life in Sydney for more about shell fish hooks in Sydney. Listen to historians Anna Clark and Tamson Pietsch searching for the fisherwomen’s world in the History Lab podcast Fishing for Answers. Read about the newly commissioned artwork in the City of Sydney media release here.

bara or Shell fish-hooks made from 'Turbo turquata' from the Australian Museum, photo by Paul Ovenden

Dr Lisa Murray is the Historian of the City of Sydney and the former chair of the Dictionary of Sydney Trust. She is the author of several books, including Sydney Cemeteries: a field guide. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thank you Lisa! Listen to the podcast with Lisa & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast  on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20 am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.  With no ongoing operational funding, the Dictionary of Sydney needs your help to survive. Make a donation to the Dictionary of Sydney and claim a tax deduction!

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 2 (detail) http://hdl.handle.net/1885/99157

On Monday we heard that the General Gordon Hotel in Sydenham had been gutted by a ferocious fire, its roof collapsing under the strain. The pub was built 86 years ago and was undergoing renovations when it was engulfed by flames and a piece of Sydney's pub history was destroyed.

Listen to Nicole and Tess on 2SER here. 

Prior to 1932, the General Gordon Hotel had occupied a different site in Sydenham, on the current day Bolton Street, where it had been operating since 1885. The hotel's first publican, John Spicer Paris, had named it in honour of the British Army officer and administrator Major-General Charles George Gordon, who was something of a popular colonial hero and had died earlier in 1885 in the Sudan War . In 1925 the hotel was licensed to publican Margaret Gleeson, who had been managing hotels in Sydney since 1910. Mrs Gleeson died at the hotel in 1929 following a stroke, aged only 45, and the licence was taken up by her daughter, Kathleen Tansey, who went on to run the hotel with her sister Mary Clarke. Like their mother, both daughters were widowed and became successful publicans. Tansey's husband had also been a barman at the General Gordon when he was killed in a car accident in 1926. In 1931, Sydney’s tabloid newspaper, Truth, reported a hearing at Newtown Police Court in which it was alleged the sisters had served drinks to two men after hours (it was illegal to operate a public hotel after 6pm at the time). In the end, the charges against were dropped as the men were 'walking out' with the sisters. During the trial, one of the police witnesses admitted that Mrs Tansey, described as 'rotund and radiating good will', actually 'conducted the hotel extraordinarily well'. In 1932, Mrs Tansey made an application to transfer the license to a new venue on the corner of Swain and Burrows Street, the construction of which was due to begin shortly. The new hotel building was designed by the architect, Sidney Warden, who was a prolific designer of hotels for the major beer brewers, Tooth and Company (the owners of the General Gordon). Warden worked on 392 hotels, designing new ones or making alterations to existing ones, and he is responsible for the designs of many of Sydney's most beloved pubs including the Old Clare Hotel in Chippendale and the Lansdowne on City Road at Broadway.

Sydenham's original General Gordon Hotel on nearby Bolton Street, that was demolished in 1926. Courtesy Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University (General Gordon Hotel card 2 side 2) http://hdl.handle.net/1885/99163

The new General Gordon Hotel opened on 13 December 1932, with free beer given out between 5.15 and 6pm to celebrate. In February 1948, 200 of the General Gordon's patrons staged a protest in the pub when it apparently ran out of beer on a Saturday afternoon. The pub was black banned and picketed for 15 weeks, with the protesters demanding longer opening hours on Saturday afternoons, the reopening of the Ladies Lounge (closed for the previous 10 years), and that bottled beer should only be sold to locals. The black ban was part of a wider protest across Sydney against the monopoly of big brewers like Tooth's on the liquor trade. Mrs Tansey eventually acceded to their demands and the General Gordon went back to serving the Sydenham community. In the end, Kathleen Tansey was the licensee of the General Gordon Hotel until about 1955, running the pub for more than 20 years.   Further reading: Road trip: A Few Marrickville Pubs, Time Gents: Australian Pub Project  https://timegents.com/2017/10/04/road-trip-a-few-marrickville-pubs/ Archive, hotel architecture, designs by Sidney Warden 2018, Powerhouse Museum, Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, https://ma.as/360699 General Gordon Hotel collection, Tooth & Company Limited yellow cards. The Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/96113 General Gordon Hotel in Sydney catches fire, roof collapses, ABC News, 30 July 2018, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-30/general-gordon-hotel-sydenham-catches-fire/10051908   Nicole Cama is a professional historian, writer and curator. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Nicole! Listen to the podcast with Nicole & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15 to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney. The Dictionary of Sydney has no ongoing operational funding and needs your help. Make a tax-deductible donation to the Dictionary of Sydney today!        

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 and around Warrane or Sydney Cove. Historians have been attracted to the possibilities inherent in stories of mutual misunderstanding and grasping negotiation, moving us towards a new national origin story, one that has emphasised entanglement and accommodation on a middle ground that was tragically to be overtaken by conflict as the British expanded, invading the hinterland and engaging in a series of increasingly brutal frontier wars. In The Sydney Wars, Stephen Gapps derides these early moments of possibility and instead urges us to consider Sydney as both the site and the stake of a war that raged almost from the very beginning. He reminds us that the sound of gunfire formed the regular background music of the early colony and shows us the ways the terrain of the emerging city shaped the war, as well as the ways the British tried to mould patterns of settlement and occupation to transform both territory and the balance of violent force. This allows him to tell a different story of Australian origins, one that foregrounds a conflict that stems from the British drive to conquer land and Aboriginal refusal to cede it. Covering the first three decades of British invasion and settlement on the Cumberland Plain, Gapps provides us with a meticulous account of almost incessant military conflict. He traces the ebb and flow of the wars that raged across the Sydney basin, exploring changing tactics and methods, and the development of military knowledge and technologies. British officers at the time, he reminds us, understood themselves to be under attack, to be at war. Why has this perspective since been pushed aside? One wonders what precisely is at stake in telling this story of war rather than accommodation, conflict rather than conciliation. There are, I think, three notes on approaching this critical period in the history of Sydney that we can derive from this book. First, Gapps shows us the benefit of a practice of reading (or re-reading) the early British manuscripts, journals, and diaries of Sydney for evidence of Indigenous military tactics that the men who were there were unable or unwilling to acknowledge. By reading with a military historian’s facility with the mechanics of armed conflict he is able to describe a war that featured parties whose military strength was unequal, but not radically so; the British were aware that, at times in the first decades of their occupation of Sydney, Aboriginal warriors held the capacity to destroy the growing town. Second, he places the militant actions of individuals or groups into the larger context of conflict over land and sovereignty. Gapps discusses the tactics of Aboriginal warriors as they changed over time, emphasising their agency and resistance along with their considered approach to warfare. And settlers who attacked the Sydney people are similarly placed in the context of the war. The distinction between redcoats or a ‘posse’ of white convicts, each of whom may have skirmished or killed groups of the Sydney people, appears only as minor, or secondary. More formal military forces may have drawn on their prior counterinsurgency experience in Ireland, North America, and India, but we are reminded that whatever the nature of the orders they followed, both formal and informal British forces formed part of the same enterprise of making the land available for white settlement. And third, Gapps implicitly makes an important claim about colonisation and the appropriate genre for representing its depredations. While I found his continual dismissals of what he terms ‘cultural history’ to be a little grating, Gapps’ insistence that violence was not tragedy but inevitability is nonetheless compelling. This kind of account boils the colonisation of Sydney down to its essence. Conflict stems, as he quotes Pattyegorang telling William Dawes in 1790, from the fact that ‘white men are settled here’. Similarly, at a meeting with Bennelong and others, David Collins was informed by the Sydney people of their anger that ‘wherever our colonists fix themselves, the natives are obliged to leave that part of the country’. The outbreak of open conflict between the British and the Sydney people should be represented, then, not as a tragic story of possibilities frustrated but—to the extent that the British had come to stay—as a story of predictable and unavoidable war. This story of Sydney is important because in many ways it established a template for what was to follow across the continent. This is a local history, but also a national and imperial one. The Sydney Wars is a valuable contribution to the way we understand both the history of the early years of British settlement in Sydney and the way we consider Australian origins. Visit the NewSouth Books website: https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/sydney-wars/ Reviewed by  Dr Ben Silverstein Australian National University July 2018

Smith's Weekly, 28 February 1920, p17 via Trove

This morning on 2SER Breakfast, Dr Rachel Franks talked to Tess Connery about Australia's oldest cold case, the murder of Constable Joseph Luker, who was the first police officer killed in the line of duty in New South Wales. 

Listen to Rachel and Tess on 2SER here. 

Joseph Luker[1] arrived in Sydney as a convict on the Third Fleet, in 1791. In 1796 he was given his freedom, and went from being a law breaker to being a law enforcer when he joined the Sydney Foot Police. In the early hours of 26 August 1803, Constable Luker was investigating a robbery in which a small portable desk containing money and legal papers had been stolen from a house in Back Row (where Phillip Street sits today) when he was set upon by a group of thugs. He was belted with the desk, bashed with the frame of a wheelbarrow and stabbed multiple times with his own weapon. The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser spared no details in describing the murder: On the head of the deceased were counted Sixteen Stabs and Contusions; the left ear was nearly divided; on the left side of the head were four wounds, and several others on the back of it. The wretch who buried the iron guard of the cutlass in the head of the unfortunate man had seized the weapon by the blade, and levelled the dreadful blow with such fatal force, as to rivet the plate in the Skull, to a depth of more than an inch and a half.[2] Because of the number of weapons involved and the extent of his injuries, it was estimated that at least three men had assaulted Luker, with no intention that he would survive the attack.

Sydney Gazette, 28 August 1804, p4 (detail, from facsimile edition)

Without the advances in the field of forensic science that are relied on in many criminal trials today it was difficult to prove guilt. Fellow police officers Issac Simmonds[3] and William Bladders were charged and tried, as were petty criminals Joseph Samuels and John Russell. Simmonds defended his blood-stained clothing by saying that ‘for a long time his nose bled habitually’ while Bladders accounted for blood on his clothes as ‘coming from a pig which he had slaughtered’. At the conclusion of the investigation into Luker’s murder and the associated trials, Joseph Samuels was found guilty of the robbery being investigated by Luker on his night watch in August but not of his murder.[4] Indeed, nobody was found guilty of the murder of the first officer of the law to die on duty in Australia: the death of Joseph Luker remains our oldest cold case. In 1811, David Dickinson Mann wrote of the community outrage surrounding the murder and his own personal trauma, in his book The Present Picture of New South Wales: In the month of August, a most inhuman murder was committed on the body of Joseph Luker, a constable, who, after going off his watch at the government-house, was beset by some villains who still remain undiscovered, and who buried the hilt of his own cutlass very deeply in his head. I was the second person at the spot, where the body of the unfortunate man was discovered; and, in attempting to turn the corpse, my fore-finger penetrated through a hole in the skull, into the brains of the deceased.[5] Luker was buried in the Old Sydney Burial Grounds, under the site of the modern-day Sydney Town Hall. The Burial Grounds, in operation from 1792 until 1820, represent Sydney’s first permanent cemetery, as laid out by Governor Phillip and Reverend Richard Johnson. The land, often referred to as Cathedral Close, was given over to the Municipal Council for the construction of the Sydney Town Hall in the 1880s – the city building opening in 1889. In 2007, over two hundred years after Luker’s death, it was confirmed that the body of the young constable had been exhumed in 1869 and re-interred at Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery. This Thursday (26 August) is the anniversary of Luker’s murder.   Further reading Rachel Franks, Writing the death of Joseph Luker: true crime reportage in colonial Sydney, TEXT Special Issue 45, Writing Death and Dying, ed Donna Lee Brien, October 2017 Louise Steding, Death on Night Watch: Constable Joseph Looker, New South Wales 1803, Sydney, NSW In Focus Press, 2016     Dr Rachel Franks is the Coordinator, Education & Scholarship at the State Library of New South Wales and a Conjoint Fellow at the University of Newcastle. She holds a PhD in Australian crime fiction and her research on crime fiction, true crime, popular culture and information science has been presented at numerous conferences. An award-winning writer, her work can be found in a wide variety of books, journals and magazines as well as on social media. She's appearing for the Dictionary today in a voluntary capacity. Thank you Rachel!  You can hear Rachel in conversation with crime fiction authors Peter Cotton and Richard Anderson at the State Library this coming Saturday. Click here to find out more and make your bookings! Listen to the podcast with Rachel & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.    Notes [1] Also spelt ‘Lucar’ in transportation records, ‘Looker’ in personal records and ‘Luker’ in reportage as well as in records of the New South Wales Police [2] Anon 1803 ‘Murder [Joseph Luker]’ The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser 28 August, 4 [3] Also spelt ‘Simmons’ [4] Samuels was sentenced to death for his role in the burglary, but after three attempts to hang him failed, he was reprieved. He is often referred to as ‘the man they couldn’t hang’. Bergman, George FJ 1963 ‘The story of two Jewish convicts: Joseph Samuel, “the man they couldn’t hang” and Isaac Simmons, alias “Hickey Bull”, highwayman and constable’ Journal of the Australian Jewish Historical Society 5 (7), 320–31 [5] Mann, David Dickinson [1811]1979 The present picture of New South Wales, 1811 Sydney: John Ferguson   Listen to the podcast with Rachel & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney. The Dictionary of Sydney has no ongoing funding and needs your help. Make a donation to the Dictionary of Sydney and claim a tax deduction!

The NSW State Archives and Records’ exhibition Blaze: Working Women, Public Leaders features fascinating stories of women trailblazers in the public sector. Listen to Nicole and Tess on 2SER here.  Among the many inspiring women featured in the exhibition is Margaret Harper, a paediatrician and infant health pioneer in Sydney. There’s also Rosette Edmunds, our first female professional town planner. Edmunds worked as an architect from 1926 until 1941 and was appointed Civic Survey Officer in 1946 for the Cumberland County Council which oversaw the master plan for Sydney. It also includes Ida Leeson, the first woman appointed as Mitchell Librarian, Margaret Whitlam, the Rachel Foster Hospital, Rose Scott, Dame Marie Bashir, Lucy Osborn and many, many more! Another of the women whose achievements are celebrated in this exhibition is the Aboriginal activist from the 1930s to the 1980s, Pearl Gibbs and this is who I wanted to talk about this week. The theme for this year's NAIDOC Week was 'Because of Her We Can', and Pearl Gibbs' contribution to the fight for Aboriginal rights and justice should be celebrated by all of us.

Mrs Gibbs, Aboriginal Welfare Board, 16 August 1955. Pic: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (GPO2 06644)

She was born in La Perouse in 1901 and worked as a domestic worker in the Potts Point area. She spoke out against the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board’s control over Aboriginal people in the 1930s and, in 1954, became the first woman to be elected to the board. Gibbs was a true trailblazer. In addition to her work with the Aborigines Welfare Board, she was the first Aboriginal woman to speak on radio, making a speech on 2GB in 1941. She also spoke at Speakers’ Corner in The Domain in 1937, climbing a ladder to her soapbox, and later recalled how she ‘shook’ and ‘shivered’ because she ‘was so fighting mad’ at the injustices faced by Aboriginal people. In 1938, she joined the Aborigines Progressive Association and was one of the organisers of the ‘Day of Mourning and Protest’ that was held at Australian Hall on Elizabeth Street in Sydney on 26 January 1938. Gibbs also founded the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship with Faith Bandler in 1956,  a group formed to campaign for equal pay and citizenship for Aboriginal people. She suffered personal tragedy when her three children were removed from her care by her estranged British husband. People have often spoken of Pearl Gibbs as ‘before her time’. Aboriginal poet Kevin Gilbert described her as someone who ‘lived and breathed, ached and bled Aboriginal affairs’. Find out more about Pearl Gibbs and many other trail blazing women in the Blaze exhibition, which is showing at the Whitlam Institute at the Female Orphan School at Western Sydney University’s Parramatta campus. It closes on 27 July so get cracking! For further information, head to the NSW State Archives and Records website: https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/exhibitions/blaze If you can't get there physically, the exhibition is also available online via the e-catalogue here.

Aborigines day of mourning, 26 January 1938 Left to right: Pearl Gibbs, Marj Tucker, Wiliam Ferguson, Jack Patten, Bill Murray, unknown, Maggie Murray (the mother of Pearl Gibbs), unknown. The photograph was taken by a passer-by, C Sorrell of Marrickville and appeared on the letters page of the magazine. Pic courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (a429004 / Q 059/9) (Man magazine, March 1938, p108)

Other reading:

• Stephanie Gilbert 'The inspirational Pearl Gibbs: Challenging norms about Aboriginal women', Australian Women's History Network: http://www.auswhn.org.au/blog/inspirational-pearl-gibbs/
• ABC Radio National: Because of Her http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/awaye/because-of-her:-anny-druett/9861840
• Sydney Barani: Speakers Corner: http://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/speakers-corner-domain/
• Australian Dictionary of Biography: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gibbs-pearl-mary-gambanyi-12533
• Stephanie Gilbert,  'Never forgotten' Pearl Gibbs (Gambanyi) in Uncommon Ground: White women in Aboriginal history, eds Cole, Haskins & Paisley, 2005, Chapter 5 via AIATSIS Library http://lryb.aiatsis.gov.au/PDFs/cole_ch5.pdf
• 'Three Tributes to Pearl Gibbs (1901-1983)', Aboriginal History, Vol 7,1, 1983 http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p71511/pdf/article011.pdf

Nicole Cama is a professional historian, writer and curator. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Nicole! Listen to the podcast with Nicole & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15 to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney. The Dictionary of Sydney has no ongoing operational funding and needs your help. Make a tax-deductible donation to the Dictionary of Sydney today!

Testing the Anti-G suit in a centrifuge designed for the purpose. Courtesy Australian War Memorial (AWM 042662)

This week on 2SER Breakfast, Dictionary special guest Dr Peter Hobbins talked to Tess about some top secret research undertaken at the University of Sydney during World War II. 

Listen to Peter and Tess on 2SER here. 

If you've ever been on the Rotor ride at Luna Park, you've felt the pressures that gravitational force (aka g-force) can wield on the human body as the centrifugal force pins you to the side of the ride and blood drains away from your head. In the 1930s, fighter pilots were increasingly realising they were suffering these same effects when they were pulling a really tight turn in the air, or pulling out of a steep dive. As the blood was rushing from their head and their heart down into their tummy and their legs, it would lead at first to their vision going grey, then black (hence the term 'black out'), and then, if they kept pulling that turn, they'd lose consciousness. This wasn't good for a pilot at any time, but particularly when another enemy plane is on their tail. By 1940, this had become a big issue. In September 1940, Frank Cotton, a physiologist at the University of Sydney who specialised in the cardiovascular system, was reading about the Battle of Britain in the newspaper when he had a flash of inspiration and saw a possible solution to the problem. He came up with the idea of a new kind of rubberised flying suit, something like a modern wetsuit, that went from the pilot's feet to the bottom of their rib cage. Critically, the suit would inflate rapidly when plane under high g, stopping the blood pooling in the pilot's stomach and legs, and preventing a black out and loss of consciousness. It was a great idea, but would it work? When the Japanese entered the war, American and Canadian researchers pooled their research with Australian scientists, and it became apparent that other solutions to the problem were being worked on elsewhere. Cotton's was deemed to be the best at a technical level and work continued on his prototypes. A human centrifugal device was built at the University of Sydney so the anti-blackout outfit, christened the Cotton Aerodynamic Anti-G  suit, could be tested, and further research done into the effects of g-force on the body. Unfortunately the centrifuge couldn't cope with the demands and developments took so long that in the end, they didn't happen quickly enough for the suit to be used in the war. In 1943 the suit was sent to Darwin for testing in combat, but just as it got there, the Japanese had practically ceased stopped flying over northern Australia. By mid-1944, most of the bugs in the suit's design had been ironed out, but the pilots also hated wearing it. Wearing a 10 kilo rubber suit in Darwin's heat and humidity, while waiting for a 'scramble' alert to intercept enemy raiders, had little appeal.

Mascot Aerodrome 1941. Professor Frank Cotton and others involved with the RAAF in the development of the aerodynamic Anti-G Flying Suit which minimised the effects of high speed flying on pilots. This photograph was taken after the first successful flight with the air-inflated G-suit. Flight Lieutenant Ken Robertson (wearing the Anti-G Suit) is at the centre of the shot, Professor Cotton is third from his right, at the rear of the group. At the very left is Joe Kelly, the rubber technician from Dunlop Perdriau in Drummoyne, who supervised many production innovations. In the background is the aircraft used in flight trials to test the effectiveness of the suit. It was the only Hawker Hurricane fighter brought to Australia during World War II. Courtesy Australian War Memorial (AWM P01529.001)

The University of Sydney holds a Cotton Aerodynamic Anti-G suit in the collections of the Macleay Museum. Further reading: Dr Peter Hobbins, The pigeonhole waltz: Deflating innovation in wartime Australia, Record 2015: The University of Sydney Archives magazine http://sydney.edu.au/arms/archives/record2015.pdf Rehousing the Cotton Suit, July 2016, Behind the Scenes, Sydney University Museums http://sydney.edu.au/museums/research/bts-jul2016.shtml About the author Dr Peter Hobbins is a Royal Australian Historical Society Councillor and a historian of science, technology and medicine at the University of Sydney. His current research focuses on aircraft crashes in Australia over 1920–70. He appears on 2SER for the Dictionary in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Peter! As part of History Week 2018, Peter will draw upon aircraft accident reports for his talk ‘Death in the air and life on the ground at Mascot Aerodrome’, at Mascot Library & George Hanna Memorial Museum on 8 September 2018. Tickets aren't available yet, but mark it in your calendars so you don't miss out:  https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/death-in-the-air-life-on-the-ground-at-mascot-aerodrome-tickets-44355051152 Listen to the podcast with Peter & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.  The Dictionary of Sydney has no ongoing funding and needs your help. Make a donation to the Dictionary of Sydney and claim a tax deduction!    

Ye Olde Crusty Wine Cellar, 255 George Street, Sydney December 1942 Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Home and Away 24160)

Nowadays, you can walk into any one of the many bars and restaurants of Sydney and be shown an extensive wine list and an array of scrumptious dishes from around the world. But it hasn’t always been so.  Listen to Nicole and Tess on 2SER here.  Since the mid-twentieth century, Sydney’s culinary and drinking culture has been completely transformed. Much of Sydney’s change in its dining habits can be connected to migrants bringing their cuisines and beverages to Australia. The way Sydneysiders have eaten and drunk over time has reflected these waves of migration, with the post-war European culinary influences later being complemented by the foods and drinks Asian and Middle Eastern communities brought with them that enhance our dining experiences. Today we're having just a quick look at a couple of the best known of the mid 20th century European venues in Sydney, in particular those that encouraged an appreciation of wine.

Interior  of Ye Olde Crusty Wine Cellar, 255 George Street, Sydney 15 August 1947, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Home and Away 11459)

Wine cellars existed in Sydney in the 19th century, but in the 20th century they were still considered somewhat unusual, especially in comparison to the well established beer culture and pubs on every corner. Wine connoisseur Leo Buring was born in 1876 in South Australia to German immigrant parents active in the local wine industry, and he continued this work over his career. In 1931 he set up an establishment opposite Bridge Street in George Street which he called ‘Ye Olde Crusty Cellar’, looking in particular to promote Australian wine. People would line up outside for their special vintage wines and the venue also hosted many distinguished guests and Sydney celebrations. It was still operating in the 1970s. Henry and Jeanne Renault were French migrants who settled in Sydney. In 1942 they opened a restaurant in Ash Street near Angel Place called 'The Hermitage'. The Hermitage served dishes such as venison in wine, and steak tartare which, although common today, shocked restaurant-goers back then. Jeanne said one patron ‘could not understand us serving raw steak. It was fit only for dogs.’ The pair were also instrumental in the establishment of the Wine & Food Society of NSW. As an interesting side note, in a 1946 Daily Telegraph article, Henry voiced his opposition to the gender segregation that was seen in public bars until the 1950s and noted: ‘Europeans have a different attitude to drinking. They do not drink to get drunk; they drink moderately because it is part of graceful living. It should, be so in Australia, but it will take people some years to learn this.’[1]

The Hermitage Cafe, Building Magazine, September 24, 1942, p36 via Trove

Sydney's has also had a well documented love affair with Italian food and wine, which flourished after World War II. On Stanley Street in Darlinghurst, No Name Restaurant opened in about 1954, and only just closed last year. And in 1956, Beppi's Restaurant opened on Yurong Street. These early establishments became known for their red and white checkered tablecloths and introduced Sydneysiders to the classic simplicity of Italian cuisine. Interestingly, more recent years have seen a bit of a resurgence in these old school places and styles. We’ve seen this in the interest in preserving Greek milk bars, and in some fashionable venues adopting the retro decor that was seen in the older family run establishments. What’s a restaurant or bar you miss from your time? Nicole Cama is a professional historian, writer and curator. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Nicole! Listen to the podcast with Nicole & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15 to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.   Further Reading: You can find more on the Dictionary of Sydney! Try looking for more on Sydney's restaurant cultures and culinary history by browsing the following Subject listings: Eating and Drinking  Restaurants and Cafes  Hotels and Pubs  Wine Culture The Cook and the Curator is a wonderful blog from Jacqui Newling and Scott Hill at Sydney's Living Museums http://blogs.sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/cook/  Bold Palates Australia's gastronomic heritage by Barbara Santich (Wakefield Press, 2012) Greek Cafe's and Milk Bars of Australia by Effy Alexakis and Leonard Janiszewski (Halstead Press, 2016) State Library of NSW Fellow Dr Julie McIntyre's work on wine in Australia First Vintage: Wine in Colonial New South Wales (NewSouth, 2012) and her forthcoming title Hunter Wine: A History with John Germov (NewSouth, 2018)   Notes: [1] NO MORE DRINKING IN SORDID BACK PARLORS, The Daily Telegraph, April 11, 1946, p21 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article248496044 ; Venison In Wine As Hunters' Dish, The Sydney Morning Herald, June 1, 1954, p2 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18440587   The Dictionary of Sydney has no ongoing operational funding and needs your help to survive. Make a tax-deductible donation to the Dictionary of Sydney today!

This week on 2SER Breakfast, Dictionary special guest Dr Peter Hobbins talked to Tess about a terrible accident in the centre of the city in 1966 when a helicopter crashed onto Gold Fields House at Circular Quay. The three people on board were killed, including the ABC cameraman whose camera, with footage of the accident, was discovered in the wreckage. 

Listen to Peter and Tess on 2SER here. 

One of the most graphic – and chilling – aircraft accidents in Australian history, the crash happened in the centre of Sydney on a sunny Saturday afternoon on 10 December 1966 when a Bell 47 helicopter that had been chartered by the ABC spiralled out of control and fell onto the roof of the newly completed Gold Fields House at Circular Quay, and from there onto another building in Pitt Street. The accident took the lives of all on board: ABC cameraman Frank Parnell, Patricia Ludford, one of the ABC's first female directors, and the helicopter's pilot James Riley, but the toll could very easily have been much higher. Unlike today, with video cameras in every pocket, the event was, remarkably, filmed from both inside and outside the helicopter. As Frank Parnell's camera continued to film the world beyond spinning around him, concurrently, an astute Commonwealth Film Unit crew on Sydney Harbour filmed the helicopter’s final plunge into the city’s central business district a fortnight before Christmas.[1] Investigations made it clear that the helicopter had crashed after the tail rotor of the helicopter had failed. One blade broke off, then the whole unit came off altogether and fell into the water at Circular Quay. What remains a mystery is why the pilot didn't immediately follow normal procedures for this kind of event and wind the power back for an immediate landing, but kept flying. Two possible explanations are that the three people crammed inside the goldfish-bowl-like helicopter panicked, or were unable to move, or alternatively, that the pilot, a former RAF pilot, could have been looking for a safer place to attempt an emergency landing rather than risk the lives of others by coming down amidst the ferries and yachts in the water below, or pedestrians at Circular Quay.

Aviation Safety Digest November 1967 p2-3

The roof of Gold Fields House, which had only just been completed and was one of the tallest buildings in the city, may have seemed a safe place to attempt to land. If this was indeed what the pilot was attempting to do, the helicopter spun out of control before the manoeuvre could be completed and fell 500 feet (about 150 metres) on to the roof before bouncing off an onto the three storey Paul Building at 33-35 Pitt Street, missing by metres the NSW Rugby Union Club where 200 children were attending a Christmas party. Wreckage was recovered from near the AMP Building, Macquarie Street, near the Opera House, Spring Street and at the base of Gold Fields House as well as Pitt Street. The technical investigation into the accident included interviews with mechanics, pilots and air traffic controllers at Bankstown Airport, whence the flight had departed. But the remaining interviewees, plus witnesses who telephoned or wrote down their observations, encompassed the breadth of Sydney’s demographic and their accounts provide modern historians with not just information about the accident but snippets of leisure in a city that nominally shut down on Saturday afternoons, suggesting a lively metropolis united momentarily by death. Men, women and children, including a little boy who was narrowly missed by a piece of falling debris at the Golden Dragon Chinese Café, all related their experiences. Another 13-year-old schoolboy was fishing at Circular Quay, just near the overseas terminal, when he saw a piece fly off the helicopter’s tail. Adults watched the morbid spectacle while crossing the Harbour Bridge or Pyrmont Bridge, strolling in the Botanical Gardens, meandering through the city streets or the Rocks, enjoying the view from the observation tower on the AMP Building, or gazing through the windows of their harbourside apartments. Some were passengers or crew aboard yachts, tugs or ferries in the harbour; others waited for them to dock at Circular Quay.[2] Given the season, there were Christmas parties at Garden Island and on Pitt Street, a devotion at St Mary’s Cathedral and drinks at the Trocadero. One man had just purchased a new 8 millimetre movie camera and intended to film the Sydney Opera House under construction -  he thought he had captured the accident but in his inexperience the film did not feed through. A surprising number of Sydneysiders were also on duty on that Saturday afternoon. They included not only several policemen, but workers at the Opera House, cooks, building caretakers and club managers, construction workers and foremen, gardeners in the Botanical Gardens and an employee at Cohen’s Furniture Shop on George Street. At Government House, the Governor’s Secretary, a footman and the wife of the caretaker also witnessed the tragedy.[3] Residents visiting the city that Saturday afternoon included a refinery operator from Auburn, a scientist from Engadine, a toolmaker from Potts Point and a teacher from Chatswood. Pioneering science communicator Dr Peter Pockley claimed to see the helicopter near the University of Sydney. Other informants hailed from Merrylands, St Leonards, Manly, Normanhurst, Roseville, Cabramatta, Concord, Kirribilli, Tempe, Green Valley, Padstow, Five Dock and Randwick. One international visitor from California happened to be an employee of the Lockheed Aircraft Company; several other witnesses also mentioned aviation backgrounds. Their cumulative testimonies helped pin down a three-dimensional and aural account of the accident, leading to a timeline and – ultimately – a formal sequence of events beginning with a broken tail rotor bolt.[4] While the investigation into the accident had consequences for the helicopter's American manufacturers Bell, who faced litigation that went on into the 1970s, another long term outcome was that single-engined aircraft, like small planes and helicopters, could no longer fly over built up areas like the city, which is why today you see them flying along Sydney's waterways like the harbour or rivers.   About the author Dr Peter Hobbins is a Royal Australian Historical Society Councillor and a historian of science, technology and medicine at the University of Sydney. His current research focuses on aircraft crashes in Australia over 1920–70. He appears on 2SER for the Dictionary in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Peter! As part of History Week 2018, Peter will draw upon aircraft accident reports for his talk ‘Death in the air and life on the ground at Mascot Aerodrome’, at Mascot Library & George Hanna Memorial Museum on 8 September 2018. Tickets aren't available yet, but mark it in your calendars so you don't miss out:  https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/death-in-the-air-life-on-the-ground-at-mascot-aerodrome-tickets-44355051152   Listen to the podcast with Peter & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.  The Dictionary of Sydney has no ongoing funding and needs your help. Make a donation to the Dictionary of Sydney and claim a tax deduction! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y5ZnctKDmg   References [1] For contemporary newsreels, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y5ZnctKDmg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L9MnwSc2Mo [2] Accident at Sydney on 10.12.1966 Bell 47G2 VH-AHF, 1973–76, NAA B638 6/266/947 PART 3. [3] ‘Aircraft Accident Report, VH-AHF, 10.12.1966, Part 2 ’, in Accident at Sydney 10.12.1966 Bell 47G2 VH-AHF, 1966–71, NAA B638 6/266/947 PART 2. [4] Peter Hobbins, 'Investigating the social history of aircraft accidents', History No. 136 (June 2018), pp. 3–7.  

Maggie Oliver in costume c1885, courtesy State Library of South Australia (PRG 280/1/18/291)

Waverley Cemetery is the resting place of more than 100,000 people, including many well known personalities from our past like writers Dorothea Mackellar and Henry Lawson, publisher JF Archibald, the aviator and inventor, Lawrence Hargrave and cricketer Victor Trumper. Today we'll look at an equally fascinating person who is buried there who has largely been forgotten in the history books.

Listen to Nicole and Tess on 2SER here. 

Maggie Oliver was a colonial era comic actress, born Maggie Walsh in Sydney in 1844. She began her career at an amateur theatre haunt, 'The Old Rag Store' in Queen's Place at the age of 15 and by the 1860s had joined the Redfern Dramatic Society. Oliver became known for her comic ability and Irish characters.  One of her best known was that of Paddy Miles in the play, The Limerick Boy, which involved, as did many of her roles, male impersonation. As well as appearing at various theatres in Sydney, she toured the goldfields as well as rural New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania. Her marriage to John King in 1869 ended when she obtained a divorce in 1877, citing his extreme violence against her. Their only child died before the divorce.

Maggie Oliver appeared in this production of the Babes in the Wood in January 1880 at the Theatre Royal as 'The Bad Man (a bad lot, with a predilection of murder, abduction, and other crimes, which he commits according to schedule; a perfect feeder to Haslem's)'. Courtesy National Library of Australia (PET PA Broadside 106)

Oliver died of dropsy (cirrhosis of the liver) at Sydney Hospital on 29 May 1892, aged just 48. The Evening News remembered her as an ‘actress of the people’ and her ‘vivacity, her undoubted talent’ in the ‘domain of burlesque’. She was buried at Waverley Cemetery, ‘the peaceful cemetery by the Pacific’, with her funeral attended by around 200 mourners. Another ceremony unveiling a marble memorial headstone carved into a cross was held a few months later in September. The inscription on the pedestal  quotes Shakespeare’s Henry VI:  ‘Why what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? And live we how we can, yet die we must’. This coming Saturday, the Friends of Waverley Cemetery Volunteers are holding one of their regular walking tours of the picturesque cemetery in Bronte, with the proceeds from the tours going toward memorial restoration work. You can book tickets for this tour via the Eventbrite website here or contact Waverley Council to find out when there's another one planned.   Nicole Cama is a professional historian, writer and curator. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Nicole! Listen to the podcast with Nicole & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15 to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney. The Dictionary of Sydney has no ongoing operational funding and needs your help. Make a tax-deductible donation to the Dictionary of Sydney today!

Gideon Haigh, A Scandal in Bohemia: The Life and Death of Mollie Dean

Penguin / Hamish Hamilton, 310 pp., ISBN: 9780143789574, p/bk, AUS$32.99

 Journalist Gideon Haigh is well-known for his engaging full-length works on cricket, business histories and, more recently, his histories of true crime cases, the most recent being: A Scandal in Bohemia: The Life and Death of Mollie Dean (2018). A still-unsolved murder, Mollie Dean’s death was a premature and tragic end to a young woman’s life. Even if Dean’s killer, who one night in 1930 took Dean’s life as she was walking home, “was merely an opportunist, he found his target with cruel precision, cutting off in her prime a woman determined to advance, to transcend, to live” (p. 283, emphasis original). Dean was ambitious and determined. An aspiring writer, and a muse for other creative practitioners, she lived in Melbourne. Occupying bohemian spaces in a period and place that did not fully accept the independent and liberated woman that Dean had crafted herself to be, her story has, until now, been elusive and obscured by the passage of time. Indeed, Dean’s story is a clear example of the complexities that surround wanting to forget a terrible event conflicting with the need to remember it. Many true crime readers prefer works with a neat, if still distressing, ending: perpetrators apprehended, punishments delivered. The mechanisms of justice move slowly — the work is labour intensive, fraught with the everyday messiness of people’s lives, the various motivations to do wrong, conflicting statements, unreliable witnesses, a near-endless search for evidence that will lead to a conviction and the task of forcing a system to meet the needs of, and respond to, very human situations — but the machinery grinds as best it can, offering some form of closure that allows society to move on. As a cold case, moving on from Mollie Dean is not a straightforward task. There is nobody to blame. This, however, offers Haigh an opportunity that he embraces. Rather than focusing on the murderer, whose identity remains a mystery, this work focuses on the victim. Often the victims within true crime texts are mere plot devices that, much like the majority of examples of crime fiction, allows the work to unfold. Readers are invited to focus on examining the how and the why of murder in addition to the details of the investigation, quickly followed by a reassuring narrative of punishment. Such reassurances are not always available. There were suspects at the time, but in many respects the real mystery of this case was the life, not the death, of Mollie Dean. From a single photograph, a Public Record Office file “of sixty-six pages of statements from thirty-nine witnesses that detectives had gathered in the course of their inquiries — neatly typed, double-spaced, and annotated by multiple unknown hands” (p. 12) and multiple references to Dean in popular culture, Haigh crafts a not only a fascinating true crime text but a compelling biography. Supported by excellent research and rich visuals, A Scandal in Bohemia is a terrific tale of early twentieth-century Melbourne and one of the vibrant women who lived, and died, there.  Reviewed by Dr Rachel Franks, June 2018 For a preview of the book or to purchase online, visit the https://www.penguin.com.au/books/a-scandal-in-bohemia-9780143789574