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Australia’s iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge is recognised around the world. From the day it was formally opened it has been a celebrated part of Sydney’s landscape. A special series of four stamps was issued to commemorate its opening in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression. One of the most important occasions it has […]

In the 1950s, former Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies said that the Royal Flying Doctor Service was ‘perhaps the single greatest contribution to the effective settlement of the far distant country we have witnessed in our time’. What wonderful praise for the person who started it all: the Reverend John Flynn. John Flynn’s parents, Thomas […]

The horses were restless, pawing the ground in the relentless heat. A shimmering haze hung over the desert, taunting the waiting riders and their thirsty steeds with the promise of water. In the distance, a pall of dust obscured the fighting. But the dust cloud was crawling aimlessly, not flying forward. It was obvious that […]

For over two hundred years, the final resting place of the man ultimately responsible for the naming of Australia was unknown. Then, in early 2019, his lead-plated coffin was discovered at the back of a train station in London. An accomplished explorer, Matthew Flinders has the largest mountain range in South Australia named after him, […]

In the early seventeenth century, many people in the then ‘known world’ were not sure that Australia existed – except, of course, the Indigenous people who lived here. In other parts of the world, there had been stories and myths for a long time about a great continent somewhere in the vast southern oceans. Many […]

After passing over rough ground covered with the bodies of the dead and wounded, strewn with barbed wire and pocked by shellfire, the nineteen-year-old sergeant led his men into a water-filled ditch which had at one time passed for a German trench. Then, as he inadvertently raised his head a bit too high, a bullet […]

Have you ever wondered how Mother’s Day and Father’s Day started? According to an article in the Australian Women’s Weekly on 7 May 1969, Mrs Janet Heyden of Strathfield in Sydney was responsible for the introduction and promotion of both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in Australia. Back in 1923, Janet Heyden had been concerned for the […]

You are probably aware of NAIDOC week, a significant event in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ calendar and for all Australians. It is the time to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and an opportunity to recognise the contributions, both past and present, that Indigenous Australians have made and continue to make to […]

‘Who are they?’ Could the indigenous people of Australia’s rugged western coast believe what they were seeing? ‘They look human but they look so pale, so ghost-like. Where do they come from? What are they doing here? What do they want?’ How difficult it is for us to imagine what people were thinking and feeling […]

Think about a newborn baby. When we look at tiny babies, we are immediately struck by their complete and utter helplessness. They depend entirely on adults to give them what they need. And not just babies: children, too, are some of the most vulnerable of all human beings and are totally dependent on the adults […]