Often on Left After Breakfast the Bagman talks of Talbot, Brigadoon of the North. What, where is Talbot ? Talbot is 159 ks NW of Melbourne not far from Maryborough. It’s an old gold mining town, with gold found nearby in 1854. By the late 1850s it had a population of 15,000 people, it is [...]
Thanks to everyone who volunteered their time to searching for the Bagman. Special thanks to the Goldfields Search and Rescue team who spent such long and lonely hours scouring bushland. Their efforts paid off! The Bagman is now resting and will return on May 27.
Footy season is back, and we can see the ‘Big men fly for a Herbert Adams pie‘, or so was the case in the 1970s. This was also the era of a player strike. What! A strike? Read on… At the start of the 1970 season 5 Essendon players Don Mckenzie, Barry Davis, Darryl Gerlach, [...]
Who remembers the Fairlea Five? That group of middle aged, middle class women who were arrested under a charge of Wilful Trespass for distributing leaflets on conscientious objection to boys registering for national service. The five women were Joan Coxsedge, Jean McLean, Chris Cathie, Jo Maclaine-Cross and Irene Miller. Already well known for their protest [...]
Ever wondered about the Luddites? I must confess I knew very little of the Luddites and next to nothing about General Ned Ludd and the Army of Redressers. Who were they? What were they on about? It must have been a lot more than just smashing up machinery, starting with stocking frames. I don’t know [...]
Recently we reviewed an article by Professor Stuart Macintyre on Gold and the birth of democracy in Victoria, going back to the 1850s. As well as the birth of parliamentary democracy, this time saw the growth of unions. The diggers faced a hard life on the gold fields, and diggings per se. Death and injury [...]
