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Saturday, August 16, 2025
Thursday, August 14, 2025
LAUGH IN WITH PETER BURLEIGH
Seemed to be Australia , Canberra in particular, although Fabula threatened the American president with a whipping. Come back Fabula , you are needed in the White House right now .
From Steeedman's personal file came another version of Fabula, below, inspired by Barbarella in Jean Claude Forest's French comics , Jane Fonda playing her in a film version, which upset the Catholic Church.
Monday, August 11, 2025
UNIQUE TROVE AT JAMES COOK UNIVERSITY
Australian Art Researcher's Eclectic Collection, rerun.
Ray Hughes , above , enjoying life ; below, an invitation to his gallery in the form of playing card for an exhibition by Alan Bourne in l977. Hughes started his first gallery in Brisbane in 1969 at the age of 21 , with just $500 , later opened another gallery in Sydney , promoted an early interest in Papua New Guinea , New Zealand and contemporary Chinese art ( which included visiting China) , died age 72. Other invites of his took the shape of specially designed, illustrated postcards, a packet of tobacco for sculptor , artist and print makere Tony Coleing , renowned for satirical and cutting edge works. |
TROPICAL ART DECO FESTIVAL
The North Queensland town of Innisfail will next month celebrate a century of art deco style , there being much of it in its architecure , such as the shire hall .
The dental clinic. |
Sunday, August 10, 2025
Saturday, August 9, 2025
ISLAND HOTEL SANATORIUM OPENED 1899
Friday, August 8, 2025
G'DAY! FROM THE NORTH
Thursday, August 7, 2025
MESSAGE FROM THE PLUCKY LITTLE DEACONESS OF THE SOUTH SEAS
After Oakwood was destroyed in the 1893 floods, Florence Buchanan lived at Townsville and competently helped Bishop C. G. Barlow to administer his diocese.
Two years later she worked among the multi-racial communities of divers on Thursday Island. Forced to go to London for surgery, on her return she met Kashiwagi Taira, an educated storekeeper who introduced her into the usually closed Japanese community. Though only modestly successful in proselytizing them, she was revered and respected by everybody on the island for her generous hospitality, friendliness, humour and compassion.
In 1906 Miss Buchanan was engaged first as a teacher and later as acting headmistress of the famed Singapore Chinese Girls’ School; she also taught the orphans at St Mary’s Home in Singapore.
In 1907 she again underwent major surgery in London and, upon recovery, returned to Thursday Island and was ordained a deaconess in January 1908. In May she went to Moa Island and conducted the Anglican mission, taught school, and tried to inculcate skills necessary for economic self-sufficiency. Her former work among Melanesians stood her in good stead, for the mission included Pacific islanders deported from Queensland.
Florence Buchanan resigned her charge of the mission in 1911 because of deteriorating health, but she stayed on as a teacher. She was disappointed at missing the dedication in August 1913 of St Paul’s Church, Moa, by her devoted friend Bishop Gilbert White. In September she performed her last public function when she spoke on ‘The mission field as a vocation for women’ at the annual congress of the Church of England in Brisbane. She died of tuberculosis in St Helen’s Methodist Hospital on December 30 and was buried in Toowong cemetery.
Her death was profoundly mourned throughout the Torres Strait. The church on Moa installed a memorial stained-glass window, with her face as the gentle but indomitable St Catherine of Genoa to whom Bishop White likened her.
(Missionary. Buchanan.Kanakas.)
WARTIME RELIC
Wednesday, August 6, 2025
GRAND TOUR TOOK IN BUDDHIST WORLD HERITAGE CITY
Found in a North Queensland cluster of worn travel guides to various parts of Asia was a collection of watercolours by Thai artist Samboon Phoungdorkmai of the former Laos capital , Luang Prabang.
The text is by the artist and Andre Lurde and Susan Atkinson. There are 63 original watercolours and 25 duotone sketches.
Presented by Thai International Airways , it was published in 2004 by Asia Horizons Books , a project initiated by the Thai Lao Association for Friendship.
(Laos. Architecture . Art.)
SHIVERING SHAG ON A ROCK
(Headless. Cold. Petros.)
Tuesday, August 5, 2025
INSPIRING TERRITORY FOR AWARD WINNING NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES
In 1938 Xavier Herbert received the Australian Commonwealth sequi-centenary award for a novel , Capricornia , which was praised by the prominent British writer H. G. Wells .
The novel was inspired to a large extent by what Herbert experienced in and the many characters he met in the Northern Territory in the l920s and 30s working as a pharmacist, railway fettler, superintendent of an Aboriginal compound and "pox doctor " to Japanese pearldivers whom he regarded as supermen .
To prevent being sued by people in the Territory who identified themselves as thinly disguised characters in the novel, Herbert called the land Capricornia.
The Territory also provided him with the name for a later Miles Franklin Award winning epic , Poor Fellow My Country , which he proudly said was bigger than the Bible. The title was based on the anguished cry of an Aborigine who was imrisoned after he threw a spear at a policeman who shot his dog at Pine Creek .
When Herbert was a boy in Western Australia , his father , a railway worker, discussed the possibility of taking up land in the Northern Territory and breeding remounts for the Indian Army.
In Melbourne , in the l920s, Herbert, intent on becoming a doctor , with a writing itch , churned out a range of material,including short stories, for various publications. Never published was a lengthy novel ,Giants of Iron, which mentiond vast deposits of iron in Western Australia.
The above view of Cavenagh Street ,in the central business district , includes part of Gordon's Don Hotel - now an ABC studio- and the Tree of Knowledge, a major gathering spot.
Mrs Christina Gordon, was a prominent Darwin identity who owned pubs, Star Pictures and the Rendezvous Cafe. When she ran the Victoria Hotel she was dubbed the aviators ' mother because she looked after the male and female pioneering aviators who lobbed in Darwin. She even urged Herbert to open a chemist shop.
At one stage Xavier and his wife , Sadie, lived in what had had been a former Chinese gambling den. Their residence included a room decorated with spears and other items, knocked to the floor during a party .
GRUESOME SHIPWRECK
Forty drowned trying to reach shore. Survivors were grouped on two small desolate islands.
(Books. Shipwreck. Birds.)