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Staying home
True south #2
About Face article
Joanna Gilmour brings a mindful Douglas Mawson’s perspective to bear on the concept of isolation.
An affray which deserves particular mention
Ben Hall and his gang outdone, 6 February 1865
About Face article
Bushranger Ben Hall and his cronies held around 40 people hostage in a pub north-west of Goulburn, telling their captives ‘don’t be alarmed; we only came here for a bit of fun’.
Waterloo and Mrs. Moore
About Face article
Beyond the centenary of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli, a number of other notable anniversaries converge this year. Waterloo deserves a little focussed consideration, for in the decades following 1815 numerous Waterloo and Peninsular War veterans came to Australia.
Indexing, the art of
About Face article
The first index I created was for my first book, and, to my astonishment, that was almost twenty-five years ago.
The Rothschilds, the Montefiores, and the Victorian Gold Rush
About Face article
Some years ago my colleague Andrea Wolk Rager and I spent several days in the darkened basement of a Rothschild Bank, inspecting every one of the nearly 700 autochromes created immediately before World War I by the youthful Lionel de Rothschild.
The personal and the historical
About Face article
Where do we draw a line between the personal and the historical? Although she died in Melbourne in 1975, when I was not quite eleven years old, I have the vividest memories of my maternal grandmother Helen Borthwick.
Christmas Island
About Face article
This is my last Trumbology before, in a little more than a week from now, I pass to my successor Karen Quinlan the precious baton of the Directorship of the National Portrait Gallery.