Capital history in the news
Parliament House tour guide Gina Hall retires after 25 years of service │Story celebrating Gina Hall’s contribution as a tour guide at Parliament House for the last 25 years. Gina commented that one of her favourite things about the job was convincing the cynics that what happened inside the Parliament was important and worth paying attention to.
Australian history takes to the track │ On Saturday 17 August 2019 the National Museum of Australia will be staging A Chequered Past at Wakefield Park Raceway, Goulburn. Some of the Museum’s most significant vehicles will be making the trip from Canberra to hit the track at Wakefield so these vintage vehicles can be seen in action.
Canberra buildings built back to front: Tim the Yowie Man │ TYM writes about Canberra’s landmark buildings that were built back to front. These include the Brassey Hotel, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) building, and the All Saints Anglican Church at Ainslie.
Hiroshima victims honoured 74 years on │A ceremony was held at the Nara Peace Park to mark 74 years since the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and the bombing of Nagasaki three days afterward.
Former Japanese prisoner of war shares lesson from the Cowra breakout, 75 years on │98-year-old Teruo Murakami who survived the Cowra breakout returned to Cowra for the 75th anniversary of the World War II breakout. He explained that several of his friends died in the outbreak and it left him resolute in his anti-war attitude. The article also covers Alfred James Roll experience as a guard on the night of the escape and the efforts by Cowra's community to repair the town's relationship with Japan over many years.
Cowra war cemetery unearths Japanese stories │ Another article on the 75th anniversary of the Cowra breakout which highlights that the Japanese Cemetery at Cowra holds not only the graves of those who died in the Cowra breakout but all Japanese nationals who died in Australia during World War II. It goes on to explain that the Cowra Japanese War Cemetery Database has been developed to provide information about those buried in the Cemetery and their personal stories can be heard through a newly created audio-visual storytelling app call Cowra voices .
Acknowledgement: Inspired by the National Museum of Australia's A Chequered Past the image above is of an antique car in front of Old Parliament House. It comes from a wonderful collection documenting Australian motoring history, the Harold Paynting Collection, held by the State Library of Victoria. Note these images are in in copyright but can be used provided the creator and the Library are acknowledged. See acknowledgement page for full details.
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