Capital history in the news
Threatened historical treasures
Historic homestead comes under threat | Canberra Times’ article about firefighting efforts to protect the treasured heritage of the Orroral Valley. This includes the Orroral Homestead, built in the mid-1860’s and the Geodetic Observatory built in 1974 which once provided Australia with its official atomic clock timing.
The treasures in the line of fire | Canberra Times’ article reporting Tim the Yowie Man’s fears that the bushfires will impact on the historic treasures of Namadgi National Park. These include the Yankee Hat rock shelter used by Aboriginal people for an estimated 800 years and the site of the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station from which the Apollo space missions were tracked.
Shine Dome heroes save Australia's historic scientific treasures | Canberra Times’ article about workers staging a dramatic rescue during the recent hailstorm to save historically important science papers from water damage when the Shine Dome’s skylights shattered. The papers including those by Frank Fenner, Douglas Mawson and Hanna Neumann were in the Australian Academy of Science of Library at the time of the downpour. Plans to digitise the collection have become more urgent after the near loss.
Other history news
Canberra visionary Enrico Taglietti posthumously recognized in Australia Day Honours | ArchitectureAU.com article about Enrico Taglietti posthumous Australia Day Honour. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), in recognition of his “distinguished service to architecture, particularly in the Australian Capital Territory, to education, and to professional organizations.”
High Court to determine whether 'Palace letters' written during the Whitlam dismissal should be released | ABC report on the High Court case which will determine if historian and Whitlam biographer, Jenny Hocking can access the "Palace letters" — the correspondence between Sir John Kerr and the Queen during the critical period leading up to Gough Whitlam's dismissal. In 2016 the National Archives told Professor Hocking that the letters were "private", rather than "Commonwealth records", and therefore not covered by the open access arrangements.
Something extra
Did they see it coming? How fortune-telling took hold in Australia - with women as clients and criminals | Article from The Conversation by Alana Piper about the history of fortune telling in Australia. Explains that in the first decades of the 20th century fortune-telling was a popular entertainment for women who also made up the bulk of fortune-tellers. So, when laws were passed around Australia that made fortune-telling illegal women were particularly affected.
Acknowledgement: Papers by Douglas Mawson were some of those rescued from the Australian Academy of Science Library during Canberra’s recent hailstorm. The image above is of Mawson on board the SY Aurora in 1911. It comes from the State Library of Victoria and is out of copyright. See acknowledgement page for full details.
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