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Vol 47 no 1, February 2025
President’s update
By Colin Thomas   |   February 2025   |   Vol 47 no 1

I trust all members had a most enjoyable festive season with family and friends. 2025 is well and truly upon us with significant events planned for the calendar year.It was most pleasing to finish 2024 with 556 members. This is a record for the society and demonstrates the value which members perceive they are ...

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Vol 47 no 1, February 2025
The Thallon Memorial Medal – a gold prize for the children of Queensland railway workers
By Kevin Lambkin   |   February 2025   |   Vol 47 no 1

Over a period of nearly 60 years from 1913 to 1970, about 200 outstanding Queensland school students, sons and daughters of employees of the Queensland Railways, were awarded gold medals valued at £3/10/, or the equivalent in scholastic books, in memory of Railway Commissioner J F Thallon (1847–191...

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Vol 46 no 4, November 2024
Annual Report Financial Statements 2024
By Lynda Summers   |   November 2024   |   Vol 46 no 4





Australiana Society Inc ABN 13 402 033 474. PROFIT & LOSS STATEMENT For the year ended 30 June 2024




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Vol 46 no 4, November 2024
A portrait miniature of Captain William Hill
By Gary L Sturgess   |   November 2024   |   Vol 46 no 4




Artefacts relating to Australia's early colonists, military and convicts are rare. They can even be endangered if their
provenance is lost. Gary Sturgess located this miniature depicting a NSW Corps officer and ensured its survival by
drawing it to the attention of the State Libr...

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Vol 46 no 4, November 2024
John Wilson Carey and his ‘Queensland’ cabinet timbers
By David Bedford   |   November 2024   |   Vol 46 no 4




Scottish-born immigrant cabinetmaker John Wilson Carey (1829–1902) made two exceptional items of Queensland
cabinetwork in the 1870s which still exist today. His skilful use of many different Queensland timber veneers makes them
cabinetmaking tours de force. ...

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Vol 46 no 4, November 2024
South Australian malachite brooches
By Jo Vandepeer   |   November 2024   |   Vol 46 no 4





We can often recognise items as being Australian because of their subject matter (such as kangaroos) or raw materials (such
as red cedar). Even regional variations in subject matter or raw materials across the continent can lead to distinctive products
or artworks t...

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Vol 46 no 4, November 2024
John Wilson Carey, cabinetmaker and saw-miller
By Yvonne Barber   |   November 2024   |   Vol 46 no 4




While David Bedford has analysed two extant examples of veneered Queensland desks made by J W Carey, Yvonne Barber
provides biographical information about this man devoted to the Queensland timber industry, who remarked that ‘taking a
man like him from his business was li...

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Vol 46 no 3, August 2024
President's update
By Colin Thomas   |   August 2024   |   Vol 46 no 3

Vale, Mr Terence Lane OAMIt would be remiss of me not to commence this update without recognising the loss of esteemed member Terence Lane. Most would be aware of Terry’s contribution to the arts, primarily through his involvement as senior curator of decorative arts at the National Gallery of Victoria. Terry...

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Vol 46 no 3, August 2024
Book reviews
By    |   August 2024   |   Vol 46 no 3

Book review byDr David Bedford of David J Mabberley, The Peter Crossing Collection, an illustrated cataloguePeter Crossing AM, Sydney, 2022. $95 plus pack and post; Book Review by Meredith Hinchliffe AM of Christine Erratt Ceremonial maces ofAustr...

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Vol 46 no 2, May 2024
President's update
By Colin Thomas   |   May 2024   |   Vol 46 no 2





The 2024 National tour to Adelaide
and its environs proved, from all
reports, to be another outstanding
success. It is difficult to believe that
this was the first tour to Adelaide in
the Society’s 46-year history. It was
fantastic to provide the opportunity f...

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Vol 46 no 2, May 2024
Australian Toys 1880–1965: The Luke Jones Collection
By    |   May 2024   |   Vol 46 no 2

The David Roche Foundation, Adelaide will show highlights from the Luke Jones toy collection this winter.

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Vol 46 no 2, May 2024
The Australiana Society’s Tour of South Australia, March 2024
By Susan Tanner   |   May 2024   |   Vol 46 no 2

The inaugural Australiana Society Tour of South Australia was held from Thursday 21 March to Monday 26 March 2024 and took in a variety of museums, public and private collections.

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Vol 46 no 2, May 2024
Knud Geelmuyden Bull (1811–1889), Norwegian-born convict artist
By Robert Stevens   |   May 2024   |   Vol 46 no 2

Knud Bull was born in Norway. He trained as an artist and painted in Norway, Dresden, Copenhagen and Stockholm before moving to London in 1845, where he was arrested for counterfeiting and sentenced to 14 years transportation in Australia. Arriving at Norfolk Island, after nine months he was transferred t...

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Vol 46 no 1, Feb 2024
President’s update
By Colin Thomas   |   February 2024   |   Vol 46 no 1

I trust all members had an enjoyable festive season with family and friends, and took the opportunity to relax. During this period of relaxation, you may well have spent some time reading Australiana and the book so generously donated regarding John Mitchell Cantle, Australia’s first native-born orn...

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Vol 46 no 1, Feb 2024
Sydney Technical College and Australian Flora in Art
By Yvonne Barber   |   February 2024   |   Vol 46 no 1

For 65,000 years, Indigenous Australians have incorporated Australian materials into their art, objects, weapons and tools. From the first year of British colonisation, settlers tried to adapt Australian materials and later, Australian motifs, into their art, manufactures and tools. A century later, Frenc...

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Vol 46 no 1, Feb 2024
Members' Awards on Australia Day
By    |   February 2024   |   Vol 46 no 1

Members of the Australiana Society have many distinctions. Our president Colin Thomas has already praised the work of Di Dorothy Erickson AM on receiving her Member of the Order of Australia award, but at least two more Australiana Society members were honoured. Julian Bickersteth AO and Dr Judith McK...

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Vol 45 no 4, Nov 2023
President's update
By Colin Thomas   |   November 2023   |   Vol 45 no 4





Thank you to members who attended
the 2023 AGM in person and via Zoom.
From my perspective it was great to
catch up with members and present the
45th AGM of our wonderful Society. A copy of my President’s Report is
included in this magazine as is the
Financial...

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Vol 45 no 4, Nov 2023
Annual Report of the Australiana Society 2023
By    |   November 2023   |   Vol 45 no 4

... 







The 2023 financial year has proven to be another great year for the Society.
With the disaster that was COVID-

19 behind us, your board got to work at a national and state level to deliver
enhanced opportunities to benefit
me...

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Vol 45 no 4, Nov 2023
The Lahey Project: recording the oeuvre of a prominent Queensland artist
By Glenn Cooke   |   November 2023   |   Vol 45 no 4




Vida Lahey is a well-regarded Queensland artist who exhibited in 33 solo exhibitions beginning in 1902. More recent interest in
women artists rekindled interest in her works. Glenn Cooke reveals a project to document Lahey’s output and seeks the help of
collectors in this...

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Vol 45 no 4, Nov 2023
Henry F Hutton and the Hutton family, Victorian jewellers
By Teaghan Hall   |   November 2023   |   Vol 45 no 4




Jewellers in colonial Australia, often lured by the gold rushes, came from various parts of Britain and Europe, arriving already
having served their apprenticeships. Teaghan Hall tells the story of several members of the Hutton family, who initially came to
the colonial Victorian...

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Vol 45 no 4, Nov 2023
William Milner and his ceramic legacy
By Gregory Hill   |   November 2023   |   Vol 45 no 4




European immigrant William Milner was a little-known entrepreneur who established a porcelain manufacturing business after
arriving in Melbourne in 1911. The porcelain industry was largely driven by a massive need for electrical insulators, and, as
COVID-19 has demons...

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Vol 45 no 3, Aug 2023
Vol 45 no 3, Aug 2023
President’s Update
By Colin Thomas   |   August 2023   |   Vol 45 no 3

As announced in the May issue, the 2024 National Tour will be held in and around Adelaide, South Australia. The organising committee has already secured visits to several private collections belonging to South Australian members and these will be combined with enhanced viewing of some sig...

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Vol 45 no 3, Aug 2023
Wedgwood: Master Potter to the Universe
By Timothy Roberts   |   August 2023   |   Vol 45 no 3

Curator and historian Tim Roberts previews a new exhibition on the English ceramics firm Wedgwood, founded by Josiah Wedgwood in 1759, and linked with the British colonisation of Australia through its design and manufacture of the ‘Sydney Cove Medallions’ in 1789. These were made from Sydney clay sent...

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Vol 45 no 3, Aug 2023
The Squatter’s Delight, or ‘A Man’s Chair’
By Robert Griffin   |   August 2023   |   Vol 45 no 3

Robert Griffin makes the case for the introduction of the squatter’s chair – a robust easy chair with swing-out leg rests – as an idea imported from India in the early 19th century. These chairs found a home on the shady verandahs of homesteads, particularly in Queensland and NSW, where the lan...

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Vol 45 no 3, Aug 2023
Book Review: Ron Radford, John Glover. Patterdale Farm and the Revelation of the Australian Landscape
By Scott Carlin   |   August 2023   |   Vol 45 no 3

Leading colonial artist? Or leading early 19th-century British artist working in the colony of Van Diemen’s Land? Clearly the latter. Ron Radford, John Glover, Patterdale Farm and the Revelation of the Australian Landscape reveals how John Glover (1767–1849), a leading artist...

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Vol 45 no 2, May 2023
President’s Update
By Colin Thomas   |   May 2023   |   Vol 45 no 2

The year is off to a great start. The National Tour conducted in the ACT was fully subscribed with the maximum 40 members and state events have already been held in Tasmania and Victoria. Part of the Victorian event was a curator-led presentation by Emma Busowsky prior to viewing the Bendigo Art Gall...

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Vol 45 no 2, May 2023
National tour to Canberra and Regional NSW
By Peter Crawshaw   |   May 2023   |   Vol 45 no 2

The March 2023 Australiana Society National Tour of Canberra and regions was a great success. Forty people from NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland enjoyed three days visiting diverse collections and houses. Each venue gave us a different perspective and appreciation of Australiana, in d...

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Vol 45 no 2, May 2023
I’ve been Framed
By R A Fredman   |   May 2023   |   Vol 45 no 2

Bob Fredman suggests old picture frames as another area of affordable and rewarding collecting. As well as being potentially useful, these nostalgic items often have an interesting story to tell, as Bob demonstrates with these examples, all found in Queensland.

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Vol 45 no 2, May 2023
The workshop of Sydney silversmith William Kerr
By Yvonne Barber   |   May 2023   |   Vol 45 no 2

A descendant of his sister Rebecca wrote about William Kerr in Australiana over 20 years ago, presenting new material obtained from family sources.1 With the help of other descendants, Yvonne Barber expands on this earlier work, beginning with the apprenticeship of William Kerr. She provides det...

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Vol 45 no 2, May 2023
Australiana: Designing a Nation, Bendigo Art Gallery 18 March to 25 June 2023
By Emma Busowsky   |   May 2023   |   Vol 45 no 2

Bendigo Art Gallery has drawn on its collections, the Australiana Fund, other collections and especially the National Gallery of Victoria to mount a new survey of Australiana from British settlement to today. Obviously it cannot cover every aspect of Australiana, nor every way artists and crafts...

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Vol 45 no 1, Feb 2023
President’s Update
By Colin Thomas   |   February 2023   |   Vol 45 no 1

Your Board trusts that you have enjoyed exploring our new website, taken the opportunity to review it in detail and researched past articles. Members’ feedback has been most encouraging! As with any change, there is always the odd issue; we are doing our best to fix them and will further enhance the site base...

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Vol 44 no 4, Nov 2022
President’s Update
By Colin Thomas   |   November 2022   |   Vol 44 no 4

Thank you to the members who attended the 2022 Annual General Meeting in person or via zoom. Thank you also for the show of support to me as President and to the other Directors who were elected.

I particularly thank Peter Crawshaw for his nomination and subsequent election to the Secretary’s position. Ly...

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Vol 44 no 4, Nov 2022
William Knox D'Arcy: Art Collector and Patron
By Dianne Byrne   |   November 2022   |   Vol 44 no 4

William Knox D’Arcy (1849–1917) is remembered today as an indefatigable adventurer, who through financial daring and
extraordinary good fortune, became the ‘founder’ of the modern oil industry in the Middle East. However, there is another
facet to his life, as the ex-Rockhampton solicitor who became a...

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Vol 44 no 4, Nov 2022
I Opine it’s a ‘Pine’
By R A Fredman   |   November 2022   |   Vol 44 no 4

From the foundation of the colonies, local cabinetmakers experimented with using the wide range of native timbers. Bob Fredman discusses a chest of drawers, most likely made about 1900 in Bundaberg, Queensland and probably by a local cabinet maker of Germanic heritage, who liked to use contrasting timbers with ...

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Vol 44 no 4, Nov 2022
Queensland to a T Collection and Exhibition, State Library of Queensland
By Peter Spearritt   |   November 2022   |   Vol 44 no 4

Prodigious Australiana contributor Glenn R. Cooke is well known through his professional interests in Queensland art, decorative arts and social history. But that does not define Glenn; he loves ballroom dancing and gardens, as well as pursuing a sideline in collecting artefacts relating to his home stat...

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Vol 44 no 3, Aug 2022
President’s Update
By    |   August 2022   |   Vol 44 no 3

It is indeed pleasing to see members honoured for their services to the community. In the 2022 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Mrs Phyllis Murphy of Melbourne and Mr Alan Landis of Sydney were recognised with Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) respectively. Both richly d...

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Vol 44 no 3, Aug 2022
Early school samplers from Van Diemen’s Land
By Nicola Kissane   |   August 2022   |   Vol 44 no 3

As part of their education in useful arts, schoolgirls sewed their own individual samplers, which are also important indicators of progress in educational methods and reach. The format is fairly standard, with the letters of the alphabet in either or both lower and upper case and basic numbers, plus the gi...

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Vol 44 no 3, Aug 2022
Thomas Griffiths' book box construction
By David Bedford   |   August 2022   |   Vol 44 no 3

Thomas Griffiths (1856–1943), a Welsh blacksmith and wheelwright, emigrated to Queensland to start a new life as a ‘skilled migrant’, at first clinging to his old profession in the Ipswich area. When the Queensland railway network was expanding, he saw
a new business opportunity and opened a sawmill at...

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Vol 44 no 3, Aug 2022
Splayds – ‘the runcible spoon that captivated the world’
By Yvonne Barber   |   August 2022   |   Vol 44 no 3

Invented in 1948 and manufactured 'from the early 1950s, Splades or Splayds were a favourite gift for shower teas, weddings and Mothers’ Day in 1960s and 1970s Australia. We were vaguely aware that they might be an Australian innovation, but that wasn’t part of their advertising – they were prom...

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
Australiana Society Sydney Basin Tour, March 2022
By Peter Crawshaw   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

Numbers were limited on the NSW Branch’s recent successful tour of the Sydney Basin, so one of the organisers, Peter Crawshaw, reports on it for members who were not able to take part in person, especially those who live outside Sydney. Colonial furniture collector Bob Fredman was honoured to be asked to give...

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
Madame Henry, Juliette Lebeau-Lopes-Rastoul-Henry
By Yvonne Barber   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

Visions of a Republic. The work of Lucien Henry, the lavishly illustrated 2001 book produced for an exhibition on the designs and art of Lucien Henry (1850–1896), devotes more words to describing a photograph of the couple’s apartment in Darlinghurst (plate 1) than it does to describing his wife Juliette. Y...

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
Indigenous motifs on a silver brooch
By Christine Erratt   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

We often recognise Australiana by the presence of motifs depicting Australia’s unique flora and fauna and, especially in the 19th century, representations of Indigenous figures. Anthropologists studied Indigenous people, while the things they made – much of it, what we would describe today as art – were r...

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
King Albert’s ‘Birthday Book’
By John Wade   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

After Albert I King of the Belgians refused safe passage to Kaiser Wilhelm’s troops to attack France, Germany invaded neutral Belgium on 4 August 1914. Britain, bound by an 1839 treaty to support Belgium’s neutrality, declared war on Germany the same day. Australian Prime Minister Joseph Cook offered his go...

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
A presentation casket with carving by John K. Blogg, 1915
By Sarah Guest   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

The box seen here shows the superb carving of John Kendrick Blogg, a successful and entrepreneurial industrial chemist who was born in 1851 in Canada, settled in the Surrey Hills region of Victoria in 1877 and died in 1936. His day job involved making perfumes and extracting essential oils. Family legend has it...

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
Breaking the mould
By Robert Griffin   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

Wet conditions in humid climates, and especially with the recent floods in eastern Australia, exacerbate the problem of household damp and mould. For collectors, this is likely to affect sensitive items, such as furniture and works of art on paper. So remember to check your collection regularly, and follow some...

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
President’s update
By Colin Thomas   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

What an outstanding event the Sydney Basin Tour proved to be! While I have detailed this verbally and via personal email, it would be completely remiss of me not to publicly thank Robert Hannan, Peter Crawshaw, Andy Simpson and Tim Cha for their outstanding efforts in planning and delivering a wonderful event. ...

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
Photographing your Collection
By John Wade & David Bedford   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

There are sound reasons why you should have good photographs of items in your collection, whether as a record, for research, for publication, for sale and for insurance.

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
Looking for Paintings on Gum Leaves
By    |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

Paintings on gum leaves are a unique Australian tradition, which began in the 1850s or 1860s and still continues today. The earliest practitioner recorded is Arthur William Eustace (1820–1907), who was born in England and arrived in Victoria with his family in 1851. He found work as a shepherd near Chiltern i...

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
Book reviews
By    |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

JOURNAL REVIEW BY DR ROSS JOHNSTON, Queensland History Journal, vol. 24, no. 11, November 2021, (Journal of The Royal Historical Society of Queensland); BOOK REVIEW BY DR LINDA YOUNG, Fringe, Frog & Tassel: The Arts of the Trimmings-Maker in Interior Decoration. By Annabel Westman; BOOK REVIEW BY DR DAVID BEDF...

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The Australiana Society acknowledges Australia’s First Nations Peoples – the First Australians – as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of this land and gives respect to the Elders – past and present – and through them to all Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.