Austhetics

The Canadian Dining Rooms on 4 George Street West (now Broadway), Sydney in the late 19th century

North Sydney residents walk across the newly opened Harbour Bridge. An estimated 250,000-750,000 Sydneysiders walked across the Bridge that day. The tremendous grandeur of the new bridge gave some respite in what was one of the darkest periods in the city's history - the Great Depression.

The Murray winding through the Riverina ♥️🇦🇺

The coat of arms

The legendary Swagman

Sydney scenes during the Great Depression.

Australian Natives' Association WW1 honour roll, exhibited in the army museum in Fremantle.

The iconic Australian postage stamp of 1952-1965 depicted Gwoja Tjungurrayi. He was born around 1895 in the Tanami Desert north-west of Alice Springs and was photographed in 1936. He appeared on his own terms, in contrast to almost all recent official depictions of Aboriginals which pigeon-hole them into the art and music markets defined by white liberals - or else participating in the formalised and bureaucratised institutions of white society (including sports). Most urban whites today have little interest in (and less knowledge of) Aboriginal stockmen or other successful Aboriginal blue collar workers.

'Lang is Right', a Jack Lang supporter pin from the 1930s.

Wattle tree in the Riverina, NSW

Map projections affect the way we see Australia in relation to the rest of the world. They even distort it. Every home should have a globe.

Newcastle 1990s

Tumut NSW 🇦🇺

🇦🇺 Our own for our own 🇦🇺

Wagga Wagga Council Chambers

A lookout in the Victorian High Country

The Murray River, Albury 🇦🇺

Beechworth, Victoria

Car windscreens used to be splattered with insects on country drives up to the 1980s. Locusts, flies, flying beetles, moths. In the 1960s and 70s heart-shaped deflectors were mounted on car bonnets to create a draught that lifted the insects over the windscreen. In some areas mesh insect screens were used to prevent overheating caused by insects clogging the vehicle’s radiator. Since the 1980s the problem has reduced by over 90%. Why? There are far fewer insects now because of the loss of their habitat, the increase in extreme weather, more powerful agricultural insecticides, more artificial light. As we cut down forests, woodlands and grasslands to “release land” for cities, migrants and agriculture, we’re losing the Australian species that depend on that bushland. Australia still has locust plagues, where cars have to slow to a crawl; if they don’t slow, the smudges on the windscreen make driving unsafe. The video shows a plague between Rockhampton and Longreach last year.

King O’Malley was the driving force behind the Commonwealth Bank. When it was established in 1911, it lacked the powers O’Malley wanted: • to provide subsidised credit to support struggling farmers and small businesses, • to use its sovereign financial power as a national bank to fund major public works, defence, and national infrastructure without relying on costly foreign debt • to directly control the issuance of the nation's paper banknotes. Prime minster Andrew Fisher must have been leant on by the bankers as O’Malley’s ambitions were thwarted. The Commonwealth Bank was given responsibility for note issue in 1920 when it became Australia’s “central bank”. The central bank role was passed to the Reserve Bank of Australia in 1959. From 1922 Australian school kids used money boxes modelled on the Bank’s head office and banked regularly at school with a teacher maintaining the passbook.