Category: History and Heritage

The people and the places

Sue Eggins receives the Kiama Electorate Woman of the Year award

There are awards that recognise a moment. Then there are awards that recognise a lifetime of turning up.

Sue Eggins has been named Kiama Electorate Woman of the Year for 2026, a well deserved recognition for someone whose dedicated persistence to heritage has shaped this community for decades.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of interviewing Sue for my Stories written so they can be found series, the project where I sit down with women across our district to record their life stories so they are not lost to time.

Sue’s story is highly entertaining.

It begins with insistence on hospital facility sterilisation standards in an ambulance heading toward Camperdown in 1948 when her mother refused a roadside delivery. It moves through science teaching, travelling the world in her twenties, a period Sue cheerfully describes as following a musician boyfriend around the country like “a brazen hussy”, and eventually lands in Kiama where her energy has been poured into protecting the history and heritage of this district.

Along the way she trained as a school counsellor, worked for decades supporting young people through some of the most complicated years of their lives, and became one of the driving forces behind the Kiama Historical Society.

Her younger years also included a stint at boarding school under a strict Catholic regime. Sundays involved Mass, Benediction, Rosary and several other services all in one day. Bread for school lunches arrived once a week and by Friday it was often mouldy. The nuns toasted fresh bread for themselves and tipped the leftovers into a bucket for the chooks, a bucket the permanently hungry girls often raided. Dormitories opened onto verandahs where winter wind snapped the canvas blinds and Sue remembers piling eleven army blankets onto her bed to keep warm.

Boarding school also came with a formidable rule book about modesty. Talcum powder was sprinkled across the bath water so the girls could not see their reflection while bathing. Even school dances were tightly managed. Boys were required to place a handkerchief between their hand and a girl’s back so skin never touched skin.  Sue remembers those years as very character forming. A decade travelling overseas and following a boyfriend and his band around the country looked positively wholesome by comparison.

If you have attended a heritage talk, heard the story of Orry-Kelly, visited the museum, or followed one of the long running campaigns to protect historic buildings such as Barroul House or the Pilot’s Cottage, chances are Sue has been somewhere either guiding a tour or behind the scenes reading the documents, asking the questions and turning up to the meetings.

And when Sue turns up, people listen.

They know she has done her homework. She understands the history, the planning rules, the legislation and the process. By the time she walks into a room she is ready to get the best outcomes for the cause.

Her approach to community life is simple. Know your subject. Make your case carefully. And never walk away simply because it looks too difficult.

Great leaders do their homework. They listen carefully. They build a case that stands up to scrutiny. They keep showing up, even when the process is slow or the outcome uncertain. Over time, people learn that when they speak, it is worth paying attention. Sue Eggins has practised that art for decades.

This award recognises exactly that kind of contribution.

And if you want to hear the full story, from ambulance drama to international travel to heritage picket lines, keep an eye out for the full Sue Eggins life story coming soon in the series.

The Epstein Coalition wants to rule the world

Michael West Media has asked the question out loud we have all be thinking. Are we led by fools and sycophants?
MWM coverage is a welcome antidote to the desperate coverage of this epic balls-up, which is not being covered by the corporate media. Read it here. https://michaelwest.com.au/australia-and-the-epstein…/
The pix is a bit of a TL:DR image BUT do read it – its horrifying and to top it all off the Iranians are calling the US and their supporters the “Epstein Coalition”
The Israeli propaganda narrative that Iranians would sprinkle rose petals at the feet of their invaders has not come to pass. It has already been demolished in fact.

Yet here was Australia, Saturday night, first out of the blocks worldwide to throw its support behind Donald Trump and his preposterous “Operation Epic Fury”, a probable pedophile being blackmailed and led around by the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu like a pony at the fairground show.

The cold facts of this debacle are that regime change does not work, that Iran did not want this war, that Iran appears to be exceptionally well prepared – even winning the war – that the Epstein Coalition, which Australia supports, is daily backing war crimes: blowing up hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure.

Like George O, Grahame Parker nailed it with this song

Milk and men (no women) and the archive we inherit

I am writing the history of the Jamberoo dairy factory.

The minutes are thorough. Motions moved. Votes carried. Chairmen thanked. Directors named.

The record is male because in that era authority was male.

That is the structure the archive preserves.

From the 1940s through to the 1970s the dairy industry ran on family labour. Women rose for early milking. They fed calves. They sterilised equipment. They kept the production books and the household accounts. They stretched the milk cheque across machinery payments and grocery bills. They managed rationing in drought years. They hosted meetings. They sustained community networks. They carried the emotional load when prices dipped or disease struck.

None of of that appears in the official file.

Board minutes record motions. Newspapers quote chairmen. Legislation names directors. The kitchens and calf sheds rarely make print. Even our local retrospectives, rich in civic detail, move through institutions and office holders.  In the Kiama Independent Our History Supplement the pattern is consistent. Public life is recorded through public roles.

The tragedy sits elsewhere. The women who carried half the enterprise are now largely gone, and their voices were rarely recorded in their own words.

Oral history could have balanced the record. Time has narrowed that opportunity. It is archival reality.

When I read through factory reports and industry correspondence, I can trace leadership decisions with precision. I can follow drought policy, milk zones, compensation debates. I can name the men who chaired meetings and negotiated with ministers.

I cannot hear the conversation at the kitchen table when the milk price fell.
I cannot see the private calculations made after a vet bill arrived.
I cannot read the words of a woman who rose at 4 am and went to bed after the books were balanced.

Half the enterprise sits between the lines.

Wanting to change that makes sense. It shifts the lens forward rather than back. It asks who is documenting women’s lived experience now, while those voices are still present. It asks whose work is counted as leadership.

If we are serious about industry history, we record the boardroom and the calf shed. We record the motion and the margin. We record the lived experience

Interviews, recorded conversations, written reflections. These are not embellishments. They are structural repair.

An industry history written only through formal office leaves half the story implied.

I am writing “Milk and men (and no women.)”

The next chapter needs different sources. I hope those voices can be found

A night at the museum when the captain ran a tight ship

 

Dr Tony Gilmour ( Vice President) and Sue Eggins ( President) who led the conversation on the history of the Pilot’s Cottage which houses the Kiama’s Maritime Museum – Composite photo

If you are going to host a Night at the Museum, it helps when your historian arrives dressed to command the harbour.

Dr Tony Gilmour stepped forward in full captain’s cap, gold braid catching the light, shirt crisp, microphone steady in hand. He arrives on time, every time. History may roam across centuries. Tony keeps the schedule.

As Vice President of the Kiama and District Historical Society, he knows his brief. And he knows his audience.

We began outside at the Pilot’s Cottage. Basalt. Blue metal. The same stone that built fortunes and fuelled arguments. The same stone hauled down Terralong Street on a tramway that managed to become famous for all the wrong reasons.

Tony retold the story with relish.

During the 1880s Kiama Council built its own tramway to move blue metal from the quarries to the harbour. A bold civic enterprise. Public ownership. Local pride. A locomotive ordered from England. Vacuum brakes admired. Aldermen impressed.

There was one small problem.

The gauge.

The line proved too narrow for sensible interchange and too awkward for the engine that was meant to run on it. The blue metal still travelled. The logic did not. Within a few years, the rails came up and the engine found another home. It also sent the council into debt.

Ambition in iron and basalt. Standing beside the Pilot’s Cottage, Tony pointed out that this sturdy building rose from that same volcanic rock. Basalt blocks that once left Kiama by ship now hold firm against the sea air.

The local press, in its day, had strong opinions. The Kiama Independent described the cottage as “a building which has otherwise no architectural pretension,” condemning its exposed black rubble as “a flagrant violation of all the principles of good design.” Rendering would have made it respectable. Raw basalt did not meet the aesthetic brief of the 1880s.

Even architectural taste carries a timestamp.

Tony then turned our attention to the Robertson Basin.

Opened in 1876, the Basin changed everything. Before it, vessels moored to a heavy chain stretched across the harbour. After it, proper ships could berth, load blue metal efficiently, and leave with dignity intact. The harbour shifted from hopeful to operational.

From the verandah of the Pilot’s Cottage, the pilot managed that transformation. He recorded arrivals, issued weather reports, raised signals, coordinated rescues and kept order in a working port that was loud, dusty and lucrative. This small basalt building once oversaw a busy stretch of coastline and the industry that shaped Kiama’s identity. It was operational authority, grounded in experience.

The story stretches into living memory. The last pilot lived in the cottage until the early 1980s. This was a functioning government residence on Crown land. When the pilot and his family moved out, the future of the building entered a new chapter.

One proposal from the state government involved demolition, another converting the building into a fast food outlet. Harbour views. Prime land. Commercial logic.

The community formed a different view. Through careful advocacy, persistence and steady engagement with council and government, local voices made their case. The cottage became a museum rather than a takeaway counter.

That history remains important today. The Kiama Historical Society currently operates under a one-year licence. Council has offered no long-term guarantee that the cottage will remain a maritime museum. For a building of state and national significance, that uncertainty is of grave concern.

The Society understands long campaigns. It holds one of the largest membership of any historical society in New South Wales. It has defended heritage before. It knows how to assemble evidence, cultivate allies and return to the table until the outcome reflects community best interest.

Kiama Historical Society President Sue Eggins

From there, we moved inside where Sue Eggins, President of the Historical Society, kept the room thoroughly entertained. Sue draws out character and colour with ease. Where Tony charts the terrain, Sue brings the people into the room.

Between them, the evening flowed. We heard of councils arguing over sewerage with missionary zeal. Of hospital roofs surrendering to coastal storms. Of electricity arriving with ceremony and consequence. Of ratepayers scrutinising every loan and levy with familiar intensity.

And then there were the hosts. The Kiama Historical Society did itself proud. Wine flowed. Nibbles circulated with impressive efficiency. Conversation hummed. This is a society that preserves archives by day and knows how to throw a party by night.

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By the end of the evening, the museum felt less like a building and more like a conversation across time.

History stood before us in a captain’s hat, precisely on schedule, anchored in basalt, overlooking the Robertson Basin, and entirely alive.

And inside, under Sue’s watchful guidance, it continued to sparkle.

Exciting News

Given the popularity of the sold-out ‘night at the museum’ last week the Kiama History Society is rolling it out again on 31 March 2026. This event will be open to everyone. Book your ticket here 

 

 

 

The Kath and Kim meme that turned into a sharp little lesson in public disagreements.

Image Source Facebook

I shared this Kath & Kim meme on Facebook as a reminder. It turned into a sharp little lesson in public disagreements.

It’s doing what satire does best. Pointing at a pattern and trusting people to recognise it. Old ideas come back. The language changes. The instincts don’t.

One response I received took it as a literal claim, as if I were saying these moments in history are the same thing. That reaction lingered longer than the disagreement itself.

Public disagreements often split at a deeper point than the issue being argued.

It made me think about how differently people respond when something presses on identity.

Some people can sit with that pressure. They adjust their view. They accept that history leaves fingerprints on the present. Connections don’t feel dangerous to them.

Others move quickly to shut it down. The first move is separation. These things have nothing to do with each other. End of discussion.

That explanation doesn’t fit what I’m seeing. What feels more relevant is how comfortable people are with revising a view.

Ideas don’t disappear. They travel through history, change names, and slowly get normalised.

If you’re able to admit error, patterns become visible. You expect ideas to repeat, to reappear with better branding, to sound more reasonable the second time around.

People who can revise a view tend to treat history as something you learn from.

If that admission feels too costly, history stays boxed up. Each event stands alone. Calling things “unrelated” keeps the present uncomplicated.

What this exchange clarified for me was that we weren’t arguing about the meme. We were talking past each other. One response was about continuity. The other was about containment.

The difference shows up clearly in conversations like this.

That realisation took the edge off.

It reminded me that people arrive at conversations with different limits, different stakes, and different reasons for holding the line where they do.

How do societies notice patterns early if they refuse to look at where ideas come from?

Often the most telling part is not what someone objects to, but what they refuse to connect.

Jamberoo history humour and the joy of taking ourselves seriously

Jamberoo has a lot to be proud of and it certainly never lacked confidence.

According to the local correspondent for the Kiama Independent in the late 1800’s what it sometimes lacked was musical ability, favourable weather patterns, and a shared view on how to handle young men with too much energy and not enough supervision. The local newspaper shared his views with a straight face.

In 1887, the colony entertained the idea of calling itself “Australia”. Jamberoo mulled over the proposal and showed little enthusiasm.

The local correspondent described the idea as one of those foolish notions the colonial government picked up from time to time. The idea raised eyebrows, conversations carried on at the pub, in the butcher and baker’s shops, and through sewing groups, while the paper moved on. Readers kept pace or fell behind.

In 1890, Jamberoo floated the idea of forming a local band. The correspondent attended the meeting, listened carefully, then reached for the claws. He reported that a gathering of half a dozen Jamberoo cats produced sounds more pleasing than those scraped from the dead fellow creatures used to make catgut strings.

Visitors received a public service announcement. Arrive during band practice and you would understand immediately what the fuss involved. Action taken, reputation adjusted.

The same year delivered frogs. Not a few, not a rumour, but thousands. Captain Garde of the steamer Illawarra stood on deck at Shoalhaven Wharf when objects struck him like hailstones.

Daylight revealed frogs across deck, wharf and water. They fell for ten minutes, arrived in good health, then carried on hopping towards Wollongong as if aerial travel formed part of normal routine. The paper reported it as routine which made it funnier than any embellishment would have.

Then came the larrikins. Jamberoo sat inside a wider Kiama problem that escalated from nuisance to civic emergency. Bridges suffered damage. The town pump broke twice. Horses bolted after deliberate scares. Church windows shattered.

One New Year’s Eve saw 40 to 50 men and boys roaming, singing, hooting and pelting buildings. The court imposed the maximum fine. The community debated stronger measures and ordered a cat o’ nine tails by steamer. The cat arrived.

Threats followed. Actual flogging rarely did. The town demonstrated enthusiasm for symbolism and restraint in execution.

Ambition ran alongside all of this. Jamberoo carried pride in hills, cows and distance from coastal bustle. The paper described it as picturesque and impractical in the same breath. Big ideas surfaced anyway. The district dreamed, announced schemes with confidence, then watched resources thin out. Earnest campaigns appeared, gathered momentum, then quietly dissolved. The effect stayed visible. Later jokes carried extra weight because the groundwork was already in print.

When the nation’s capital was being decided, Jamberoo put itself forward as the Bush Capital. Supporters pointed to green hills, dairy country, space, calm, and distance from Sydney politics. The argument reflected how Jamberoo saw itself. Sydney politicians continued their search elsewhere. The paper recorded Jamberoo’s confidence and the broader response in close succession, then turned the page.

Smaller moments filled the margins. Visitors received warnings about local music. Outsiders earned suspicion, hospitality, then criticism in columns. Public enthusiasm surged, committees formed, and minutes followed. Jamberoo showed itself lively, observant, and fond of commentary on its own behaviour and not happy with Kiama Council governance.

Jamberoo took itself seriously. Very seriously. Reading the paper now, you’re reminded how fortunate it was that these debates stayed on the page and in the pub, rather than being amplified in real time. A band meeting, a capital bid, frogs from the sky, all of it received careful attention and confident opinion. Social media would have been carnage. Half the district would still be making its case.

BTW Did you know this? I didn’t.

Before Federation we were know as The Australian Colonies and legally and politically, it was six British colonies, not a country. On 1 January 1901, the colonies federated to form The Commonwealth of Australia

Why are people listening differently when local history is told through lived experience?

My experience has shown me that telling local history through lived experience draws a response rooted in recognition rather than nostalgia.

People are asking how using history to share lived experience changes the way decisions, relationships, and reputation are understood in the places they know well. From there, the questions deepen.

I am being invited to speak to community groups about history, and the invitations keep coming. Each one begins in a similar way. People say they know the dates. They know the names. They know the family trees. What they want to hear is what life felt like. Over time, a pattern has emerged.

The curiosity has grown alongside a book I am writing. It is historical fiction set in my village of Jamberoo around Federation. An elderly widower marries a much younger woman when circumstance leaves them both with few options. The marriage unsettles the family. Relationships strain. Friendships shift. The town steps in and fills the silences.

At its heart, the book is about the courage it takes for a woman to live outside the version of her that a community has already decided on, before they’ve even met her.

That story catches attention because it sounds familiar. Every community recognises how quickly private lives become everyone’s business . Reputation circulates. Memory lasts.

When I talk about the book, I also talk about the research behind it. Family histories tend to preserve facts with care. They record births, deaths, marriages, places, and dates. The outline survives. What slips away is the experience of living inside those moments.

You know what happened. You rarely know what it demanded of the people involved.

That is where people lean forward. They recognise the pressures of the time, the work that filled the days, the skills people relied on, the compromises they made, the losses they experienced, the way change landed differently across households. Place returns to the centre of the story.

At that point, I see it each time I ask a simple question. Who here keeps stories? Hands rise. Photo albums. Letters tied with ribbon. Boxes in cupboards. A drawer nobody else opens. People understand the responsibility straight away.

One story I often share involves a suitcase. A man kept his family’s letters and photographs inside it. When he died, the suitcase passed to his son. The son treated it as something to look after. Inside were photographs of my own family I had never seen. My history survived through someone else’s care.

Experiences like this are common. They rarely get spoken about.

Today, that care can extend beyond cupboards and drawers. Digital spaces allow stories to travel. Ordinary lives become searchable and discoverable. A single record can reach families, researchers, and future generations who have yet to realise what they are looking for.

Each invitation I receive leads to a different conversation.

People want to hear about their own backyards. Their streets. Their arguments. Their decisions. Their innovations. They want to recognise themselves in the record.

What I bring to these conversations is a way of looking at history through lived experience. History shaped by choice, effort, and consequence. The facts still matter. Meaning travels alongside them when someone takes the time to carry it forward.

Who will be laughing at us in a hundred years

Old newspapers are a gift. They show us a community concentrating very hard on the business of being right about the small things.

In Jamberoo in the late 1800s, people worried about the name of the colony. Australia felt flimsy. Too casual. Too much like a place where people might relax. A proper society, it was argued, required a name with authority and a whiff of empire. Something that would sit comfortably on official letterhead.

The name survived. It now appears on passports, Olympic medals, and road signs without incident.

Beach behaviour also drew close attention. Men bathing in underwear sparked outrage. Editorials were written. Public standards were defended. The issue hinged on fabric, fit, and the preservation of decency. The town believed civilisation rested on correct swimwear.

Electricity prompted years of debate. Poles were discussed. Tariffs were dissected. Who should pay occupied many meetings. When power arrived, streets were lit and grievances brightened along with them.

Women voting caused genuine concern. Serious men warned it would alter women’s nature, upset social balance, and weaken chivalry. These arguments were delivered with confidence and a straight face.

Marriage advice was also a public service.

In 1886, the Kiama Independent offered bachelors a guide to finding a wife. It advised men to observe women closely in the morning. To check her hair. Her dress. Her energy levels. To assess whether she complained of cold, executed unreasonable projects, or wrote too many letters. A man was cautioned against leading a woman to the altar if she showed signs of extravagance or ambition. A good wife, readers were assured, would not be a boaster and a slattern. This bible of rules was apparently the gold standard.

This guidance was published earnestly. Presumably clipped. Possibly discussed over tea.

At the time, all of this mattered. These were serious conversations held by serious people trying to protect their world from decline, disorder, and women who might write letters.

Seen from here, the intensity is impressive.

Which brings us to the present.

We have our own certainties. Our own moral alarms. Our own debates conducted with absolute conviction. We argue about productivity, visibility, optimisation, self branding, and being constantly available. We hold strong views about how people should live, work, partner, parent, age, and perform success.

Future readers will find these pages too.

They will smile at the confidence. They will marvel at the energy. They will wonder how so much attention landed in such particular places.

History tends to be generous. It shows how people worked with the ideas they had.

The more useful question is which of today’s decisions will still make sense once everyone involved is dead and no one is defending them.

Those choices are rarely the ones anyone is busy congratulating themselves for.

They do not come with rules.

And they show zero interest in what a woman looks like before breakfast.

 

How a small town editor changed the landscape by channelling Hawke, Mandela and Attenborough

Wouldn’t life be easier if we knew when to calm the room like David Attenborough, when to hold the line like Nelson Mandela, and when to roll up our sleeves and push like Bob Hawke?

Joseph Weston understood timing.

He was the editor of the Kiama Independent in the late nineteenth century, a farmer in an earlier life, and a fierce advocate for systems that moved farmers from price takers to price makers.

He had range.
Emotional range.
Strategic range.
Editorial range.

I’ve spent a long time watching how change actually happens. It often slips in while everyone is busy arguing about something else. Weston seemed to understand that instinctively.

Start with women.

As editor of the Kiama Independent, Weston strategically expands who appears in the public record. Women begin to show up with careers. Paid work outside the home becomes part of everyday reporting. Secretaries. Clerical and office roles. Assistants in business and administration.

His commentary ensures these roles sit comfortably on the page.

Education is assumed. Literacy is assumed. Organisational skill comes with the territory. Women appear as capable participants in the life of the town.

Alongside this, the paper notes the first woman to graduate university with an Arts degree. She takes her place among the day’s business and the paper moves on. Education, work, and opportunity sit naturally within community life.

This is Weston in Attenborough mode.

He trusts readers to notice. He lets repetition do the work. Over time, expectations widen because what people see keeps widening.

Then he switches gear.

When the dairy industry is at stake, Weston becomes very Hawke. Energy up. Purpose clear.

He writes under the pseudonym The Dairyman. Farmers start asking each other who The Dairyman might be. They argue about the ideas and speculate about the author at the same time. The conversation spreads. Momentum gains traction.

Cooperative dairying becomes something people are talking about in sheds, kitchens, and at the factory gate.

This is Weston mobilising attention.

Running through both approaches is a third instinct, the Mandela one. A sense of timing. Knowing when to slow things down and when to apply pressure. Knowing that influence works differently depending on the moment.

With women’s roles, Weston widens the frame until it feels familiar.
With cooperative dairying, he sharpens the focus until it demands action.

Same person. Different tools. Wisdom we all can aspire too.

Joseph Weston understood how communities change. He worked with that reality. Low-key when low-key works. Direct when direction builds momentum.

For me

Joseph Weston is a role model who shows us how to rearrange the furniture, and when to do it.

FYI

Source 

If Google cannot find you, did you even happen? Putting Jamberoo firmly on the digital map

Source Facebook 

Marketing guru Gaye Steel is a friend and mentor. In passing, she said something that made me smile and then made me act. If you are not on Google, you do not exist.

She was talking about what lasts.

A digital footprint carries a story beyond the last person who remembers it. Beyond the neighbour who knows. Beyond the family who tells it at the table.

Gaye is someone worth listening to because she has spent decades making big organisations move, not talking about it. She understands what cuts through because she has been responsible for ideas that had to work in the real world, at scale, with no room for excuses.

At McDonald’s, Gaye was at the centre of market defining innovation. She led the launch of products that reshaped the brand’s Australian offer, including Flake n Cone, McFlurry, McOz, and the first Family Meal Deal. These initiatives strengthened McDonald’s market leadership and showed her ability to translate consumer insight into large scale commercial success.

Gaye Steel taught me that good advice is meant to be used. So I used it, nudging a few Jamberoo legends onto the internet and leaving enough breadcrumbs that when someone types a name into a search bar, something comes back.

Think of it as historical housekeeping, with a keyboard. A way of making sure the people who shaped this place do not quietly slip out of view.

Geoff Boxsell and Kevin Richardson are a perfect example. Between them, they created the formula for spreadable butter, something that changed how Australians eat at breakfast. For years they were far too quiet about it. Hardly anyone in Jamberoo knew the full story.

Geoff Boxsell gets his first Instagram moment at 86 and somehow makes it look effortless. Read the story in Region Illawarra here 

Now the world does.

There are Google pages. Radio interviews. TV interviews  Podcast stories. A national audience hearing how two local blokes solved a practical problem and changed a national habit. The story has moved from sheds and factory floors into the places people actually look.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

This work also connects back to why I started digging so deeply in the first place. When I spoke with Dr Tony Gilmour, who has been documenting local history for years, I told him I wanted to ground my book in what Jamberoo was like in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He warned me there was not a great deal of Jamberoo history written down.

If the record is thin, what we add now carries weight. Digital footprints are not about promotion. They are about continuity. They give future storytellers somewhere solid to start.

Jamberoo’s residents are proud of our village. Always have been. What has changed is that we are now firmly on the digital map as well. Our stories are there, searchable, linked, and ready to be found.

And that feels like a good thing to leave behind.