In researching for my March 2025 article on the New Lambton real estate riot, I came across information that enabled me to identify the location and approximate date of this Ralph Snowball photo . See my page on Horsfield’s Lease for more details.
I was reading a newspaper article today about a public meeting protesting the impending loss of park land at the location of Wallarah and Blackley Ovals in New Lambton. One contributor to the meeting said …
A park of considerable dimensions was required in their midst. There was every probability that the population would increase, which made it all the more necessary that they should have all the parks they could get for recreation purposes.
Interestingly, this statement is not from 2024/2025 when the NSW State Government (in collusion with Newcastle Council) want to hand over much needed sporting fields for the construction of a basketball stadium. No, this is from a public meeting 126 years ago on 15 May 1899. Attendees at the meeting were railing against the state government’s plan to sell into private ownership, at bargain basement prices, large swathes of publicly owned land previously promised for a district park.
Fortunately for us now, the community back then kicked up such a fuss that within a couple of months the government revoked their plans for the sell off. The image below shows an old parish map that has the Homestead Selection Area 585 outlined in red. I have overlaid this into Google Earth then shaded in green the areas that are still green space or used for public recreation today. This amounts to 35 hectares of land that we would not have now if the residents of 1899 had not been vigilant, and actively protested the government’s intentions to flog off public land to the public’s detriment.
The old battle is with us anew.
Historical parish map showing the 1899 Homestead Selection Area 585 outlined in red, with areas still used for public recreation today shaded in green. Parish map from Historical Land Records Viewer.
This month marks 10 years since I started writing monthly local history articles for The Local. I initially submitted a one-off article and was somewhat surprised when Mark Brooker, the publisher, responded asking if I wanted to write a monthly column. At the time I thought I only had material for half dozen articles and so initially only committed to that number. Ten years on I’m up to article 116, and the ideas for articles keep accumulating.
The author in December 2014 (left) and December 2024 (right).
My writing about local history in the Lambton area began in the summer of 2014-2015 with a series of ‘then and now’ photographs published over the course of 16 days. To mark the ten years since the summer of 2024-2025 I have revisited each of the locations and taken another photo in the ‘then and now’ series.
Having written much local history content on this website over the last 10 years, the question of how to preserve this digital content in the long term was increasingly on my mind. However thanks to the recommendation of Ruth Cotton (noted community historian of the Hamilton area), my website has been added to the State Library of NSW Pandora archive of digital content.
Each year the library will store an archive of the local history content of my site (everything under the https://lachlanwetherall.com/then-and-now URL), so that when this site is no longer available, my content will still be accessible via the library archive.
Being added to the Pandora archive was a great honour, and a spur for me to re-organise my site to make sure that all the significant local history content is under the “/then-and-now” URL and can be reached via the That was then, This is now index page.
While preparing a household budget today for the next calendar year, I was somewhat shocked to discover that my Microsoft M365 subscription for next year was jumping from $109 to $159, an increase of nearly 50%. A bit of research showed that the price jump was due to the introduction of AI capabilities (branded as Copilot) in the suite of Office products. I have no use for these AI functions, and was somewhat miffed that I was going to be slugged for features I’m never going to use.
The good news is that it is possible to revert back to an M365 subscription without the AI, and avoid the inflated price. The process to do this is slightly non-obvious. You have to …
Click the “Cancel subscription” link, which will then take you to page where you have the option to …
Choose the “Microsoft 365 Personal Classic” subscription (with no AI)
Just to demonstrate how pathetically useless AI is, I asked Microsoft’s Copilot to “generate an image of an evil corporation sucking money from unsuspecting consumers”, and this is all I got. 🙁
Now is the time to formally submit your opposition to this project going ahead on this site, that will result in the loss of vital green space and existing sporting facilities.
