Changing the iCloud account on an iPad Mini

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I just had a slightly confusing experience changing the iCloud account on an iPad mini. I was helping out a family member who had recently changed their Apple ID email address recently, due to a change in ISP/email provider. In the iPad settings the ID showing in the “iTunes and App Store” section was correct, but the ID showing in the iCloud settings was the old ID. This wasn’t a problem until recently when the iPad started prompting for the password for the iCloud account every 30 seconds, rendering the device unusable.

It wasn’t at all clear how to change the iCloud ID. Clicking on the ID at the top of the page only gave the option of entering the password for the old incorrect ID, with no ability to change the ID.

Eventually I discovered that I needed to scroll the page up to reveal the “Sign Out” button at the bottom of the page. After signing out, I was then able to sign-in with the new correct Apple ID. Simple once you know what’s going on.

Lambton Council Chambers

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Thanks to the land titles available in the Historical Land Records Viewer, I have been able to identify all the locations that Lambton Council meetings were held during its existence from 1871 to 1938. I have updated my Lambton Council page with this information, including a map.

Of the six buildings they met in, only the last of them still survives – the Lambton Library building in the corner of the park.

Lambton Library, January 2022.

A long road

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My article for the December 2021 issue of The Local is out now, this month on Marshall St and the inner city bypass. The article is titled “A very long road story” for three reasons.

  1. Marshall St (on early maps at least) is a very long straight road, stretching 5 km from Jesmond to Kotara.
  2. This story took a long time to come to fruition. I’ve had plans to write various versions of this story for over five years, before I completed it this year.
  3. With the construction of the final section of the inner city bypass to commence in 2022, as I researched the history of this project I was quite surprised to find how long ago the bypass was first announced – in 1945! When construction is completed in 2025 it will have been 80 years in progress, making it a very long road story indeed.
A 1936 map showing Boundary Rd (Marshall St) stretching from Jesmond to Garden Suburb.

Worlds apart

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My October 2021 article for The Local is out, this month on William Thomas Dent.

Often my research for these articles leads me in unexpected directions, and this month was no exception taking me to the short lived Hartley Vale colliery of James and Alexander Brown in the Broadmeadow area, and all the way to the other side of the world to the coalfields of Durham where William’s father Mark Dent was a key figure in the great miners’ strikes of 1844 .

One of the things that struck me about the story of the Dent family is how much things can change in the space of one generation. Because of his involvement in the miners strikes, Mark Dent found it hard to get work, was subject to poverty and was “driven from his native land” to seek a living in Australia. William arrived in Australia after his father, lived and worked in a coal mining community, grew wealthy as the head of major financial institution, was an alderman for 17 years, many of them working cooperatively alongside Thomas Croudace the Lambton colliery manager.

The unexpected find from this month’s research is that Dent St North Lambton is probably named in honour of Mark Dent the famed mining unionist who died in Lambton in 1882, rather than William Thomas Dent who was only a relatively junior alderman at the time Dent St was named.