Monday May 7, 2012
Home gardeners' history on view
During the Second World War the NSW government asked residents throughout the state to consider growing their own vegetables. Mosman Council supported this notion and sponsored a working group under the direction of its own head gardener to teach locals how to grow vegetables in their gardens.
Calling themselves The Mosman Agricultural Society, this group established the Mosman Home Gardeners’ Association after the war and went through several names changes over the decades finally becoming The Mosman Home Gardeners’ Society Inc.
The Society fosters an interest in gardens, with regular outings and meetings where members share their knowledge and until recently the Society’s Annual Spring Show was a popular event on the local social calendar.
Recognising its historical significance the Society has recently donated its archives to the Mosman Local Studies Collection. These archives include minute books, the Society’s newsletter, posters, photographs, show ribbons and medals.
Currently on view in the Library’s Mosman Room is a selection of beautifully designed medals presented to the Society and its members over the years.
Tuesday March 27, 2012
Upcoming Centenary of the Mosman-Neutral Bay Rifle Club
Club Members between the Wars some still wearing vestiges of their WW1 uniforms
On March 27th 1915, the Inaugural General Meeting of the Mosman-Neutral Bay Rifle Club was held and the “Rifle and Training Corps” called for by the citizens of Mosman and Neutral Bay was born.
In the fervour of the early days of WW1, over 700 Mosman and Neutral Bay men joined the Rifle Club, and from those members who received their initial military training with the Club, more than 240 enlisted in the armed forces with 16 of those losing their lives in the conflict.
In the years following the war, the Club was able to continue with many members who had found comradeship within the Club and through their training finding that target shooting was a highly competitive sport they enjoyed. In a few short years the Club’s successes began to mount and today the Mosman-Neutral Bay Rifle Club enjoys a formidable reputation throughout Australia and the Commonwealth with many members having represented both their State and Australia in Competition.
In March of 2015, the Club will celebrate its 100th Anniversary.
The Club are calling on past members and descendants of members who would be interested in joining in celebration, to forward their contact details for a mailing list from which they can keep people advised of 100th Anniversary events.
Leaflet: Upcoming Centenary Of Mosman-Neutral Bay Rifle Club (PDF)
If you were a member in the past or know someone in your family or a friend who was a member please contact Gary Somerville by email or phone 0419 142 653.
Visit the Mosman-Neutral Bay Rifle Club webpage at mosmanneutralbayrifleclub.com
Mosman Library holds a number of the Club’s documents including a written history of the Club that may be viewed in the Local Studies Area.
Monday March 26, 2012
Mosman Faces is back...
You may remember in May last year our newest website in Local Studies – Mosman Faces – was launched.
In the first series of Mosman Faces ten people told their stories, stories that have shaped the Mosman community.
These stories were presented as filmed interviews on the web and complemented by images from the Local Studies collection.
We aim to build on these interviews and images, not only through your responses, but also through further interviews and this is what we did last Tuesday.
Once again we used the film making skills of Damon from Filmview, Donna Braye, the Local Studies Librarian for images and prompting and me to ask the curly questions to Kenneth Dryland and Diane Wachman.
For those of you who don’t know these names, Kenneth Dryland, besides being the late Dame Joan Sutherland’s hairdresser for over 50 years and Mosman’s 1982 Citizen of the Year, was the director of the inaugural Festival of Mosman in 1981 and continued to direct this major event until 1997.
Diane Wachman, born and bred in Mosman, was also an active and integral member of the Festival of Mosman committee until 1997 and then her skills were snapped up by the newly formed Mosman Art Gallery.
Kenneth Dryland believes Mosman was the first municipality in a major Australian city to hold such an event, it brought the Mosman community together and put Mosman on the map for arts and entertainment.
Kenneth and Diane relived the activities both before and during the seven festivals they worked on together, the Grand Parade, the Opera Concerts, the Twilight Venetian festival and more…
Stay tuned for these lively additions to Mosman Faces but we need YOUR help too.
To add to the entertainment of the ‘Faces’ we need your home movies from this festival era of 1981-1996 and the footage can be in any format, DVD, VHS, USB and film reel.
If you can help please contact Mary Lou Byrne on 9978 4097 or m.byrne@mosman.nsw.gov.au
Photos
Tuesday March 6, 2012
Two exciting local history donations
Many important materials held in the Local Studies collection have been donated. The first major donation of photographs and maps, collected by Dalton Jack Carroll, were given to the Library in the 1950s.
Since then we continue to receive photographs, ephemera, personal papers, plans, community archives and so much more. However, two recent donations have caused some excitement.
Mosman had a number of stone quarries from the mid-19th century including those belonging to Richard Hayes Hartnett at Mosman Bay, Ed Ritchie’s on Wyong Road, A J. McDougall’s Clifton Gardens Quarry and others on Avenue Road and at The Spit. A local kindly donated some quarryman’s tools she had purchased at garage sale in the 1970s. They came from descendants of the workman, who owned these tools, and who had worked as a stonemason at Hartnett’s Quarries. These are on view in the library.
Mosman Library holds an extensive, but incomplete, set of the Mosman Daily dating from 1917. The library recently received a donation of a bound volume of The (Mosman) Daily from January to June 1923. This volume has now been microfilmed as a means of preserving the original paper and allowing people to read the microfilmed copy.
Wednesday January 25, 2012
A Tribute to Mr Mosman
Dom Lopez OAM sadly passed away last night.
Born in 1939 to Italian immigrants and Mosman fruit shop owners Antonio and Terzita Lopez, Dominic Lopez’s passion for Mosman started early in this family business. Dom Lopez was educated at Mosman by the nuns at Sacred heart School and later the Marist Brothers. He married Zena, whose father ran the Montana milk bar at Mosman and brought up four children in Mosman.
The fruit shop was ‘home’ for Dom and the good will of the Mosman people encouraged him to give back a little to Mosman and so he ran for Council and was elected in December 1968.
Apart from a short break in the early 1970s, he continued to serve the Mosman people, including five terms as Mayor, with a passion and a pride for Mosman, his ‘Pearl of the Pacific’, that knew no bounds. R.I.P.
Friday November 11, 2011
Major P.S. Woodforde, 1st Battalion A.I.F.
Today – 11 November 2011 – is Remembrance Day. Mary-Lou Byrne chose one Anzac to remember on our Flickr photo stream.
Thursday June 2, 2011
Unleashed - Waratahs and Kookaburras in the Library
I relish the challenge of Local Studies, I love Australian decorative arts and I am passionate about the need to promote both these areas.
Exhibitions are an essential part of the Mosman Library Local Studies Service having the potential to attract an audience – old and new and impart and gather information. Each year I curate four small exhibitions, one for History Week and a major one for the annual National Trust Heritage Festival which has an official opening with invited guests, wine and food.
Thursday May 26, 2011
Oh what a night...
Well the night had finally arrived, the launch of Mosman Faces, the website goes live www.MosmanFaces.net and we can all collapse in a heap – but not for long as after all we are out there spreading the message that Mosman’s story is alive and we need you to help us tell it – and tell us they did!
Late afternoon and Bernard had the website all set up, the videos were being slowly uploaded, put my glad rags on and speech rehearsed… 5:40 time was ticking on and no alcohol. A phone call confirmed the worst, they’d got the day wrong aaahhh but said they could get the drink, ice and glasses there by 6:30 and indeed they did even if it was the neighbouring pizza delivery boy who obliged rather than the cellar man!
Abundance of food, a lot of people, a bit of music but no filmmaker! Again time was ticking by and by – the big screen was set up and so was the website, it looked great but there were no moving pictures on the big screen so it was time for a bit of old fashioned entertainment…
We had the music, we had the food and we had the wine now we needed some words … I started the ball rolling with a thank you to all and this was followed by the Mayor Anne Connon who spoke about the Mosman Faces project and launched the website …
This could have been it, as we had no trailer as we had no filmmaker, but I said to the Mayor, ‘maybe we should get people to share their stories?’ She said ‘yes, yes!’ and so it was on!
We opened up the floor to stories of Mosman, one story led to another, slow to start at first but one person’s memories would trigger another – all united in their love for living in, working in and growing up in Mosman.
Pitt’s Cake Shop, the Island, Bakewell’s Folly, jitterbugging at The Barn, Middle Head, selling ice creams at Balmoral…
A little theatre and of course a little poetry from Paul Delprat as he encouraged the crowd to go home and scribble down those words those memories…
And words of wisdom from Barry O’Keefe who reminded us that history isn’t just the past, history is today, it is now.
A lively night – these people didn’t need entertainment they provided their own and no doubt we will be hearing from them soon to add another chapter to their story, Mosman’s story.
Tuesday March 1, 2011
That magnificent stretch of natural bush lying between Whiting Beach and Athol Gardens
Lynn Walsh posted this newspaper report on Taronga Zoo moving to Mosman.
In making available digitised records of Australian newspapers (from 1803-1954), the National Library of Australia (NLA) has created a most valuable resource for researchers, historians, genealogists and others simply interested in understanding the history of Australia as it was reported.
By selecting articles and illustrations from its current and growing collection, I want to entice others to go trawling for themselves…
There are lots more fascinating stories going up at her blog.
Visit Now and then: Snippets of Australian social history from newspapers and other sources
Thursday October 7, 2010
Beautiful Balmoral, on a plate
This little Vande plate with its beautiful depiction of Balmoral is one of the gems that we saw as a result of the Australian Accent exhibition. Unsure of its origins, the owner brought it into the Library for identification and we were able to say it was a Vande piece and had been decorated by the elusive AMP. It is 14 cm in diameter.
If you haven’t seen Australian Accent: the Designs of Annan Fabrics and Vande Pottery of the ’40s and ’50s – or wish to revisit it – make sure to visit the Mosman Art Gallery this week. The exhibition closes Sunday.
UPDATE: 10 DECEMBER 2010
Thanks to kooriflag on Flickr who left a comment with more information:
This plate although beautiful is not by Vande Pottery. It is a later work by AMP and was made after Vande Pottery closed. I have a few examples of her later works.
I suspected AMP went out on her own as I have found similar pieces which were definitely not Vande. This also explains why the plate shape is that of another commercial studio – Studio Anna.
