1.
Wellington, New South Wales
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Wellington is a town in inland New South Wales, Australia, located at the junction of the Macquarie and Bell Rivers. It is within the government area of Dubbo Regional Council. The town is 362 kilometres from Sydney on the Great Western Highway, at the 2011 census, Wellington had a population of 4,540. The area was occupied by the Wiradjuri people. Explorer John Oxley was the first European to discover the area in 1817 and named it Wellington Valley after Arthur Wellesley, Wellington was originally established in 1823 by Percy Simpson in early 1823 as an agricultural station. Squatters started settling along the Macquarie Valley and in 1832 CMS was established in the settlement to teach Christianity to the Aboriginal people of the area, the convict settlement ceased in 1831 but a village called Montefiores was established on the north side of the Macquarie River crossing. The Town of Wellington was gazetted in 1846, on 20 March 1885, Wellington was proclaimed a town. Wellington Shire Council was established in 1949, Wellington is the second oldest New South Wales settlement west of the Blue Mountains. The railway from Sydney reached Wellington in 1880, as a regional centre Wellington benefited by the development of the gold mining industry in the district from the 1850s. Initially this was working alluvial deposits of gold but later focused on the mining of quartz reefs, among the mining districts was Mitchells Creek located 8 miles to the north east near the locality of Bodangora. Wellington is the centre of agricultural land. While alfalfa and vegetables are grown on lands on the river, wheat, wool, lambs, in 2011, Wellington had a population of 4,540, while the population of the surrounding shire is 9200. The town acts as a centre for the district. In September 2008, the Wellington Correctional Centre was opened, a Probation and Parole Office was also opened in the centre of town. Wellington Council hopes this will stimulate growth in the area, due to increasing employment opportunities. The local newspaper The Wellington Times, a Rural Press title, is published three times a week with a circulation in the region of around 1000, there is a popular Community Radio Station operating on a frequency of 91.5 MHz FM. Wellington has a subtropical climate with hot summers and cool winters. The town is rather sunny, getting 138.1 clear days annually
2.
Australians
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Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are people associated with Australia, sharing a common history, culture, and language. Present-day Australians are citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia, governed by its nationality law, the majority of Australians descend from the peoples of the British Isles. Many early settlements were penal colonies, and transported convicts made up a significant proportion of the population in most colonies, large-scale immigration did not occur until the 1850s, following a series of gold rushes. Prior to British settlement, Australia was inhabited by indigenous peoples – Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal Tasmanians, and Torres Strait Islanders. A small percentage of present-day Australians descend from these peoples, the development of a separate Australian identity and national character is most often linked with the period surrounding the First World War, which gave rise to the concept of the Anzac spirit. The Eureka Rebellion of 1854 and various events of the Second World War, large-scale immigration occurred after the First and Second World Wars, with many post-World War II migrants coming from Southern and Eastern Europe introducing a variety of elements. Immigration from the Middle East, south and east Asia, Australian culture has diverged significantly since British settlement. Australians are referred to as Aussie and Antipodean, Australians were historically referred to as Colonials, British and British subjects. Australian identity draws on a multicultural, European and British cultural heritage, today, Australians of Anglo and other European descent are the dominant majority in Australia, estimated at 85–92% of the total population. Historically, European immigrants had great influence over Australian history and society, since soon after the beginning of British settlement in 1788, people of European descent have formed the majority of the population in Australia. The majority of Australians are of British – English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, or Manx –, although some observers stress Australias convict history, the vast majority of early settlers came of their own free will. Far more Australians are descended from assisted immigrants than from convicts, about 20% of Australians are descendants of convicts. Most of the first Australian settlers came from London, the Midlands and the North of England, anglo-Celtic Australians have been highly influential in shaping the nations culture. By the mid-1840s, the numbers of settlers had overtaken the convict population. In 1888,60 percent of the Australian population had been born in Australia, out of the remaining 40 percent,34 percent had been born in the British Isles, and 6 percent were of European origin, mainly from Germany and Scandinavia. In the 1840s, Scots-born immigrants constituted 12 percent of the Australian population, there were 1.3 million British migrants to Australia in the period from 1861–1914, of which 13.5 percent were Scots. 5.3 percent of the convicts transported to Eastern Australia between 1789 and 1852 were Scots, by 1850, there were 290,000 Aboriginal Australians. The European population grew from 0.3 percent of the population of the continent at 1800 to 58.6 percent at 1850, germans formed the largest non-British community for most of the 19th century
3.
The Flying Doctors
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The popular series ran for nine seasons and was successfully screened internationally. It was initially a 1985 mini-series based in the outback town of Coopers Crossing. The success of the led to its return the following year as an ongoing series with McFarlane being joined by a new doctor, Chris Randall. McFarlane left during the first season, and actor Robert Grubb arrived as new doctor Geoff Standish, McFarlane later returned to the series, resuming his role The series episodes were mostly self-contained but also featured ongoing storylines, such as Dr. Standishs romance with Sister Kate Wellings. Other major characters included pilot Sam Patterson, mechanic Emma Plimpton, jack Carruthers and Vic and Nancy Buckley, who ran The Majestic, a local pub/hotel. Andrew McFarlane as Tom Callaghan, a doctor who takes over the R. F. D. S base in Coopers Crossing after proving himself to the original boss of the base. He brings along Chris Randall, who is also a doctor, in episode sixteen Tom leaves the base, volunteering for World Vision in Africa. He returns in episode 113, staying until episode 156 although he remained in the credits for the rest of the season. Tom makes a appearance in episode 201 when there is a town celebration in Coopers Crossing. Liz Burch as Chris Randall, a doctor who comes along with Tom Callaghan to run the R. F. D. S base in Cooper Crossing. When Tom leaves for Africa she decides to stay in Coopers Crossing, remaining until episode 146, returns in episode 201 for the town celebration, and falls in love with Tom Callaghan again. She decides to join Tom in Africa, Robert Grubb as Geoff Standish, who makes his first appearance in episode 17 when he takes over the R. F. D. S base from Tom Callaghan. Geoff is one of the characters in the series. His relationship with Nurse Kate Wellings was a key storyline, a young doctor who joins the staff in episode 101 and stays until episode 171 when he decides to leave to do something else with his life. However, after a rescue mission goes terribly wrong, he dies in a climbing accident when he falls down a cliff. Sarah Chadwick as Rosie Rowie Lang and she makes her first appearance in Swinging on the Rope, when she returns to Coopers Crossing after leaving as a teenager to attend Medical School at the University of Sydney. Dr. Lang is the replacement for Dr. Radcliffe, despite her late arrival, Sarah is given a rich character-profile, the series featuring episodes in which both her older brother Frank and her father Alf appear. She attracts romanctic interest from Captain Johnno Johnson and eventually accepts his proposal of marriage, on the day of the wedding she realises she is marrying Johnno to make up for the less than ideal marriage her mother experienced
4.
Love My Way
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Love My Way is a Logie Award winning and critically acclaimed Australian television drama series. It won the AFI award for Best Television Drama Series for each of its three seasons, set in Sydney, Love My Way was about a group of 30-somethings dealing with the ups and downs of life. The series revolves around a family unit - Frankie Paige and Charlie Jackson are the separated parents of Lou. As the series began, Charlies new wife Julia is about to have their first child, frankies mother, Di and Charlies mother Brenda and father Gerry also have a strong presence in the ongoing story, as does Julias ex-lover Howard, who enters into a relationship with Frankie. Produced by John Edwards and Claudia Karvan, Love My Way starred Karvan, Sam Worthington, Dan Wyllie, Asher Keddie, Brendan Cowell, and Alex Cook. As the program was made for television in Australia, it contained stronger material than most Australian programs, regular swearing, drug use. When the series was launched, much was made of the connection between Love My Way and The Secret Life of Us, both sharing a star, as well as significant creative talent. However, the series is not a continuation of Secret Life, the star of the series, Claudia Karvan, is also a co-producer, along with having written for the series. Brendan Cowell, who appears as Tom, also worked as writer for two episodes of Series 1 and three episodes of Series 2. On first airing, the song originally by The Psychedelic Furs. Some scenes were filmed on location at the infamously dangerous Cromwell Park, the series premiered on FOX8 on 22 November 2004 during the late summer months when commercial TV is in a non-ratings period. During the second season it was moved to W. Channel, in 2007, for its third series, it screened on Showtime. 2005 Wins Best Television Drama Series Best Direction in Television Best Television Screenplay Best Actress in Television Best Supporting Actor in Television, at the ASTRA Awards it won awards in 2005 and 2006 for Claudia Karvan, Dan Wyllie and Best Drama Program. Asher Keddie and Daniel Wyllie won acting awards in 2007, in 2008 Claudia Karvan won her third ASTRA for the series. In its four years, the series was nomination for a total of 25 ASTRAs including nominations for stars Alex Cook, Brendan Cowell and Ben Mendelsohn. In Sweden it airs on channel 4 on Thursday evenings and it aired in Ireland on RTÉ Two in the early hours of Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is also screened in Estonia on ETV during Sunday evenings, as well, Super Channel carries Love My Way. In Mexico is screened on Cosmopolitan
5.
Lawson, New South Wales
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Lawson is a town in the Blue Mountains area of New South Wales, Australia. It is located on the Great Western Highway between Hazelbrook in the north east and Bullaburra in the west, at the 2006 census, Lawson had a population of 2,419 people. It has a station on the Main Western line, one of the first settlements on the eastern slopes of the Blue Mountains, Lawson was identified on early maps as 24 Mile Hollow–a name which was changed to Christmas Swamp for a few years. When the Blue Mountain Inn was opened in 1848, the locals adopted the name Blue Mountain for the village and this name was also given to the original railway station after the rail line was pushed through in 1867. In 1931, the Railway Department agreed to supply electricity to the Blue Mountains Shire Council, power lines were constructed between Blackheath and Lawson, accompanied by a maintenance track. The authorities then decided to promote the track as a walking trail, it became known as Bruces Walk. The track later became neglected and forgotten, until it was rediscovered and improved by bushwalkers in the 1980s and it can now be followed from Medlow Bath to the north side of Lawson, although it is not shown on the relevant topographic map. In more recent years, Lawson was at the centre of controversy due to a government proposal to widen the Great Western Highway. Groups opposed to the demolition claimed the hall could be re-sited, others claimed this would be too costly, there was also a group lobbying for the retention of the shops on heritage grounds. By the end of 2008, the Community Centre had been saved, the walks in South Lawson can be accessed from several points along Honour Ave, within easy walk of the train station. This includes four waterfalls, Adelina Falls, Cataract Falls, Federal Falls, while not having the height of upper mountains waterfalls, this waterfalls walk can be completed in 2 hours. On the north side of town beyond the centre, walks take in Fairy Falls, Dantes Glen, St Michaels Falls. The historic Lawson Community Hall built in 1903 has now reopened after a battle to save it from demolition due to road widening. Media related to Lawson, New South Wales at Wikimedia Commons Media related to Blue Mountains, whats on at the Lawson Community Hall - Mechanics Institute Mid Mountains History Save Community Centre Blogspot
6.
Blue Mountains (New South Wales)
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The Blue Mountains is a mountainous region and a mountain range located in New South Wales, Australia. The region borders on Sydneys metropolitan area, its foothills starting about 50 kilometres west of the state capital, the publics understanding of the extent of the Blue Mountains is varied, as it forms only part of an extensive mountainous area associated with the Great Dividing Range. Geologically, it is situated in the parts of the Sydney Basin. For about two thirds of its length it is traversed by the Great Western Highway and the Main Western railway line, several established towns are situated on its heights, including Katoomba, Blackheath, Mount Victoria, and Springwood. The range forms the watershed between Coxs River to the south and the Grose and Wolgan rivers to the north, the range contains the Explorer Range and the Bell Range. The Blue Mountains area includes the government areas of the City of Blue Mountains, the City of Hawkesbury. Following European settlement of the Sydney area, the area was named the Carmarthen, the Carmarthen Hills were in the north of the region and the Lansdowne Hills were in the south. The name Blue Mountains, however, was preferred and is derived from the blue tinge the range takes on when viewed from a distance. Volatile terpenoids emitted in large quantities by the abundant eucalyptus trees in the Blue Mountains may cause Mie scattering, gundungurra Tribal Council Aboriginal Corporation has a registered Native Title Claim since 1995 over their traditional lands, which include the Blue Mountains and surrounding areas. Examples of Aboriginal habitation can be found in many places, in the Red Hands Cave, a rock shelter near Glenbrook, the walls contain hand stencils from adults and children. On the southern side of Queen Elizabeth Drive, at Wentworth Falls, there are also carved images of animal tracks and an occupation cave. The site is known as Kings Tableland Aboriginal Site and dates back 22,000 years, Arthur Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales, first glimpsed the extent of the Blue Mountains from a ridge at the site of todays Oakhill College, Castle Hill. He named them the Carmarthen Hills, some forty to sixty miles distant, and he reckoned that the ground was most suitable for government stock. This is the location where Gidley King in 1799 established a town for political prisoners from Ireland and Scotland. The first documented use of the name Blue Mountains appears in Captain John Hunter’s account of Phillip’s 1789 expedition up the Hawkesbury River and it could be followed upstream to the open plains of the Kanimbla Valley, the type of country that farmers prize. European settlers initially considered that fertile lands lay beyond the mountains, as was China in the belief of many convicts and this idea was, to some extent, convenient for local authorities. An insurmountable barrier would deter convicts from trying to escape in that direction, a former convict, John Wilson, may have been the first European to cross the Blue Mountains. It is also believed that Mathew Everingham,1795, may have also been partly based on letters he wrote at the time which came to light in the late 1980s
7.
Brett Whiteley
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Brett Whiteley AO was an Australian artist. He is represented in the collections of all the large Australian galleries and he held many exhibitions, and lived and painted in Australia as well as Italy, England, Fiji and the United States. Growing up in Longueville, a suburb of Sydney, Whiteley was educated at The Scots School, Bathurst and The Scots College and he started drawing at a very early age. While he was a teenager, he painted on weekends in the Central West of New South Wales, throughout 1956-1959 at the National Art School in East Sydney, Whiteley attended drawing classes. After meeting the director of the Whitechapel Gallery, he was included in the group show Survey of Recent Australian Painting where his Untitled red painting was bought by the Tate Gallery, in 1962, Whiteley married Wendy Julius. Their only child, daughter Arkie Whiteley, was born in London in 1964, while in London, Whiteley painted works in several different series, bathing, the zoo and the Christies. His paintings during these years were influenced by the modernist British art of the sixties - particularly the works of William Scott and it was these abstracted works which led to him being recognised as an artist, just at the time when many other Australian artists were exhibiting in London. He painted Woman in bath as part of a series of works he was doing of bathroom pictures and it has primarily black on one side and an image of his wife Wendy in a bathtub from behind. Another in the series was a more abstracted Woman in the bath II, during these years he worked with the American painter George Sheridan, sharing for some months his studio in the Haute Pyrenees. In 1964, while in London, Whiteley became fascinated by the murderer John Christie and he painted a series of paintings based on these events, including Head of Christie. Whiteleys intention was to portray the violence of the events, during this time, Whiteley painted works based on the animals at the London Zoo, such as Two Indonesian giraffes, which he found sometimes difficult because of how much the animals would move. As he said, To draw animals, one has to work at white heat because they move so much, Whiteley appears as a character in the book Falling Towards England by Clive James under the name Dibbs Buckley. His wife Wendy appears as Delish, in 1967 Whiteley won a Harkness Fellowship Scholarship to study and work in New York. He met other artists and musicians while he lived at the Hotel Chelsea and his first impression of New York was shown in the painting First sensation of New York City, which showed streets with fast moving vehicles, street signs, hot dog vendors, and tall buildings. The Hotel Chelsea displays several of Whiteleys paintings from the time when he lived there including Portrait of New York which hangs behind the reception desk, one way that America influenced him is the scale of his works. Whiteley became active in the peace movements of the 1960s. The work was called The American dream, it was a work that used painting and collage. It took up a deal of his time and effort
8.
Sunday (Australian TV program)
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Sunday was an Australian current affairs, arts and politics program, broadcast nationally on Sunday mornings on the Nine Network Australia. Its final show was aired on Sunday,3 August 2008, Sunday was often referred to as the baby of network boss Kerry Packer, although rival media outlets have characterised it as an expensive indulgence. The first edition of Sunday aired on 15 November 1981, presented by Jim Waley, Sunday differed from Four Corners in several key respects, at the time Sunday premiered, a typical Four Corners episode ran for 40–45 minutes and rarely presented more than one story per week. By contrast Sunday ran for two hours with a wide-ranging magazine-style format, for many years, each show usually concluded with a musical segment, often featuring a visiting overseas performer or group. Waley continued as host until December 2002, when he left the show to take over from the retiring Brian Henderson as Sydney presenter on National Nine News and he was replaced as Sunday host by ex-A Current Affair host and reporter Jana Wendt. Prior to the 2008 return of Sunday, it was announced that the program would return with a new, after the announcement, Martin suddenly quit the Nine Network after 30 years. Martin was not replaced and Fanning remained as the solo host, until 2006, the programme was modelled after another Sunday morning programme with a similar format from the United States – CBS News Sunday Morning. After the initial success of Sunday, an edition was produced from 1986 called Business Sunday, Business Sunday was committed to comprehensive coverage and quality reporting of business, economic and financial issues affecting Australia and the world. However, after 20 years of the program on Australian television, in 2003, Sunday was awarded the Most Outstanding Public Affairs Program on Australian Television Logie Award. For the first year, the program produced encoded videos for the website of selected segments, sister program Business Sunday and Small Business Show followed. On 25 July 2008, Sunday and Nines late news program Nightline were cancelled by the network, the final broadcast was announced on 3 August 2008. The reasons for the axing of Sunday included both poor ratings and budgetary constraints as part of Nines news and current affairs brand, the final episode of Sunday was aired on 3 August 2008 from 7, 30am–9, 30am. It was hosted by Ellen Fanning, peter Thompson also made an appearance, reflecting on past film reviews. A special live crossover between Channel 9 and pay TV news channel Sky News Australia occurred, with an interview with former reporter Helen Dalley, who now works at Sky News. Jim Waley went on to present the last Canberra interview by then current Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, after the final show, former and current Sunday staff gathered for a final farewell function at the Union Hotel in North Sydney. In an interview published the day in the Sydney Morning Herald, Ray Martin criticised Nines decision to shelve the series indefinitely, were not serious about news. If you want your serious stuff go to the ABC, Sunday is part of the Nine brand. So you cant just look at the bottom line, of course you have to make money, but how do you put a price on quality
