Category Archives: History

Of Tin & Tea & Tidal Rivers

Posted on 15 June 2026 by sheg4184

The penultimate phase: the Lizard Peninsula I have just been looking at a map that divides Cornwall into six areas, like stripy socks, and noticed that the southern end of the county looks something like a crab claw. So, we … Continue reading →

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“A Wimpling Wind”*

Posted on 17 May 2026 by sheg4184

Phase 3 of the Salt Path: Lynmouth to Westward Ho! Wandering through a tranquil wilderness beneath dappled beechwoods, I emerge into green fields beside a still and silent lake, and it is hard to imagine that I am in the … Continue reading →

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Needles & Pins

Posted on 14 October 2025 by sheg4184

Historical novelist Tracey Chevalier is probably best known for her second novel, ‘The Girl with a Pearl Earring’, a fictional account of the Dutch painter, Vermeer, and his model. This, you may remember, was made into a movie in 2003 … Continue reading →

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The Wheels on the Bus

Posted on 5 September 2025 by sheg4184

It has been an extremely long, long-haul flight to London, and I am feeling gritty and grey as we drag our bags off the bus at Paddington. But the sun is shining between showers and sparkling in the puddles, and … Continue reading →

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Lives of ‘Gratified Activity’: A quest to unpack the inspirations & motivations of a family of ‘Awakened’ women in settler-colonial South Australia.

Posted on 1 December 2024 by sheg4184

My title comes from the words of South Australian suffragist Catherine Helen Spence, who once described herself as a new woman, awakened to her sense of responsibility to both family and community, that ‘the world may be glad that she … Continue reading →

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A Walled Garden and a Copper Pig

Posted on 9 June 2024 by sheg4184

I have been waxing lyrical about the National Trust for the past few months, as we made plans to travel through the UK. The National Trust – in case you haven’t heard me mention it before – is a charity … Continue reading →

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Roaming Through Gippsland

Posted on 19 April 2024 by sheg4184

Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray,Roaming the countryside, a truant boy,Nursing thy project in unclouded joy,And every doubt long blown by time away.~ Matthew Arnold, The Gypsy Scholar We’ve snuck away for a week or two … Continue reading →

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The Sound of Music

Posted on 4 June 2023 by sheg4184

Now we are back in South Australia and in the depths of a damp winter, it is hard to believe that only a few weeks ago we were wandering through Rome, immersed in spring. Early in the tourist season, the … Continue reading →

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A Final Glimpse of Tasmania, Past, Present and Bucolic

Posted on 3 March 2023 by sheg4184

‘Scrimshaw.’ My favourite new word for the week. What is scrimshaw? A character from Harry Potter perhaps? No, not quite. That was Rufus Scrimgeour, I believe. Scrimshaw is, in fact, the art of engraving images on objects made from whale … Continue reading →

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‘A Pack of Thieves’

Posted on 13 February 2023 by sheg4184

Port Arthur. Today, it is an hour and a half’s drive from the pretty, waterside city of Hobart. Two hundred years ago, it was a day’s sailing from the decidedly seedy and often violent waterfront of Hobart Town, which had … Continue reading →

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