Brisbane City Architect Frank Gibson Costello designed the City Council’s air-raid shelters to provide a post-war utility as well as short-term safety. After the bombing of Darwin on 19 February 1942 and the presence of Japanese submarines off the Queensland coast, Brisbane prepared for the possibility of attack, building more than 200 air-raid shelters throughout […]
At the end of World War II, repatriating and demobilising the Australian military was a huge and challenging logistical task. There was a large variety of military equipment needing to be shifted, including 530 army pigeons that needed to be returned from Canungra, Queensland, to their original civilian owners in New South Wales, Victoria or […]
You may have seen in the news recently that Sweden – one of those countries that recycles almost all of their household waste and even imports waste from other countries to recycle – has opened a shopping centre that only sells recycled, upcycled and repurposed goods! This news story got me thinking about the methods […]
This article, by Dr Julie Ustinoff, was originally published on the Queensland State Archives website, April 2009. At approximately 4 a.m. on the morning of Friday 14th May 1943, the Australian Hospital Ship, Centaur was attacked by a Japanese submarine, killing 268 of the 332 people on board. In addition to the ship’s crew of […]