Pavel ‘Paul’ Yolkin came to live in Bulli with his partner Glad Polleski in 1923. After retiring, dusted from the Bulli colliery, Yolkin and Glad opened a fish shop on the highway opposite the Bulli Family Hotel. But it wasn’t his fish shop he was known for. He was known as a pioneer of the…
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THE June 1933 by-election for the State electorate of Bulli was won by the Labor Party’s John Thomas Sweeney with over 45 per cent of the vote. Sweeney was up against the United Australia Party’s Arthur Butterell, Communist, Paul Martin and the Miners’ Candidate, Albert Willis. The by-election for the seat, which had 13,008 on…
WHILE staying for a holiday at Thirroul in 1917, Ena Hunter, of Sydney, attended a local political meeting to rally support for Labor candidate Billy Davies, for the coming state election. The mother of two, who had lost a 19-year-old son, Sergeant Norman H. Hunter fighting in France during 1915, was furious when a supporter…
By MICK ROBERTS © FOR quarter of a century English born John Barnes Nicholson represented the predominately working class people of the northern Illawarra as a politician. Labor’s first Illawarra parliamentarian did not find his way to Macquarie Street easily though, and controversy surrounded his 1891 entry into politics. Nicholson arrived in Sydney in 1882 as a 42 year-old…
By MICK ROBERTS © BREAKING that unwritten rule of never discussing politics and religion at the pub can have dire consequence. Some people learn the hard way: like Bulli bullocky James Robinson. Robinson was a new arrival to the parochial little coal-mining village of Bulli and was causing quite a stir with his outspoken political…
By MICK ROBERTS © BEFORE the days of organised political parties, the present City of Wollongong was represented by just one Member of Parliament during the 1880s – a colonial electorate stretching from Yallah in the south to Helensburgh in the north. Two local publicans decided to throw their hats in the ring to vie…
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