This fantastic historic image is from a newspaper clipping taken from a scrap book that was given to me many years ago by an old Woonona identity. It is undated, but I would guess it was snapped early last century. The caption reads: “AN early camera man, with an eye for the unusual, used these…
The hotels in Wollongong, on the NSW South Coast, went through a major transformation with the population explosion that came with the opening of Hoskins Iron and Steel Works at Port Kembla in 1927. The works became Australian Iron and Steel the following year, and as the 1930s progressed, the region struggled with the…
By MICK ROBERTS © WHEN a Shellharbour civic leader died on the sofa of Wollongong’s Commercial Hotel in 1872 the news caused a sensation. Edward Killalea was elected to the Shellharbour Municipal Council just two years before his death in 1872 from the “effects of excessive drinking” and taking a does of strychnine “enough to poison…
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…
Looking Back 