Historian and maker of small scale model aeroplanes
THE DIMBOOLA COURT HOUSE1875 My father was an active member of the Dimboola and District Historical Society and, at his urging, I wrote a short history of the Dimboola Court House which the Society acquired and moved to its new location around 2002. The Society now uses the Court House as its meeting place and … More The Dimboola Court House
Here is a paper that I wrote for a short talk I gave at a recent Collaborative Research Center in Australian History research seminar at Federation University. It’s more or less about the theoretical ideas behind the history of Australian civil aviation that I’m working on. As it turned out, what is written here and … More Australian Aviation – A Technological System – A seminar paper
Here’s the text of a talk that I gave at the open day of the Airways Museum which focused, this year, on the Empire Air Mail Scheme. This talk of mine is based on a paper about differing ideas about the concept of ‘Empire’ between Britain and Australia in the 1930s that I should put … More Origins of the Empire Air Main Scheme
The fourth Aviation Cultures meeting took place at Sydney University this past week. Around 100 people attended and had a fine time with many interesting presenters on a wide range of topics related to aviation studies. I made a contribution too, a short paper on the history of Australian civil aviation in the 20th Century … More A History of Australian Civil Aviation
We’ve let monsters into our house. Not only are they monsters of the usual kind, they are model kit eating monsters. Last year I decided that it was about time I came to grips with this new (for me) acrylic paint. Having been put off by the first generation of acrylic modelling paints back in … More A Tale of Two Kittens (and lost parts)
Yesterday I went to Booktown Clunes which is a huge orgy of book selling and buying. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s worth finding out about on the www. Despite the manifest temptations I bought only three books, and worthy tomes they are too, none of your paperback rubbish. My main reason for going … More BEFORE/NOW
I reckon it might be fifty years or more since I went to the MCG to watch a game of footy. Not that footy isn’t interesting, just that there were other more interesting things to do on the weekend during that time or we weren’t living in Melbourne or the Melbourne Football Club team was … More I go to the footy
As part of the history of Australian sf fandom that I’m working on I have been publishing a small fanzine called iOTA containing reports on the progress of the project, some general thoughts on fandom past and present, reviews of old fanzines and reprints of various items previously published in Australian fanzines. I put this … More iOTA – issues 01 to 16
Here is a convention report of mine that was published in Beam 15 a little while ago, edited by Nic Farey and Ulrika O’Brien. If you want to read the entire fanzine, and you should, you can find it on efanzines.com at https://efanzines.com/Beam/Beam15.pdf A fair Day Out – Beam 15
Published just now is an article of mine titled ‘Sudden Turbulence in the 1970s, Australian Air Transport and the Whitlam Government’. It is a draft of the first chapter of the third volume of my history of Australian civil aviation in the 20th century.
Leigh Edmonds little box of stuff 