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Nancy Cushing

@ncushing12.bsky.social
280 followers 125 following 44 posts

Environmental historian on Durramuragal and Awabakal Country. 🐨🦘🍁. University of Newcastle. Coral Thomas Fellow, 2024-25, State Library NSW. On execs of OzAHA and AANZ Environmental History Network.

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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
Spent the last couple of weeks at @slnsw looking for animals on detailed plans of Sydney city street blocks from 1880s to 1930s. Not much to see. Mainly the odd stable hidden away behind the street fronts. So then I visited the grand daddy of Sydney stables.
Plan of Market Street block showing stables behind building facing the street.Grand building with turrets.  Current Sydney Conservatorium, built as the stables for Government House, Sydney.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Top morning last Friday talking history with these legends and many others during a Museums of History NSW symposium at the Mint. Looking forward to joining efforts to connect historians working across the state. Photo © Joshua Morris for MHNSW.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Just for you
Statue of Charles Dickens attached to a stool for stability.Bronze Statue of Henry Parkes with plaque noting it replaces one destroyed in 1971.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Looking for historical animals in Sydney’s Centennial Park. And why historians need a stout pair of boots.
Bronze lion surrounding statueFormer bird sanctuary, wrought iron gates with wetland plants and bird donated by Gould League of Birdlovers.Paperbark / melaleuca trees with flying foxes hanging from them.My feet in muddy white sneakers.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Is this happening in your place? Theft of plaques from monuments and memorials apparently for the value of the metal? Are the thieves unwitting allies of iconoclasts?
Newcastle (Australia) coal monument (1909) missing illustrative and informational plaques.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Which Australian bark are you?
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
They could always play hockey (well, ok, they would have had to invent it) but I wanted to share this photo of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment hockey team awaiting transport to England in 1917, and especially, their adorable sweaters. Some skilful women behind them, I think.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
It contributes to making the case for why the 26th of January, the day on which the colony of New South Wales was officially launched, is not a day of celebration but a day of mourning for the continent's First Peoples.
Photograph from 1938 of a group of Aboriginal men, women and children with a sign saying Aborigines Conference/ Day of Mourning/ Aborigines Only [final word obscured].  One holds a sign saying Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
There is some irony in seeing that my former colleague, the late Professor Lyndall RYAN AM, has been made an officer of the Order of Australia today "For distinguished service to tertiary education, particularly Indigenous history and colonial settlement through research and publications."
Photograph of EP Lyndall Ryan with a book open in front of her on a table.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
1940 bushfire poster from New South Wales linking them with the housing shortage that existed before the war and became much worse as it progressed, as resources were shifted to war purposes.
Stylised view of a heavily burned forest with black and grey tree trunks on a background of red soil and sky.  Text: Burned trees build no homes.  Prevent Forest Fires.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
It is Christmas day here in Australia and as part of my bushfire series, what seems like a highly inappropriate way to wish someone Christmas joy.
Three exhausted looking men holding green boughs and axes watching as a bush fire burns around their dwelling. Labelled “The Enemy” but with the words “To wish you joy” added.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
In 1948, the Bush Fire Advisory Committee reminded the people of New South Wales of their Christian duty to provide stewardship to birds and animals. They put a strong emphasis on charismatic native species but didn't forget the economically important sheep in the background.
An image of an idealised edge of well watered, green Australian bush with kangaroo, wallabies, lyre birds, an echidna, emu and chicks, possum, kookaburra, koala, willy wagtails, magpie larks and magpies, with sheep in the background.  A quote from Coleridge about loving all creatures great and small; and the message Protect Australian Birds and Animals, Prevent Bush Fires.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Playing with perspective in this 1947 anti-bushfire poster. The white cuff and well groomed hand suggest this is a city dweller unfamiliar with the protocols that needed to be observed in the bush.
A man's hand extending out from a red railway carriage's window tosses a lit cigarette butt out into a dry Australian landscape.  Caption: Don't throw them out!  Prevent Bushfires
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
A series in the lead up to Christmas Australian-style. What is more seasonal than the threat of bushfires? Some cautionary posters from the NSW Rural Fire Service, starting with this tasteless one from 1946. All nicked from www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/ourstory/gal...
Red, black and white poster labelling a lit match an atom bomb Australian style and warning people to put out matches to prevent bushfires.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
An ibis’s work is never done. At Sydney Botanic Gardens.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
A simple message post the Riding Tide protest in Newcastle, Australia. But the ships keep coming and leaving a day later full of coal mainly bound for Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China. More coal is exported here than through any other port. #coalmustfall.
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Wild Life always seems to promise something different than wildlife does. The crocodilian binding suggests this book could go either way. 🐊
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Nancy Cushing @ncushing12.bsky.social · 02/10/2024
Just a proof of life post as I have not been using this account. A bluebottle and a seagull on Newcastle Beach, Australia.
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