to the Ratbag Encyclopedia.
Latest research:
Grave Matters
Help save the grave of James Dyson and his two wives in East Perth Cemetery The bodies of James Dyson and his wives Fanny and Jane lie in the old East Perth Cemetery. The three were united only briefly together under the same roof in life, and when they died many years apart, they were not …
Won’t you think of the children?
A reference list for the children of James, Fanny and Jane Dyson
Boom time.
During the early 1840s, Western Australia experienced its first modern economic boom. This both contributed to and was fed by a sudden expansion in the white settler population. Between 1837 and 1843 the European population doubled. While that sounds impressive, consider this: The total population in 1837 was only 2,025 men, women and children. There might …
Alias Hoffington
I believe I have successfully reconstructed the baroque, Byzantine story of the first Mrs Dyson. I’m now prepared to state my theory and die on this hill if that be my fate. (Hint: I’m probably entirely wrong!)
Rename Canning Bridge
The unspeakable horror of Canning Bridge
Choose your own Adventure
This is the tale of two convicts in Van Diemen’s Land. Their story does not have an end yet: happy, sad or otherwise. Can you help?
A Trial on Trial
A man killed his wife. When the powerful find themselves on trial, discussions happen about the justice system that don’t happen when the powerless are similarly ensnared.
Pavement Archaeology
On the pavements of around where I live in a southern suburb of Perth in Western Australia, are many concrete slabs of various shapes, sizes, and marked with various esoteric designs. Show me anything with two or more variations on a basic pattern of anything and I’m going to want to understand why, or more …
Dyson’s hat
Kings Meadows Convict Station discovery finds artefacts, convict hat
A Tale of Three Cities
Albany, Fremantle and Perth: The three oldest cities in Western Australia: At each other’s throats.
All the articles:
An introduction to the Dysons
The Lancashire Hotpot
Van Diemen’s Land
A Dark Deed in a Damp Land
Too outrageous a coincidence?
Twenty-one Children
Stones in Cumberland
Stuffed
Are you my Mummy?
Joseph Dyson the Elder: The Respectable one
Dorothy Dyson Dances
In Old Hobart Town
All the girls love a soldier
Going Postal: The great family rift.
“The Poste Restante”
Hello Sailor…
CSI Halifax
Leetown to Auchterarder
Rottnest Island #1: It’s a start
Secret Squirrel Business
Know your Guv’nor
The Little Boy Lost: Enter Drewy.
Timber!
Steam Powered Luddites
Kill the Joke (AKA: “You had to be there”)
Literally —ing the Patriarchy: Introducing Jane.
Aberdeen
Thurso
Francis Armstrong: Thesis
I hate Maitland Brown
Under the Establishment
The Sons of Australia: Foundation and Foulkes
Winterbottom’s End
Dyson’s Corner (the First)
Dyson’s Hotel
Happy Gunpowder Treason Day
The Smoking Gun
An Anthemic Ancestor
The Stranger In the Mirror
When the apocalypse comes
Astley 1: Orphans of a Perfect Storm
Astley 2: For Sail
Astley 3: The Gallant Ship Australia
Recognise this face?
I demand the right to be labelled a bastard
On Cemetery Hill
The Fate of the First Wife, Part I
The Fate of the First Wife, Part II
The Fate of The First Wife, Part III
Thomas Dyson: The Canny one
Our George Dyson
Dyson’s Corner (the Second)
On a Roll
A Tale of Three Cities
Dyson’s hat
Pavement Archaeology
A Trial on Trial
Choose your own Adventure
Rename Canning Bridge
Alias Hoffington
Boom time.
Won’t you think of the children?
Grave Matters
Going to the Fairies…
What has been left unsaid..
Reconstructing old Perth out of cardboard (so it lasts, this time)
New Government House
A little bit of war profiteering
How 2020 ended…
Bio: Richard Edwards (jr)
Are you … kidding me?
Rank Hypocrisy
Locating the United Service Tavern
Researching a Convict Ship
Tales of the Moffatt
Perth City Council Minutes 1858-1875
Unreliable Witness
A departure from Van Diemen’s Land
Bio: Henry Nickolls
Bio: David Williams
Bio: Lt Pearson Foote (RN)
Bio: Samuel McKee
Four days with the VDL Establishment
The One that Got Away
I’m sure this is all completely normal
Bio: Edward Hales Taylor
Central Perth in cardboard
Shadowy Spouses
Flame out
Missing an Allpike link?
Thompson’s Swamp
Jane Develing no more.
The point of no return.