to the Ratbag Encyclopedia.
Latest research:
Timber!
Timber was the business of James Dyson from his earliest years in Western Australia. A year after his arrival in 1841 he was working as a labourer. Of the few people from this time we know for sure that he associated with, Stephen Hyde was a carpenter, and his next door neighbour in Perth for …
The Little Boy Lost: Enter Drewy.
He was a monster. That has to be made plain from the start. He could be very funny, he was creative and he was intelligent. He loved animals. He probably loved his family, but he also hurt them. He hurt them a lot. He also hurt many of the animals he loved as well, and …
Know your Guv’nor
A sarcastic guide to the gubernatorial incumbents of Western Australia during the 19th Century. Before responsible (ha ha) government was granted to the colony in 1890, the direct representatives of the houses of Hannover and Saxe Coburg Gotha had the final word in (well) governing said territory. Its a bit difficult to remember who was in …
Secret Squirrel Business
It seems like there was nothing the average man in Australia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries enjoyed more than belonging to a secret society. Of course it’s no fun at all if no-one can know that you belong to an exclusive brotherhood*, so you have to make sure that everyone has got the memo …
Rottnest Island #1: It’s a start
Rottnest Island, 2013 Digression time: This is an actual sandgroper. They are very rare, I doubt most “true blue” Westralians have actually seen one, much less know what they actually are… that’s another trope I detest: the name Westralia. It’s Western Australia, thank you! Fortunately this obnoxious moniker had mostly died out in the early 20th …
Leetown to Auchterarder
When certain members of the Dyson clan chose to deny their Lancashire heritage of robbery and mayhem, they liked to pretend their antecedents came from Scotland (As you do.) However, some of them truly did: These were the Brough family from Perthshire, Scotland.
CSI Halifax
18 June 1833. Halifax, Yorkshire. A heinous crime had been committed the previous evening, Mr Robertshaw had been viciously attacked and robbed in the street that night. That Tuesday morning the wheels of early nineteenth century justice began to turn. A suspicious character was apprehended that very morning. He was from across the border in Lancashire, …
Hello Sailor…
Could James Dyson have been crew on a Whaler?
“The Poste Restante”
The fairly grand former General Post Office building on the corner of St Georges Terrace and Barrack street, the the exact site of which had once been the original soldier’s barracks for Perth, Western Australia.
Going Postal: The great family rift.
…About half-past nine last Friday night, my attention was attracted by a number of persons standing in front of prisoner’s brothers’ residence, in Murray-street; I was in plain clothes at the time, and Dyson’s sister — a little girl — came up to me and said that her brother Andrew was killing her Father; The evidence …
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.

extinct on the mainland,
you shouldn’t kick it like a football,
or feed it by the hand.