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to the Ratbag Encyclopedia.

Latest research:

  • Timber!

    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.

    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

    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

    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 #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

    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

    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…

    Hello Sailor...

    Could James Dyson have been crew on a Whaler?

  • “The Poste Restante”

    "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.

    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:

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