Illawarra Mercury

And at my feet, waves wash up pebbles of coal among the shells.

And every now and then, you know, the Illawarra Mercury would be reporting that, you know, the Bulleye Jetty or some other jetty had been washed away in a storm or badly damaged.

But

the coal companies kept going, you know.

There was a bit of jostling between Wollongong and Port Kembla, but in 1898, the New South Wales Government passed the Port Kembla Harbour Act, and it was chosen as a new public port.

Breakwaters were built, the natural bay, which was then called Tom Thumb's Lagoon, was excavated to accommodate bigger and deeper ships, and Port Kembla became the main port to export coal for all of the local Illawarra coal mines.

As early as the 1860s, you'd find references in the Illawarra Mercury to Wollongong becoming the Birmingham of the South, and that a good, safe, deep-water port at Port Kembla would allow large ships to dock there and load, be it coal, iron, steel, copper, whatever it may be, to take off to Australian or overseas markets.

If we peek through there, we can see Port Kembla.

Then he went for a trip to England and had a good time in the hunting field, coming back in order to take up a captaincy in Baden-Polz police, but arriving some days after his leave had expired and so forfeiting his commission.

Quote from the Illawarra Mercury, Thursday, the 11th of July, 1901, page two, the South African War.

Why have I switched to British? Because I fucking felt like it.

because he was in Britain.

But, I mean, there was... you know helped along by various royal commissions that brought some of this stuff out but certainly with the network pedophilia which is a real sort of stream of this series again by accident it just became something like you know it became the story when it wasn't necessarily going to be so many journos talked to so many people and did i would argue the hard work that now almost everyone i'm talking about is dead or at the very least you know convicted or whatever And Brett Martin, I'm thinking about.

So he was Illawarra Mercury who uncovered Philip Bell, Frank Arkell, that whole kind of group of predators.

Like, I can't compare what I've done now with some of that work.

But it's just very satisfying to kind of look back with a broad lens, which I've got the luxury of doing.