Gillies and Judd Family History
While researching old newspapers in relation to the early use of LSD on psychiatric patients in the 1960s, I stumbled across the weird 1950s CIA mind control project known as MK-ULTRA. 86 institutions including universities, mental hospitals and prisons – participated in CIA-sponsored experiments on (often unwitting) human subjects. Over eleven years,...
In 1965, at age 13, I sold evening newspapers standing outside a pub on a busy intersection in Carnegie from about 4.30pm to 6pm. Blokes (and they were all men) used to knock off work and rush to the pub to get in a good hours beer guzzling before the...
While working as a psychiatric nurse on night duty at a large mental hospital in the late 1970s, I found an old, large, leather bound volume which contained dozens of records of the administration of Lysergic acid diethylamine (LSD) to patients with psychotic illnesses in the 1960s. I remember being...
Leucotomy (or lobotomy) is an obsolete treatment for schizophrenia – the surgical ‘interruption’ of nerve tracts to and from the frontal lobe of the brain – usually with the aim of alleviating or ‘curing’ the mental illness. It often resulted in marked cognitive and personality changes. The originator of the procedure, Portuguese neurologist...
My great grandfather Alexander Migan sailed on the barque, Kathleen Hilda. The following is an excerpt from his memoir of his sailing days, about the loss of a mate at sea in 1895. I joined the crew of the Barque ‘Kathleen Hilda’. An old inter-colonial timber trader for a number...
SAD DAYS FOR THE BOTTLE-O Wants Suburbia Back on Beer Yes, we have no beer bottles; we have pickle bottles and vinegar bottles, but yes, we have no beer bottles to-day (chorus) THE only chap who hasn’t had his share of sympathy among those affected by the beer strike is...
THE TRAIL OF THE NIGHTCART Yesterday morning Arthur Lewis appeared before the bench in answer to a summons charging him with so filling a night-cart with night-soil as to cause some of the contents to run over along William-street, Bathurst, on the 15th. instant. The P.M. and Mr. J. Meagher,...
Rabbits European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) were introduced to Australia in the 18th century with the First Fleet and eventually became widespread. In mid 1860s there was an epidemic of rabbits which originated with the release of 24 wild rabbits by Thomas Austin for hunting purposes in October 1859, on his property,...
HYDATIDS When I first came to live in the Derwent Valley in Tasmania in the mid 1970s, and as a dog owner, I was surprised to learn of the prevalence and dangers of Hydatid disease – something I had never heard of at that time. Hydatids caused the death of...
Warning: This article contains much mid 19th century Australian racism and prejudice. BLACKFELLOWS OPOSSUM HUNTING Opussum hunting is one of the most popular of our sports, whether we regard the keen appetite of the aboriginal, or the mere lure of animal conquest, implanted in the bosom of his more civilised...
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