Biography, Event, Politics, Women's History

DAD’S EULOGY: Adrian Leonard Aldrick – We all knew him as Len or Dad or Dar

All the family helped around the property on Terrigal Road, in the orchard which supplemented the family income and in the vegetable garden or milking cows. Some would often recall having to bring the cows in for milking and in the winter when the frost was crackling under their bare feet, they would stand in the fresh cowpats just to keep their feet warm.

Len worked in the bush with his Father for about three years then got a job at a local orchard. A few months after the war ended, and aged about 19, Len and his mate decided to look for work further afield and ended up at Wee Waa in the North West of the State working on a property during the wheat season. Len also sought work in the Riverina. Our family would return some years later to live at that property outside Wee Waa called “Brushy Park”. By now he had met Neryl and came to live at Carlingford and they were married in 1947. Len worked in a sawmill at Parramatta then at HMV Homebush and EMI, pressing records. The record collection began to grow. Then it was back to Terrigal Road where Len and Neryl built a small house and he began cutting and carting logs for a local sawmill. By then they had two very young daughters, Phyllis and Maureen, and Len would come home from work and they would both get stuck into finishing the house working well into the nights.

Event, General, Politics, Women's History

Making Changes by Making History: Women in Construction

… construction projects have seen women taking on more senior roles like that of architect Nicole Dosso, Technical Director of the construction project known as One World Trade Centre. Dosso was the single senior technical coordinator representing Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) on the day-to-day execution of the job. For all intents and purposes it could be said that a woman built the tallest tower in North America. For her contribution to the rebuilding of the World Trade Centre site, Nicole Dosso was honoured by the US National Association of Professional Women in Construction in 2006.

Biography, Event, Politics, Women's History

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act – A History of Equal Pay

Lilly Ledbetter’s eight year battle started with a little note she found in the women’s bathroom at work. The note ranked her salary alongside the much higher salaries of three male tire-room managers, and Ledbetter was shocked to see that her male peers were making $14,000 and more per year than she was. “I’d worried about being paid less than the men who were doing the same work I was,” Ledbetter records in her memoir, but she never had evidence to prove her suspicions (5). Armed with this alarming new information, Ledbetter took action and sued Goodyear for pay discrimination.

Biography, Event, Politics, Source, Women's History

Remembering Naomi Jacob (1884-1964)

Although she was brought up in the Church of England, Jacob converted to Roman Catholicism at around the age of eighteen. But she remained proud of her Jewish heritage. This is most clearly demonstrated in The Gollantz Saga, which she began writing just before the Nazis swept to power in Germany. Beginning in early nineteenth century Vienna, it follow several generations of a Jewish family, as the head of the house establishes a business and life in England, moving among the British upper classes. The series is an engaging and warm exploration of family ties and rivalries, and the principles of honour and loyalty.

Event, Politics, Women's History

The Women ‘who never cry’: British Women Released by Germany

The women were more fortunate than the 150 white men, who were taken back to Prisoner of War camps in Germany. And that privileging of women was a common pattern in WW2 .

After that Betsy and Geraldine’s group endured two weeks of what one newspaper described as ‘a rollicking Robinson Crusoe adventure’ on Emirau (‘Squally’) Island. It was not.

Then on Christmas Day an Australian naval initiative rescued them and took them safely to the Antipodes.