A little Sooty Piece of History

Some may know that I love old things and anything historic with a story.

We’ve been in our 80 odd year old house almost 4 years. Yesterday Dad helped me pull out the old fireplace mantle in order to renovate it. As you can imagine there was a ton of black dust and soot behind it. Out came the vaccuum and I carefully started to clean the wall.

To my delight I noticed a newspaper-like piece of paper folded at the bottom covered in black dust. It is delicate and the print easily lifted.

I couldn’t wait to google some details on the paper to find out how old it was.

It’s an old timetable for an Omnibus service from Newtown-Hamilton-Merewether Beach. The first thing I learnt from researching was that on 30Sept 1925 Newtown’s name was officially changed to North Hamilton. The timetable shows departure and arrival times, and various advertisements for local business’s in Hamilton and Merewether.

I am keen to find out more about this lucky find, and feeling inspired to do something creative with it to celebrate this little piece of history.