'In the last decade of his long life, Wal Stubbings (1913-2014), retired Water side worker from the port of Brisbane, occupied himself with his life story. As a worker, and a militant one, he had already penned a number of short articles for his union, the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF, later the Maritime Union of Australia) and for the Communist Party of Australia (CPA, dissolved in 1991), and letters to the Courier-Mail. When asked to contribute to the Stubbings family history being compiled by a cousin in Melbourne, his taste for memoir was whetted and he continued on after the family history was published. Wal Stubbings knew that he had lived as a player in the political history of Australia and he wanted an autobiography that included his all-important family and his life as a militant worker.' (Introduction)
'The physical toll of the Great War was enormous and its effect on Australian society profound. From 416,809 enlisted servicemen, Australia lost more than half that number either killed or wounded, and the nature of the weaponry used had produced a legacy of maiming and disability of an unprecedented severity and scale. While families who had lost loved ones struggled with their absence, those whose sons, husbands, brothers, or fathers were physically altered also had to deal with a dramatic change in their circumstances. The Repatriation Department was overwhelmed with requests for assistance. Far more insidious though were the mental wounds of the war. Although less obvious than a missing or maimed limb, the psychological effects of the horrors of modern warfare had as much a profound impact on men's ability to return to society as did physical wounds. Of great concern for organisations responsible for the care of returned men, cases of 'shell-shock' continued to increase after the war.' (Introduction)
'Edwin Maurice Little lived his late teens at Indooroopilly, Brisbane, as a son of the first minister of the Indooroopilly Methodist Church to be appointed after union was effected between the Wesleyan and Primitive arms of the Methodist church. Rev. William Little was the minister of the congregation from 1910 to 1914 when the small timber chapel at the corner of Rylatt Street and Moggill Road was the place of worship. The Little family were the first occupants of the parsonage that was located in Moggill Road beside the church and which remains today.' (Introduction)
'The word Deaf is misleading when it is used in a general term. Children who are born deaf, that is, pre-lingually deaf have a completely different problem to those who lose their hearing later in life. The pre-lingually deaf have never heard a spoken language and for them it is a lifelong struggle to make sense of their environment. However if hearing is lost after the establishment of language then the problem becomes one of a sound deficiency. The social emotional and intellectual consequences of the two groups are not the same and require different educational approaches.' For the purpose of this paper the pre-lingually deaf children will be discussed.' (Introduction)
'In January 1864 George Elphinstone Dalrymple, and a group of about 20 settlers, landed at Rockingham Bay in north Queensland. His chief purpose was to establish a town and a track across the rugged coastal range to his station, Valley of Lagoons, 130 kilometres to the west. The local Indigenous people, not surprisingly, resisted this invasion of their land, making life for the new-comers difficult, with violence occurring on both sides. Included in the first group to land at Rockingham Bay was John Dallachy, a botanist employed by Ferdinand von Mueller, director of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, with the brief to collect plant specimens for the Gardens. Over the next seven years Dallachy provided the first significant collections from the area we now know as the 'Wet Tropics'. (Introduction)
