April 9, 2015
These cottages in Williwa Street Portland, on the edge of the cement works site, have been derelict for as long as I can remember, since the mid 1970s at least. But in 1950, when the cement works were in full swing and my grandfather William (Billy) Milliss was the foreman, my parents lived there and […]
April 7, 2015
The garden surrounding Lidsdale House was designed by Paul Sorensen. It is lush and manicured. But the 1940s extensions to the house are in a creepy and ominous style. They have an uncanny lost domain feeling that haunted me as I cautiously peeked over the fence as a child. In some strange way they projected […]
April 6, 2015
As a teenager during the Second World War my mother worked as a telephonist in a room above the grand entrance to the Lithgow Small Arms Factory. The Small Arms Factory was once one of the most high technology factories in the southern hemisphere. It is now empty and abandoned.