John Gardiner, MC
John Gardiner was born near Glasgow, Scotland in 1894. At age 17 he enlisted in the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) as part of the Territorial Forces. With the start of WWI…
William Baird
This photograph from the 1960s shows the headstone of William Baird at the Angel Close Historic Cemetery in Forster. William Baird was born in 1851 in Sydney…
Alfred Basham and Jane Middlemiss
In the Angel Close Historic Cemetery at Forster lies the remains of Alfred Basham and Jane Middlemiss. While these two youths were not related nor did they die together they were nevertheless connected…
Robert Croker and the Nabiac War Memorial
Robert Croker was awarded the contract to build the memorial and hired other war veterans to help him. The dedication service was on ANZAC Day 1932 and some 60 returned soldiers marched to the new memorial…
John “Wylie” Breckenridge Third
Like his forebears, Wylie Breckenridge was a boat enthusiast. He had an idea for making the sport of motor boat racing popular at Cape Hawke and set about designing a speedboat…
Captain Cromarty buried at Carrington Cemetery
During a storm in 1838, a steamer lost its smaller boat which was stranded at One Mile Beach. Cromarty was asked to retrieve the boat and row it back to Port Stephens…
Clyde Smith and the SS Reliance
Following the war, Clyde returned to Tea Gardens where he worked on the passenger steamer “SS Reliance” owned by Thurlow and Co. He held both an engineer’s ticket and master’s ticket so at times captained the ship…
Robert Clyde Smith and the Dalfram Strike
No. 4 Jetty at Port Kembla was the scene of a shocking fatality on 7 November 1938. A young man from Tea Gardens, Robert Clyde Smith, was crushed to death while unloading pig-iron (wrought iron) on to a ship bound for Japan…
Pietro Muscio’s diary
In the twilight of Pietro Antonio Muscio’s life he sat down to write his ‘little story’ over a fortnight in November 1922. Using a fountain pen, exercise book and in English (his second language) he wrote his life story in 43 pages…
Joseph and Ada Tolhurst
Joseph Tolhurst and his sister Ada share a gravestone in a small park at the end of Angel Close, Forster. Joseph was just 18 years old when he was killed at the Breckenridge Sawmills…