Friday, 31 January 2014

News From The Dark Side Of The Moon

The Illustrated London News August of 1864 was an action packed edition, from which I could have created many posts .... but in this series of blasts from the news past, I will create just one more post from that edition. So after a post from Ceylon, and one from North America, I have created a post from the Pacific area - New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

The first story is from New Zealand where there was a simple story on the arrival of news from England - an event which was a very important for a people who were months away from news from home. They may as well have been on another planet or the dark side of the moon.
 
News From The Other Side Of The World

.... it took a month for the packet ship to arrive from Sydney alone, and months for the ships from England to get to Australia.

The Main Post Office In Auckland 1864

This is particularly interesting as there was brief mention of military actions in New Zealand, which must have been wars with the native Maori's .... so the news from home and family would have been even more wanted.

Fighting In New Zealand

Then there was a report on the building of the Tarradale railways viaduct completing the Melbourne to Sandhurst line. This was in Victoria Colony, the richest in Australia at the time ....

A Big Achievement In Australia.

And the arrival of flat bottomed schooners in Sydney New South Wales having sailed 16,000 miles to get there was big news. Its easy to forget how many ships were sunk on trips of those distances in 1864 ...


The West Hartley - One Of Two Flat Bottomed Schooners
Finally, The Illustrated London News reported on a land, so strange and exotic that it had been closed to westerners up until 1853, when Admiral Perry from the US Navy had forced it to open up. So this was only a decade after that opening up ..... Japan really was a foreign land.

Report From Osaca in Japan

Osaca Street Scene in 1864

The Japanese Army Modernised Quickly After This Scene in 1864


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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous20 February 2014 at 23:04

    The pictures are fantastic. If you framed them I'll bet there's a real market for them, even if it ruins the paper.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No PC21 February 2014 at 18:48

      They do have a value as 'prints' but I am loathe to vandalise the papers .... maybe after I have posted them all, i might eBay them in frames.

      Delete

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