Summary

20-page brochure with colour cover featuring a stylized image of a red and white train. The brochure provides information on the Central and North Australia Railways passenger rail service. It was made around 1958. The publisher's name is not recorded.

The train depicted is a stylized GM class - an Australian diesel locomotive built by Clyde Engineering, Granville for the Commonwealth Railways between 1951 and 1967. The Commonwealth Railways was established in 1912 and absorbed into the Australian National Railways Commission in 1975.

Physical Description

20-page brochure with colour cover featuring a stylized image of a red and white train pulled by a diesel-electric locomotive at bottom, laid over an image of the outback with a mountain and water hole. Rear cover features images of 'exciting places' in Central Australia and the Northern Territory. Contents printed in black and white, with some green highlights. Contents include general description and black-and-white (some with green highlights) images relating to the Central Australia Railway passenger service, facilities and amenities on board, tourist attractions en route, a map of the main / Commonwealth railways in Australia with gauge sizes indicated, historical notes on Central and North Australia Railways, general information for passengers, and brief information on the Stuart and Barkly Highways.

Significance

Historical Background:

Part of an eclectic collection that includes ephemera accumulated by the donor's family over the past 100 or so years, as well as provenanced items relating to Ellen Webb and Stanley Hammond, her son-in-law. Ellen Webb was born in Norfolk, England, in 1836, the daughter of an agricultural labourer. At the age of 12 she went into service as a maid. At the age of 20, in 1856, she married her cousin Thomas Webb, by then an Australian settler, who had returned from Australia to marry her. Thomas had done well on the goldfields, and used his earnings to buy a half-share in a schooner. During his visit to England he became qualified as a ship's captain. Captain Webb later became one of the first directors of the shipping company Huddart Parker, and became a rich man.

Thomas and Ellen returned to Australia and lived in Emerald Hill, then in Geelong, and finally at Melville, 32 Middle Crescent Brighton, where they both spent the rest of their days in genteel comfort. Thomas died at the age of 68, in 1898. Ellen outlived him by many years, and was remembered to dress in an old-fashioned manner in later life. She enjoyed handcrafts such as making headpieces. She died at the age of 88, in 1924.

One of their eight children, Ivie Constance, born in 1879, married a neighbour's son, Stanley Hammond (also from Middle Crescent, Brighton). Stanley had attended Melbourne Grammar School, played cricket and tennis, and became a long-term player and official of the Brighton Cricket Club. He went to the Boer War 1900-1901 as a Trooper in 3rd Victorian Contingent, and in 1906 married Ivie. They lived at Carinya in Kensington Road, South Yarra and then at Coonac in Clendon Road, Toorak. They had four daughters: Claire, Joyce, Patricia and Susan. Stanley became a director of British Tobacco Co. (Aust.) Ltd, British-Australasian Tobacco, Co. Pty Ltd; States Tobacco Co. (Aust.) Ltd; and W.D. & H.O. Wills (Aust.) Ltd, Melbourne. Stanley belonged to the Bohemian Club and subsequently The Melbourne Club, and to the Melbourne Cricket Club. He was a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries. Ivie died in 1933; Stanley kept working, but retired in 1941. During World War II Coonac was requisitioned by the government for the use of the WAAAFs (Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force). By this time his daughters had all married and Stanley moved to Trawalla, a boarding house in Toorak. When Trawalla was sold he moved to the Melbourne Club, where he lived until his death in 1958.

Thomas and Ellen's great grand-daughter is the donor of the collection.

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