Becoming Australian - The Baker Family

Westy Women - Ep2 Pt2 Ida Viola Bohle

Benita Parker of the West Wallsend District Heritage Group continues Ida Viola Bohle’s story in this compelling first-person series celebrating the women who helped shape West Wallsend. In Part 2, Ida reflects on a lifetime of family, community, music, resilience, and change in a town she called home for more than seventy years.

Westy Women - Ep2 Pt1 Ida Viola Bohle

Join Benita Parker from the West Wallsend District Heritage Group as she presents another story of West Wallsend’s pioneering women through vivid first-person narration. In Part 1 of this podcast, we meet Ida Viola Bohle, who arrived in West Wallsend in 1926 as a young teacher and whose connection with the town would endure for more than seven decades.

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Early Mayfield

Society member Sandra Boyd, takes us back to the early 1850s—to a landscape of swamp, scrub, and isolation along the banks of the Hunter River, where her family, the Bakers and others helped shape what would become the suburb of Mayfield.

Westy Women - Ep1 Pt2 Mary Johnston

Benita Parker of the West Wallsend District Heritage Group continues the story of Mary Johnston in this series exploring the lives of West Wallsend’s pioneering women. Set against a time of expanding families, new opportunities, and sweeping change, this episode follows the journey of a miner’s wife who becomes the matriarch of a bustling household as a small settlement grows into a thriving town.