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Picture of Harry Houdini's flight in Diggers Rest, Victoria.
Harry Houdini Flew a Flimsy Aircraft in Diggers Rest. But Was He Really the First to Fly in Australia?
Six years after the Wright Brothers made the world’s first controlled, sustained flight of an engine-powered aircraft in the US, Harry Houdini—yes, that Houdini, the famous Hungarian-American escape artist and stunt performer—set a similarly impressive record in the small town of Diggers Rest, Victoria.  Diggers Rest is now considered an outer Melbourne suburb, at about…
Thrift Your Way Through Castlemaine
If you ask a local, they’ll tell you the way to pronounce the first ‘a’ in Castlemaine is short and staccato, like a pouncing ‘cat’. But if you put the question to a different local, they may swear sideways that in fact the ‘a’ is longer and posher, as in ‘glass’. Sitting pretty on Dja…
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