An intro…

[HorologyHead]

Hi fellow students and lovers of Horology,
Am very glad to finally be here. When I was a little boy of about 7 years we regularly visited the home where several great-aunts and my beloved great grandmother all lived together. These deeply family committed ladies had all lost their husbands and even some children early, either in the Great-War or from illness, so as family they banded and lived together to endure the Great Depression, all in a single very happy but frugal home. Their home and community, in Maroubra, Sydney is where I was first exposed to a Westminster chiming mantel clock, suspected timekeeping was special and was bitten by the bug

I can’t now remember my first wrist watch (though I destroyed my Mum’s nursing watch as soon as I was old enough to find it). In my teens I was able to afford the first duty-free cheap red LED display watches with a black plastic band, when we travelled for a family holiday to Fiji in the 1970s.

My Dad’s horology extended really to one watch only.From when I was born in 1959, to when he passed in 2006, he always wore his nickelled steel cased and banded, small diameter wristwatch with an ornate face signed Lavina (the dial barely visible through a lifetime of scratches!). I still have his worn Lavina, wrapped in acid-free paper, an important piece of my vintage wrist-watch collection. 

In the early 1990s I became enthused with history and antiques of every type— from houses to furniture but also including antique timepieces.

Anyway, at 65 years, I  have a modest collection of beautiful (not necessarily mint) wrist and pocket watches, I have antique chiming clocks ranging from grandfathers to granddaughters to an Angelo Tornaghi fusee Australian Cedar wall clock ca. 1870, to a Grand Master’s Masonic presentation clock of the 1920s. I’ve a few 1790s pair-cased fusee pocket watches—but my latest interest is in American Railroad Grade timepieces from Elgin, Hamilton and Illinois.

Wishing you all well—we are only caretakers of our timepieces—I’m certain I’ll find the best practices and advice here that’ll help me do the right things as a caretaker.

Best Wishes, Mike, Australia

[RichardHarris123]

Hello and welcome from Leeds, England.  I have family all over Australia, went as £10 poms.

[HorologyHead]

RichardHarris123: Hello and welcome from Leeds, England.  I have family all over Australia, went as £10 poms

Thanks Richard. Hope you’re able to visit your family here and that they’ve all done well  My relatives arrived from England in the 1790s transported on the ‘Second & Third Fleets’—a story of timber sailing ships, of convicts and doing well in this huge Country of Australia. When I visited the UK in the 1980s, I was too young to comprehend the depth and breadth of its history… 

Best wishes, Mike

William Chapman, my 4th great Grandad’s charges, at age 23 read at the Old Bailey; sentenced to 7 years of transportation to Sydney.