See descriptions of highlighted books below.
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PICTORIAL HISTORY WILLOUGHY
by Bob McKillop and published by Kingsclear Books, Alexandria to mark the 150th 
Anniversary of the Willoughby Municipality/City.
Our own Bob McKillop has written the text and captions for many of the more than 300 photographs and other illustrations that help present the history of our city over the past 150 years. The 140 page book in landscape A4 format tells the history of Willoughby in a well-told presentation covering the landscape, people and infrastructure that brings out the special places and features of our city. In a first for the Kingsclear Pictorial History books, this new addition includes 20 colour photos in the final section of the book.
Managing our Waste: an environmental history of Flat Rock Creek and the Willoughby Incinerator 1900 to 2011
by Robert F McKillop. Castlecrag, published by MWA International, 2012. Size 189x267mm, 74 photos, 6 maps and 12 figures (6 in colour). Weight 350 gms.
Managing our Waste is a complementary publication to the successful ‘Flat Rock Creek: Rugged, Ruined and Reclaimed’ exhibition at the Willoughby Museum. It is based on detailed research into the environmental degradation and reclamation of Flat Rock Creek, particularly the rocky gully of its lower reaches, in the municipality, now the City of Willoughby. It also incorporates the stories told by many local residents of their association with the area, particularly as a playground during their childhood.
Managing our Wasteexplores the forces that resulted in local governments taking responsibility for garbage collection and disposal following Sydney’s 1901 bubonic plague epidemic through to the construction of efficient municipal incinerators in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Willoughby Incinerator housed in an outstanding industrial building designed by Walter Burley Griffin was one of these responses.
The 1930s Depression impacted significantly on Willoughby Council resulting in inadequate funds to install a second furnace or maintain the incinerator. There was a reversion to open-air dumping by the late 1940s and this continued on an increasing scale over the next 20 years.
The changes in community values regarding unrestrained development and its impact on the environment that emerged in the late 1960s influenced local politics from 1974. For Willoughby Council, as elsewhere, there was increasing pressure to manage waste and public open space in accordance with new legislative requirements.
The incinerator building was saved from demolition following a active campaign by community groups and was restored as a restaurant, while the Australian Bicentenary provided the opportunity to reclaim the tip through an ambitious project to create a major sporting complex and a lineal park linking Artarmon with Middle Harbour. The shift from waste disposal to waste management is explored in detail, together with the efforts by the community and Willoughby Council to restore the landscape and conserve the incinerator building as a community facility.
Chatswood Catholic Cemetery – c. 1865 – c.1911
This book is intended to be a lasting memorial to the many extraordinary settlers and 
pioneers who came to this area on Sydney‘s North Shore. Over many years, the deceased and their stories captured Joan’s interest, especially when she discovered that several of those buried at Chatswood were convicts. Evidence also emerged of close ties to the First, Second and Third Fleets and early military regiments.
Historian Joan Newman Antarakis is a New South Wales native and fifth generation Australian. She is married with five children. Her paternal ancestors were early pioneers on the Hunter River (1826) and Clarence River (1842). A keen family historian, especially in the area of Australian history, Joan studied at the University of New England (Armidale) and graduated with a Diploma in Local and Applied History.
Voices of thge Northern Shore
by Terry Fogarty. Chatswood. Boake Press 442 pp
Voices of the Northern Shore is a literary gazetteer of hundreds of poets and authors who have ‘touched’ the North Shore of Sydney. The book is arranged by suburb. Each entry contains some short biographical details of the writer, and excerpt from their work (particularly if it shows their connections to the North Shore) andna list of their published works.
Voices fills a void in the cultural history of Sydney. The northern shore is rich in writers from a wide range of genre. Not since the Oxford Literary Guide to Australia has there been a comprehensive attempt to capture the sense of place embodied in then works of many of our local writers.
Terry Fogarty is a local Geographer\/Historian with a passion for local studies, art and literacy.
Pottery a Willoughby pioneer industry: The Mashman story
by Jean Miller. Chatswood, published by the author for the WDHS, 1999. 53 pages 340 x 175mm with colour card cover, perfect binding.
This is the definitive history of the Victoria Pottery established by the brothers William and Henry Mashman (initially in partnership with James Sanderson) in Victoria Avenue, Chatswood in 1885. With the cooperation of the Mashman family, the author explores the history of early potteries on Sydney’s North Shore and then provides a detailed history of the Mashman brothers business though to its partnership with the Royal Doulton Company in 1957 and its sale to that company in 1959, which then traded as Doulton Australia. Short sections cover the sale of the factory to Corona Unit Packaging in 1980, who continued to manufactory quality sanitary wares there, and on the people who worked in the factory, particularly Jack W Ronson. The book is well-illustrated, including pages from an early catalogue, the stamps used on Mashman pottery, photographs of a range of Mashman Regal artware and a Mashman family tree.
This book is highly collectable and has recently brought high prices on auction sites.
Boronia: Recipes and Recollections.
Chatswood, Willoughby District Historical Society, 1997 (2nd edition 1998). 76 pages in A4
size with spiral binding. This book was prepared at the initiative of Margaret Forsyth Snodgrass who collected recipes from WDHS members that were handed down from past generations. The book is illustrated with historical photographs from the Willoughby Museum collection. Price $10, plus $4.00 packing and postage within Australia.
Paradise and Peccadilloes: Willoughby Pioneers and their Descendants
by Ian Rannard. 210 x 270 mm, landscape, 204 pages, 174 b&w photos. Self published 2011.
This book by local author Ian Rannard is a well researched and written historical account of eight of Willoughby’s pioneers and their descendants, namely the Baldry, Broomham, Day, Forsyth, French, Hammond, Horsley and Stephenson families.
Rannard traces the ups and downs within the families in terms of their prosperity and cohesion in the context of the outside forces interacting on them and the community: economic booms and busts, the impact of wars and the evolving structure and values of our community. The stories are enhanced by a selection of excellent historical photographs, largely provided to the author by the families. In addition, the graphic design and presentation of the book is of a high standard.
