Memories of Morawa (Joe W. Harris)
At this year’s Morawa Get Together (2025) at the Greenwood Hotel in Warwick I was provided with a book titled “Memories of Morawa” written by Joe W. Harris. Many thanks to Dot Calver for providing this to me, and thanks also to Marion Stone who provided it to Dot before that.
While the author/editor/publisher does provide his phone number on the cover, which I can assure you is no longer a working phone number (otherwise I would have blanked it out), nowhere in the document could I find the date that Mr. Harris compiled or published his writings. The publication does however have an Internation Standard Book Number (ISBN) which is “0 646 09772 5” and it takes a bit of work to obtain one of these. You also have to pay out some money to get one registered.
From previous work I have done with books such as copy editing and laying out the 460 page book “Crying Babies & Beyond: The ins and outs & ups and downs” by Renee Shilkin, I knew a bit about ISBNs.
I went to ISBNDB.com and looked up the ISBN number.
It was there, but as you can see from the screen clip at left, ISBNDB.com was not going to show me the published date unless I created an account, which I decided I didn’t want to do.
So I am going to guess the date.
If you look at the PDF file of the book you will see that is was self-published and was printed using a dot matrix printer. Most likely anyone under 40 is not going to have any idea what a dot matrix printer is or was. But this does kind of help me in the dating of this book.
From this I now know it is at least 40 years old thereby putting my first guess at around 1985.
Next there is the format of the phone number. A query using the AI engine Perplexity told me that the phone number style used on the cover of this book was last used in Australia in the early 90s. So that kind of aligns with 1985. Kind of.
From some of the text that I have read there is a reference to Jim Lowry as the policeman in Morawa at the time and when I left Morawa in 1973 Mr. Lowry was the copper there.
So, until I find other overriding evidence I am going to put the date of this publication at the late-70s.
In order for me to put this book on this Website it was necessary, obviously, for me to scan it and turn it into a PDF. Not just any old PDF but a text-searchable PDF—which takes a bit more time and effort and costs $8. However, as noted earlier, this book was printed using a dot matrix printer. It is also printed in a mono-spaced font. Additionally, the pages are photo-copied and for parts of the book the photo-copying is seriously less than optimal. These three things conspired to make the conversion to a PDF a bit more challenging and make the job of turning the PDF into a text-searchable PDF even more challenging. This is because the “AI” that does the magic of making the PDF text-searchable has probably never seen a dot matrix printed document before, and certainly not one using a mono-spaced font, and the faint photocopying in parts of the book just adds to these two issues.
I have gone to the trouble of typing in the above so that I can now point out that the text searchability of the PDF is not perfect. There are clumps of text that the AI could not decipher and thereby make searchable. But even so, based on the testing I have done the text search is probably up around 80 percent reliable—more-or-less.
As part of my testing, while the text search was not able to recognise “blister” in the example shown at right, which is from the second last line in the first paragraph on page 126 of the book, it could recognise “Berrabinning” from the third paragraph on page 26.
I guess what I am saying is that if you are searching for something that is actually in the book the PDF text search may fail even though that content is in the book.
The PDF is stored on my OneDrive and may take half a minute or so to fully open into your default PDF reader or browser.
Once the PDF downloads and opens on your computer or other device you can then use the PDF search function to try and locate information within the book. Or, if you are so included, just read the entire book.
Note of Interest:
One of the other books I have on my Website “A History of the Morawa District: 1850 to 2006” (here) makes frequent referrals to Joe H. Harris and the book “Memories of Morawa”. I assume that these references should be citing Joe W. Harris.
The following information is provided for the indexers and is not intended to be read.
This needs to be done because the indexers (e.g., Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, etc.) do not index inside linked PDF files.
Ballaranga, Monsignor Bryan, Carslake brothers, Alan Deason, E. T. Gordon, Jack Hancock, Johnny Harley, Ivan Kapor, Kempthorne, Irwin Lewis, Bill Lewis, P. J. McGinnis, Marias McKenzie, F. W. Micke, Doug Murray, The Tyrant Rossi, Con Ryan, Alf Smith, Rosemary Solomon, Jack Spicer, Tony Taseff, C. M. Valentine, G. P. White, Alf Yewers, Mount Marvel Joe, Farming is Dangerous, Merkanooka Bill, Stuart Bovell, Sir David Brand, Jack Heitman, Carmen Lawrence, Fred Tubby, Reg Tubby, Western Mining Corp.
Rod Adams, Jack Agar, Ruth Allen, Maree Anderson, Cec Baxter, Wallie Baylis, Bob Bickford, Stuart Bovell, Jack Bradley, Marg Burton, Peter Burton, Melva Calver, Keith Carter, Les Carter, Tony Catalino, John Cattalini, Alf Chapman, Cobweb Corner, Laurie Cotton, Alice Croot, Bert Croot, Douglas Croot, Keith Croot, Lorraine Croot, Nichol Croot, Billie Deason, Esme Doherty, Tom Drake-Brockman, David Fallon, Noel Fallon, Alf From, Vincent Gill, Merv Gillette, Howard Gray, Gullewa, Allan Harley, Johnny Harley, Len Harley, Phil Harley, Enid Harris, Skinny Hearn, Cecil Heitman, Athol Higgins, Charlie Hoey, Bill Johnson, Ray Jones MLC, Ken Judge, Kadji Kadji, Joyce Keeling, Koolanooka, Byron Krummel, Ross Latham, Ernie Lawrence, Midge Lawrence, Maurice Lodge, Olive Lodge, Yorky Lodge, P. H. Lodge, Jim Lowry, Michael Lowry, Rod Madden, Doris McGlew, Jack McGlew, M. B. P. McKenzie, M. E. McKenzie, Tom McKeown, Merkanooka, Edgar Micke, Peter Micke, Jim Milloy, Peter Milloy, Peter Monks, Moondyne Joe, Fred Moore, Cossy Mountain, Mt Marvel, Mount Marvel, Ida Munckton, Jimmy Munckton, Colin Noble, Bill North, John Nunn, Charlie Olsen, Snowy Pike, Dr. R. A. D. Pope, Bill Powell, Jim Powell, Dave Robinson, Vic Rogers, Geoff Roper, John Ross, Patt Ross, Sandy Ross, Sam Rossi, Bill Rule, Peter Rule, Reg Rundle, Bell Rutley, Cyril Rutley, Geoff Sermon, Frank Skipworth, Sir Eric Smart, Garth Snook, Hinky Stokes, Jean Stokes, Strathenden, Bill Tetlow, Tippings Well, Joe Tropiano, Peter Tropiano, Fred Tubby, C. M. Valentine, Mike Vandeleur, Gordon White, Stan White, Yongarloo Spring.