The Latest Breaking News from Damien Hassan

Silk, mulberry trees and the WA 'get-rich' scheme that was tainted by 'scandals'

In the 1800s, the WA government invested in the lucrative silk trade, taking it to the "world stage". But in less than a decade its opportunistic silk ambitions "fell through".

ABC News · May 5, 2023

Western Australia's 1929 centenary celebrations were full of colonial pride, but festivities went awry

A poetry competition whose entries were so bad the judges got legal advice and a fireworks display "overrun by hooligans" were two of the ways Western Australia marked 100 years as a colony.

ABC News · Feb 11, 2023

How last century's bubonic plague outbreak was met with many of the same strategies as COVID-19

A trove of unread documents in WA's state records lays bare the story of how the city tackled a sudden outbreak of deadly disease brought in by rats onboard ships.

ABC News · Aug 6, 2022