If you love living here, imagine how much First Nations people must have loved it before the British invasion, writes Frank Coldebella.

Long before holiday houses were million-dollar mansions, the hut dwellers of Shack Bay lived like kings. Frank Coldebella will never forget those dreamtime days.

Trained in the Wonthaggi mine workshops, Danny Carr and his workmates proved a boon to the district after the mine closed.

How the big end of town hijacked the community’s vision for Wonthaggi ... Frank Coldebella reports.

It was only a summer job but it was the start of Frank Coldebella’s real education.

The liquor and gambling industry should not be telling us how to use our public space, writes Frank Coldebella, who backs a plan to make McBride Avenue a gathering place.

Wonthaggi’s “dinkum common folk” and a culture of working for the public good created a multi-cultural society ahead of its time, writes Frank Coldebella.

Dear Santa ... Frank Coldebella spells out his wish list.

Frank Coldebella celebrates the achievements of forgotten, ordinary people who fought for a better world.

Germans have platze, French places, Italian piazzas. Frank Coldebella imagines a Wonthaggi version of such a meeting space.

Photos: Geoff Ellis At a clearing sale in the hills, an old piano sings to Frank Coldebella of other days. By Frank Coldebella A CLEARING sale is a pivotal event, where neighbours, friends, kids,...

Jim McDonnell was still living in a hut on the coast between Harmers and Cape in the mid-1970s. Frank Coldebella recalls a man more attuned to the natural rhythms than to the trivia of town life.

Years after houses replaced Wonthaggi’s tent town, many old people remembered their camping times as the best days of their lives. By Frank Coldebella IN 1892 Australia was six separate colonies each...

Seventy years after the end of the Second World War, many local people are still haunted by personal experiences of war. ​ By Frank Coldebella ​ FIVE hundred and twenty-one Australians were killed in...

"Australia is not a country that goes looking for trouble,” Tony Abbott said recently, but our history tells a different story. ​ ​By Frank Coldebella ON WINNING the Americas Cup in 1983, Alan Bond...

The 1960s finally came to Wonthaggi in 1968, writes Frank Coldebella, with a contingent of young teachers who didn’t use abuse, bullying or violence as teaching aids. By Frank Coldebella IN 1966, the...

Henry Meyrick’s words expose a dark chapter of Gippsland’s – and Victoria’s – history.

​Handing out how-to-vote cards on election day provided plenty of opportunity for Frank Coldebella to contemplate voters, democracy, free speech and obesity.​​ By Frank Coldebella IT WAS cold, grey...

All over the world, 1968 was a revolutionary year. Frank Coldebella was in year 9 and watched the spark of revolution reach Wonthaggi. By Frank Coldebella ​IN 1968, fires in the Dandenongs destroyed...

It started with a clothes line, a peg, an electrical cord and some cobwebs, and pretty soon a couple of grey fantails had crafted a fine home in a Wonthaggi garage.