Bulli & Clifton Times

Nicholson (third from left top row) was also a director of the first Bulli Hospital Board in 1892. Also pictured are A S Artis (Sitting bottom row third from left) whose formal objection to a shortage of ballot papers at Bulli, caused by an “error of judgement” by returning officer Henry Fry (bearded and sitting top row fourth from left) caused a by-election in 1891.

By MICK ROBERTS ©

John Barnes Nicholson

FOR quarter of a century English born John Barnes Nicholson represented the predominately working class people of the northern Illawarra as a politician.

Labor’s first Illawarra parliamentarian did not find his way to Macquarie Street easily though, and controversy surrounded his 1891 entry into politics.

Nicholson arrived in Sydney in 1882 as a 42 year-old from the Californian gold fields. Mining was in his blood, entering the pits in England as a teenager, and after his Californian adventure, working in the Newcastle coal fields.

Nicholson later…