On a fiercely hot 11th of July 1924, the event that took the Paris Olympics by storm was the astonishing gold medal run by sprinter Eric Liddell. On that day, against the odds, ‘The Flying Scotsman’ as he was known, fully embodied the Olympic motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” He had copped a wave of criticism at home when he declined running in his favoured 100m event because it was scheduled on a Sunday, which for him was set aside for God.
 
He was transformed into a larger-than-life hero when, given an alternative to run in his less favoured 400m, he won by seven metres in world record time. Over the following century this unlikely story of muscular Christianity has grown in the telling, impacting people of every kind all over the world.
 
Now in 2024, as the multi-billion-dollar international sporting extravaganza opens in the ‘City of Love’, it’s remarkable that the most enduring image from the 1924 Games is that of Eric, head thrown back, blitzing the field, proving on a cinder race track that principle mattered more than patriotism. 

​I was encouraged by the way the remarkable story of William Arnott ‘the Biscuit King of Newcastle’, fired interest. For me, telling the tale of the penniless convict’s son who built a business employing 800 workers, took on a surprising twist when I realised its threads were woven into the tapestry of my Dad’s family history.
 
Two years after 20-year-old William arrived in Maitland on the Hunter River in 1851, my great-grand mother Marianne stepped off the barque Lady Anne, a child immigrant from Portsmouth. Her family settled beside Newcastle Harbour at Stockton. She later married and mothered five children.  
 
Mary Ann Dalby loved serving people. For the next fifty years, while raising her family and sharing in the running of a shoe business with her husband, she maintained her commitment to organisations that touched the lives of the needy. Suffering the loss of two infant children only seemed to deepen her compassion.

The majority of Australians in the past century and a half have sunk their teeth into one or other of a SAO, a Monte Carlo or a Tim Tam. But I guarantee most of us wouldn’t know a cracker about the battler who created the legendary ARNOTT’S biscuit empire.  It’s one of the truly great stories of Australian industry, but more than anything, it’s an inspirational narrative of a man who refused to give in to repeated disasters.
​Click the link to READ and WATCH to learn more.

The Hunter River at Morpeth