One feature of cooking during the Great Depression, especially in rural areas, was home made kitchen ware. I especially like the flour sifter; Kerosene was widely used in Australia for heating and lighting, and the empty tins provided the raw material for all manner of makeshift household
Read more →Engineer George Morris arrived in Australia in the 1890s. He settled in Sydney, marrying Priscilla Walker in 1903. The couple then moved to Lithgow, in the Blue Mountains, where George was initially employed at the town’s blast furnace. In 1910 he left, to open a foundry in
Read more →A SMALL PIECE OF WOOD Apparently wooden ‘dolly pegs’ were originally hand made by Gypsies in the UK, who sold them door to door. Sometimes they were carved from hedgerow wood, sometimes they were just a couple of sticks bound together with strips of tin. In Tasmania
Read more →GOLD IN THE BLOOD? Many years ago one of my elderly Larcombe aunts sent me a yellowed newspaper cutting of a famous gold find in Western Australia, It was The Golden Eagle nugget, discovered in 1931. I can only presume that the Jim Larcombe in the
Read more →FAMILY HEIRLOOMS During my childhood in Tasmania there were two small oil paintings hanging beside the open fire in our farmhouse sitting room. When the wind blew, the hessian backed wallpaper ballooned out, and the pictures nearly fell off their nails. I was always intrigued by them,
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