Peter Kotz, a fellow social history buff, took the photo below. The rusting, 70 lb golden syrup drum was found on a rough bush track near Alice Springs. Golden syrup was such an integral part of life in the parched Australian outback. It replaced butter on a
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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
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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
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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
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CONTINUING THE STORY OF SYDNEY SOCIALITE AIMÉE EDOLS . CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE In 1932, bankrupt Sydney socialite Aimée Edols evaded police for nearly six months. She had turned for help to an
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THE GOOD LIFE! In 1930, 47 year old Aimée Edols was living in Sydney’s fashionable Eastern Suburbs. Her husband Ernest was a retired grazier, whose family had once owned Burrawang, an extensive property at Forbes , in the Central West of New South Wales. Burrawang was famous for having one
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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
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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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THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. In 1910 Henry Lawson wrote the following lines celebrating Sydney’s restorative Southerly Buster; ‘Tis a glorious mission , Old Sydney’s Physician Broom, Bucket and Cloth of the East, ‘Tis a breeze and a sprayer that answers our
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